Best Distro to run Mycroft on old hardware

General Discussion
1

Does anyone have advice on a known-working distro for older laptops to run Mycroft?

I attempted to run Mycroft on an old netbook and gave up because I couldn’t get the microphone to work and thought it was due to machine speed. I gave up on that device and installed on a Lenovo IdeaPad U330, Core 2 Duo P7350, 4GB RAM. I installed Lubuntu 18.04 and set up Mycroft, including pairing the device to my account. However, I cannot get the microphone to work at all. I’ve done a bunch of troubleshooting, unmuted it, messed with some suggestions found online, and just plain can’t get the mic working. So, I’m willing to reimage this machine to something else if that may help at all.

I’m about to try Mint, but am happy to try whatever distro will run well and work here.

2

Problem is something with Microsoft HD Audio and linux. Plugged in a mic and got it going. Now to play around.

1 Like
3

Hey Dan,

We get plenty of audio issues around here unfortunately, so certainly something we can help with if you want to get the inbuilt mic working in the future.

First stop is generally our audio troubleshooting page if you haven’t seen it already.

4

If it’s not inappropriate, can I still get an answer to Dan’s original question about the best distro to run Mycroft on old hardware? I’m going to learn linux specifically for Mycroft, so I have no context.

5

anything debian based should be safe

if you really do mean old, i am running mycroft on antiX

System:    Host: AntIx Kernel: 4.15.9-antix.1-686-smp-pae i686 bits: 32 compiler: gcc v: 6.3.0 
           Desktop: IceWM 1.4.2 info: icewmtray wm: motif dm: SLiM 1.3.4 
           Distro: antiX-17.1_386-full Heather Heyer 17 March 2018 
           base: Debian GNU/Linux 9 (stretch) 
Machine:   Type: Laptop System: Packard Bell product: EasyNote LV44HC v: V2.08 serial: <filter> 
           Mobo: Type2 - Board Vendor Name1 model: VG70_HC v: Type2 - Board Version 
           serial: <filter> UEFI [Legacy]: Insyde v: 2.08 date: 08/21/2012 
Memory:    RAM: total: 3.76 GiB 
CPU:       Topology: Dual Core model: Intel Pentium B960 bits: 64 type: MCP arch: Sandy Bridge 
           family: 6 model-id: 2A (42) stepping: 7 microcode: 26 L2 cache: 2048 KiB bogomips: 8779 
           Speed: 1149 MHz min/max: 800/1760 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 849 2: 847            
Graphics:  Device-1: Intel 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics 
           vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI driver: i915 v: kernel bus ID: 00:02.0 chip ID: 8086:0106 
           Display: server: X.Org 1.19.2 driver: modesetting unloaded: fbdev,vesa 
           resolution: 1600x900~60Hz 
           OpenGL: renderer: Mesa DRI Intel Sandybridge Mobile x86/MMX/SSE2 v: 3.3 Mesa 13.0.6 
           compat-v: 3.0 direct render: Yes 
Audio:     Device-1: Intel 7 Series/C216 Family High Definition Audio 
           vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus ID: 00:1b.0 
           chip ID: 8086:1e20 
           Sound Server: ALSA v: k4.15.9-antix.1-686-smp-pae
6

Thanks JarbasAI

I’m new to OS things, so trying to parse the information you provided, it looks like mine may be comparable. It’s an early 2008 iMac.

Model Name: iMac
Model Identifier: iMac8,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.8 GHz
Number of Processors: 1
Total Number of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 6 MB
Memory: 2 GB
Bus Speed: 1.07 GHz
Boot ROM Version: IM81.00C1.B00
SMC Version (system): 1.30f1

7

I’d take a look at Xubuntu, which is a lightweight version of Ubuntu using the XFCE desktop environment.

1 Like
8

Thanks! I’ll give that a try. Does the Mycroft Ubuntu documentation apply to Xubuntu?

9

Yes. the x bits are gui only, unless you intend to try the alpha mycroft-gui bits, it will be fine.

10

OpenEmbedded (https://www.openembedded.org/wiki/Main_Page) now supports Mycroft, it is very lightweight.