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Absolutely appaling performance of LibreOffice! OpenOffice has a slightly better performance than LibreOffice on my small Linux netbook, probably because it's older in the core program. But still, it never justifies the amount of power that is needed in comparison to old texting programs. I've tested the lightweight AbiWord on Linux some years ago, but was unhappy with the way it worked with tables.

Open Office Writer 4.1.7 (2019)
on Salix-Linux
106,2 MB

Microsoft Word 97
on Windows XP
5,7 MB

Dammit, I forgot the name of another well-performing office program for Linux! All I remember it was made by a dutch developer and there was a medieval painting in black/white, showing a man with curly hair, at the title screen. That office program performed well on a Pentium 2 I remember.

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1 hour ago, Gansangriff said:

Microsoft Word 97
on Windows XP
5,7 MB

Sure, but (besides the extreme slowness of Open/Libre Office, at least on windows, on low power machines), the MS Office '97 up to 2000/2002 (XP) is all in all "acceptable", see the graph (old news - 2009) here:

 https://www.oooninja.com/2008/05/openofficeorg-microsoft-office-moores.html

 

See also how Word 97 compares with later versions:

https://www.oooninja.com/2008/07/benchmarking-microsoft-word-95-2007.html

jaclaz

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Hi all. We could all list progressively lighter software, which would in turn have less features or become less compatible in modern environments. I could happily write a novel using vi but that wouldn't interest anyone.

To re-iterate, the 45 second load time for LibreOffice above is using an 800 MHz system, not many use this hardware today as daily driver. To me it's a good accomplishment: full featured office suite, open source, continuous development, thousands of commits, more features, constantly striving for inter-office compatability, same load time with less RAM than 10 years ago.

Hopefully the coders won't think their life's work gets summarized as 'absolutely appaling' @Gansangriff. The memory footprint of a relatively modern LibreOffice in GNU/Linux is 33 MB, what are you referring to when you indicated Open Office at '106,2 MB' (RAM use, package size)?

On same hardware with a fresh boot, old RetroZilla loads in 15 seconds in Windows 98 SE while the latest SeaMonkey (non-SSE2 capable hardware) loads in 39 seconds in GNU/Linux. By my estimate RetroZilla is a half-functional browser (basic browser functions, loads most pages, poor rendering, no JavaScript). In comparison, this SeaMonkey still works well on > 90% of websites.

Personal preference, i'm not going to discard old hardware or relegate it hobby status because i've run out of fingers and toes to count load times. If RetroZilla took more than twice the time to load but provided the same functionality as a newer SeaMonkey then Windows 98 would still be a viable sole operating system, sadly it's not.

There are almost always work-arounds for older hardware, though it's not always feasible to use the lightest alternatives, mostly learn some patience and enjoy the experience. Even modern computing with new hardware and latest browsers has load times but we've all developed work-arounds, such as loading browser tabs in the background.
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Regarding my comment, the LibreOffice developers would show me the finger and tell me to get out of the stone age. Their program is simply not built to run on such old computers.
Maybe I'm a stubborn id***, but I don't see any major improvements in Office Suites in the last 25 years, really. PDF exporting since Office 2003 is the most important feature that I use. To be honest, a peek at Word 6.0 (of 1993) for Windows 3.11 "felt" pretty much like sitting in front of Word 97 with round buttons, but I haven't tested that in detail and realised any projects with it.
So of course LibreOffice has its important place in today's computing, but I have to compare features and performance for working, regardless of whatever age this program is, so I end up with Word 97 as a solution and am always amazed by the amout of power that LibreOffice needs to achieve the same things.

Sorry, it looks like I measured something different, which was the RAM usage on startup in fact. My mistake!

To tell you the truth, Word 97 has plenty of flaws. And one has to get used to them, probably find ways around them, and then one can do fantastic projects with the program. Now what would have been, if I as a 4-year-old would have been sat in front if a Linux machine instead of Windows 98? Much likely I would have gotten used to the flaws of the Linux programs instead and worked with them.

Regarding lightweight browsers for Linux, Midori was a good choice on the Pentium 2, but that was 5 years ago. Unfortuneatly, it was left behind by the newer encryption standards in my distro then. For computers without enough CPU power, w3m might be an option as a capable text-browser. It can be navigated with a mouse and does everything it displays obviously quick.

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1 hour ago, Gansangriff said:

Regarding my comment, the LibreOffice developers would show me the finger and tell me to get out of the stone age. Their program is simply not built to run on such old computers.
Maybe I'm a stubborn id***, but I don't see any major improvements in Office Suites in the last 25 years, really. PDF exporting since Office 2003 is the most important feature that I use. To be honest, a peek at Word 6.0 (of 1993) for Windows 3.11 "felt" pretty much like sitting in front of Word 97 with round buttons, but I haven't tested that in detail and realised any projects with it.
So of course LibreOffice has its important place in today's computing, but I have to compare features and performance for working, regardless of whatever age this program is, so I end up with Word 97 as a solution and am always amazed by the amout of power that LibreOffice needs to achieve the same things.

Sorry, it looks like I measured something different, which was the RAM usage on startup in fact. My mistake!

To tell you the truth, Word 97 has plenty of flaws. And one has to get used to them, probably find ways around them, and then one can do fantastic projects with the program. Now what would have been, if I as a 4-year-old would have been sat in front if a Linux machine instead of Windows 98? Much likely I would have gotten used to the flaws of the Linux programs instead and worked with them.

I agree with this. Office programs only gotten more heavy over time and added useless features. Office 97 was first MS office that did not suck but it issue with crashing was since it drew dialog menus using it own graphics not windows native menus that could result to low resources and crashing. I tried office softwares on my netbook too and starting libreoffice with ssd took 2 minutes.

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Totally agree!  I actually run MS Office 2003 at work from a USB stick (excluding Outlook) and it still loads faster than Office 365 and LibreOffice (the only two options available on company computers).  But only "mid-level" (and higher) associates are granted permission to use USB sticks.  So even with the popup nag requesting my USB-access password, I can load my Excel 2003 spreadsheets from a memory stick in less time than it takes Office 365 or LibreOffice to load from SSD.  I even keep a version of WordPad on that USB stick but it's more for Excel and spreadsheets than anything else.

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1 hour ago, Mr.Scienceman2000 said:

PDF exporting since Office 2003 is the most important feature that I use.

I use a freebie called doPDF for this.  And my version from June 2014 works perfectly.  My guess is that the "newer" versions have basically suffered the same demise as MS Office - newer is not necessarily better.

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2 hours ago, NotHereToPlayGames said:

I use a freebie called doPDF for this.

I may need give that a shot.

2 hours ago, NotHereToPlayGames said:

newer is not necessarily better.

but..but big companies said it is so I cant question them.

Life taught me that most of modern tech is done too complex and poorly designed making it horrible for purpose it was designed for. Take modern TV example. It got homecall features that cant be disabled and it lacks many features my old tv got.

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To anyone posting, please read the thread title carefully. It's purpose is not to compete with your beloved (mobile or old) Windows software, it's to provide a viable solution for old Windows 9x era hardware in the modern era.

Old Windows fans, who don't want Microsoft's latest, need solutions for a modern computing environment. To anyone who follows tech news, it's evident they are still using the same playbook: behind the scenes upgrades to Windows 10, difficulty changing default browser, 'Shopping with Microsoft Edge', etc.

As @NotHereToPlayGames indicated, 'Office 365 and LibreOffice (the only two options available on company computers)'. If you're farting around at home, doesn't matter. If you need inter-office compatability it's a big deal. And of course the breaking point for all these good old Windows systems is always the web browser, that's another story. So no, newer isn't always better, rarely better actually..but often required.

LibreOffice as a project needs to compete with latest Microsoft, not Word 97. If Microsoft adds features and LibreOffice lags, they are no longer a viable alternative. A software monopoly should not be tolerated (or supported).

Here's the history of Microsoft Word, of course they already knew basic documents and spreadsheets years ago. The churning adds new features, forced upgrade, more dollars: Word for DOS, Word for Windows 1989 to 1995, Word 95, Word 97, Word 98, Word 2000, Word 2001, Word 2002/XP, Word 2003, Word 2004, Word 2007, Word 2008, Word 2010, Word 2011, Word 2013, Word 2016, Word 2019, Word included with Office 365.

Office 365 requirements (Windows):
- 1.6 GHz or faster, 2-core
- 4 GB RAM or 2 GB RAM (32-bit)
- 4 GB of available disk space
- 1280 x 768 screen resolution
- Graphics hardware acceleration requires DirectX 9 or later
- Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2019, Windows Server 2016
- The current version of Microsoft Edge, Safari, Chrome, or Firefox
- Some features may require .NET 3.5 or 4.6 and higher
https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/microsoft-365/microsoft-365-and-office-resources#coreui-heading-5dcqxz4

LibreOffice requirements (GNU/Linux release):
- Pentium-compatible PC (Pentium III, Athlon or more-recent system recommended)
- 256Mb RAM (512 MB RAM recommended)
- Up to 1.55 GB available hard disk space
- X Server with 1024x768 resolution, with at least 256 colors
https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/system-requirements/

Why the bar is always set higher for open source projects, GNU/Linux included, while most force upgrade is beyond comprehension. So when referring to competitve, large scale, modern projects like office suites, where's the bloat exactly?

As indicated, this Devuan Beowulf install runs on 20 year old hardware with a hard drive footprint of 3.2 GB. This includes core operating system, graphics, sound, helper applications, window manager (Openbox), 4 web browsers (Dillo, Firefox-ESR, SeaMonkey, Links2), full featured file manager (Caja), music player (Audacious), video player (Mplayer) and LibreOffice. I don't see the load times others are reporting, my LibreOffice test results were reported earlier.
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1 hour ago, Wunderbar98 said:

Old Windows fans, who don't want Microsoft's latest, need solutions for a modern computing environment. To anyone who follows tech news, it's evident they are still using the same playbook: behind the scenes upgrades to Windows 10, difficulty changing default browser, 'Shopping with Microsoft Edge', etc.

I do not like to be called fan as fans are most toxic form of community. They refuse to see problem with whatever they are using, blindly defend any decision related company or other behind project and harass and haunt anyone who suggest that even single thing could be improved.

For me it is whatever work best for use case and most of time modern operating system or device fails to fulfill that task. For some modern windoze 11 PC might fulfill for some full Linux use may fulfill it and that is great if does but some (not all) are ignoring those who cant make it fullfill their tasks and insist them to use it. I am running linux on my router and servers plus use it for banking but for some things like gaming, office tasks at home, listening to music, editing older windows just works so damn well and that is why I keep it.

I hate when someone insists "you need go to newer or other platform despite current one works perfectly for you" but are so insulted if someone else say their platform is bad. I can admit, 98 is stable as nitroglycerin sometimes, Windows XP is stable but has flaws like Internet Exploiter and WPA but many of things that are issues to me on older version of Windows either have not been fixed or gotten worse. And we cant just accept that there is latest and greatest Windoze, Macos and Linux as only options on market.

Two of those are going fast downfall and Linux has it own flaws community refuses to admit like lack of support for some programs, lack of gui support (which by the way cannot be ignored with freedom to control excuse, not all of are skilled or willing to tweak all trough command line. Try setup bind9 with gui that are near nonexisting vs Windows server DNS, I bet you will cry for bind9 refusing to start without proper error), big corporations having too much control over features implemented with SystemD and Pulseaudio. Sure you can have SystemD and Pulseaudio free distro but that is band aid fix as companies will work on making those two depencies lets take GNOME and Firefox as example (which is owned by google by the way) and bet in future more and more will depend on it so deeply you cant run away from features they want to force down user throat. Also did you know that evil Microsoft contributes to linux kernel these days so just wait until they start add unwanted stuff there too. Linux is not community run project rather controllerd by big corpos (And I know Linux is kernel not OS before someone says so and know it is GNU/Linux unless use some custom distro, but kernel can shape OS)

This turned into rant but I had to say my word on this. There is not perfect or even good solution anymore if go with new stuff and old one can be fight against windmills (but I will take that challenge to have freedom over OS I use) and fans are reason why this world turned into such mess it is now.  If all would have had judged corpos as they did bad things and would have boycotted them none of this would be issue now. But sadly most are too diehard fans to admit anything being wrong with their precious products. I sh1t on everything problems, be that oldschool Nokia, Symbian, Windows 95-Windows 7, Linux, Saab, Volvo, Honda or other thing and only reason why I say against badmouthing is when I hear completely false claims from something that people without knowledge says.

P.S This is nothing personal to you just that I expressed my opinion

Ok enough posting stuff to this thread So it can stay on topic. Just wanted put my word here since there is rarely linux talk. Maybe someone need open thread to linux where can talk from this.

This owl will be flying away and wait for other threads to talk

2083186345_Pllanimaatiot-Joulu.gif.1782d46faf5558c74eeb0887948432d1.gif

Edited by Mr.Scienceman2000
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Just my 2 cents, the now called lightweight software of the past didn't feel so light on the then starved systems. Then there's the typical MSFNer that tends to label everything (s)he doesn't need as "bloat". Someone more deeply involved with particular kind of software might appreciate that "bloat".

That word kinda lost its meaning to me, it reminds of the phenomenon on social networks where someone with controversial/unpopular opinion is labelled as fascist (or another label used in the same fashion).

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4 hours ago, Wunderbar98 said:

And of course the breaking point for all these good old Windows systems is always the web browser, that's another story. So no, newer isn't always better, rarely better actually..but often required.

Along that front...

My "oldest" hardware is a single-core AMD Sempron 3100+ at 1.8 GHz with 2.0 GB RAM.

The Sempron 3100+ was launched in July 2004 so it probably doesn't qualify for "old Windows 9x era hardware".

I think it is supposed to be 64-bit capable though I've only ever installed 32-bit OS's.

 

So...

I've actually tried a few Linux distros over the years and I was never impressed.

HOWEVER - against the backdrop of the breaking point always being the web browser, I'm up for suggestions on what Linux distro to give a try.

 

And I'd prefer dual-boot without having to re-install my current XP SP3 (I think the last time I tried, I had to install Linux FIRST then install XP in order to get dual-boot).  Suggestions?

Edited by NotHereToPlayGames
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53 minutes ago, NotHereToPlayGames said:

I've actually tried a few Linux distros over the years and I was never impressed.

HOWEVER - against the backdrop of the breaking point always being the web browser, I'm up for suggestions on what Linux distro to give a try.

 

And I'd prefer dual-boot without having to re-install my current XP SP3 (I think the last time I tried, I had to install Linux FIRST then install XP in order to get dual-boot).  Suggestions?

I got two suggestions that offers live cd to test OS fully before you start formatting drive to it. Both of them are beginner friendly and browse web wont need do any command line things. Also both can configure windows dualboot and partition automatically without lot of hassle

Salix OS and Linux mint are my recommendation.

Linux mint is based on Ubuntu and got wider support for software but it got some bad things like system D. If you use pick XCFE desktop as it wont need 3d acceleration. It got graphical application installer for additional software.

Salix OS is Slackware based but got GUI for installing packages and softwares and got pretty decent software collection out of box but follows one program per task philosophy and most important to me lacks systemD.

Why is systemD so bad? It limits freedom of choice. and should I go with Salix? No. You can test both and see which fits for best for you using livecd. And at the end things like freedom choosing init systems and others wont mean a thing when going first time to linux so pick whatever works for you out those two. You can later decide what path you want take but you cant take path if pulled off from it.

And order you install them is XP first then Linux that grub loader will take over and work with both. Just keep spare linux install medium around if you accidentally hose up the bootloader

Edited by Mr.Scienceman2000
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38 minutes ago, Mr.Scienceman2000 said:

Salix OS and Linux mint are my recommendation.

Have you compared "performance" for 32bit versus 64bit?

I've tended to always prefer 32bit because 64bit "used to" (perhaps still does) use TWICE the RAM but didn't really "use" twice the RAM.  It would "allocate" 64 bytes for a memory address, but the address only actually contained 32 bytes of data.  Literally WASTING half of your RAM.

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10 hours ago, NotHereToPlayGames said:

Have you compared "performance" for 32bit versus 64bit?

I've tended to always prefer 32bit because 64bit "used to" (perhaps still does) use TWICE the RAM but didn't really "use" twice the RAM.  It would "allocate" 64 bytes for a memory address, but the address only actually contained 32 bytes of data.  Literally WASTING half of your RAM.

in my experience they used equally amount of ram. Linux mint 32 and 64 bit uses around 1gb of ram and salix uses around 400mb of ram with my config on 64 and 32bit.

So salix got less extra clutter by default but it also mean it wont have things like timeshift (linux version of system restore), update manager but you need to pick between which feels best.

Like I said usb Live USB to see yourself which suites best.

Here is downloads

Salix:

https://www.salixos.org/download.html

 

Linux Mint LTS (long term support) releases since you are not bleeding edge kid and likely prefer stuff not change too rapidly:

 

Linux Mint 19 Tara supported until 2023

https://linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=256

Linux Mint 20 Ulyana supported until 2025

https://linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=283

 

 

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