Welcome to another long blog entry written by LittleSinchen. I’m not quite satisfied with the entry I already posted on a PC with Asus A8V motherboard. In my previous entry I said that this PC is completely unsuitable for daily usage because of one major issue: Missing full disk encryption (FDE from now on). I have been using FDE since about 2006 or 2007. Back then I had an Athlon X2 6000+ – a real power hog CPU with 125W TDP. This beast of a CPU with high clock frequency and two cores had serious trouble handling FDE (and I did in conjunction with VirtualBox running Windows Vista and later Windows 7 64 bit version with openSUSE as host OS). Using a single core Athlon instead? No chance!
… and I couldn’t just accept my own verdict. Having read from other GBAtemp members that they are forced to use a Windows 8.1 laptop with 4GB of RAM and a slightly damaged screen… or even a PlayStation Vita as their means of accessing the internet I had to reconsider. Other members being forced to use unsuitable devices is a great motivation for looking into this deeper (and posting it here instead of my new blog).
Any innocent person with more than two working brain cells should avoid exposing personal data to rogue “law” enforcement. I can't even experiment without encryption. This leaves an unsatisfactory compromise: using an encrypted home partition while leaving the root partition vulnerable.
This method exposes lots and lots of metadata, log files, system configuration files and the local account password hashes to any attacker with physical access. It represents a insufficient “better than nothing”-approach. With a bit more care such leaks could at least be minimized (for example encrypted /var costing a bit of performance, avoiding hibernation…)
DO NOT RESORT TO SUCH COMPROMISES ON MODERN PCS!
What is certainly a bad idea is just ticking the box for encryption on a standard graphical Linux distro installer. Even if there is an option to limit it on /home this will have more negative impact on performance than manually creating a LUKS partition choosing Twofish algorithm over AES (Rjindael). On old CPUs without hardware acceleration (AES-NI) Twofish often shines as the most efficient algorithm. cryptsetup benchmark will show you what is the fastest on your system. On any modern system it will be AES.
Kernel: Linux 7.0.0-30-generic
CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 3700+ @ 2.42 GHz
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce 6600 [Discrete]
Memory: 1.52 GiB / 3.82 GiB (40%)
Swap: 300.00 KiB / 1.91 GiB (0%)
Disk (/): 10.79 GiB / 97.37 GiB (11%) - ext4
Disk (/home): 5.86 GiB / 358.94 GiB (2%) - ext4
Disk (/unencrypted): 11.44 GiB / 595.63 GiB (2%) - xfs
To not repeat everything from the last entry in full detail again, I’ll just list the roadblocks I encountered when trying to make my old PC usable – as well as their solutions/workarounds (if any).
This HDD offers too little storage room and /home is speed limited by encryption. A situation demanding more storage space. A kind of scratchpad. A place for replaceable and non-personal data (like downloaded Linux images, software packages or video lessons… whatever). Goal: maximum performance and storage while maintaining the rule of using only heavily outdated hardware.
Two 320GB 2.5” laptop HDDs are suitable when used in dangerous RAID 0 configuration.
As you can see below my partitioning of the main HDD is minimalist. 100GB root partition (plenty of room for the OS), rest for /home – no swap and nothing else.
/dev/sda1 * 2048 209717247 209715200 100G 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 209717248 976773119 767055872 365,8G 83 Linux
Setting this up after default installation requires basic Linux knowledge and command line usage:
/dev/sda1 98G 11G 82G 12% /
/dev/md0 596G 12G 585G 2% /unencrypted
/dev/mapper/Daten 359G 751M 340G 1% /home
Now, how does this old computer handle everyday tasks?
Here's where it gets frustrating: nouveau doesn't work with 3D acceleration on my system. It never has. I once attempted installing proprietary NVIDIA drivers on a current Linux distribution and it went horribly wrong — incompatibilities, broken dependencies, kernel module compilation failures. So gaming and emulation requiring hardware acceleration? Completely off the table.
Most frustrating about this: It worked back then with Linux distros from the early 2010s using proprietary drivers.
This system is somewhat usable for web browsing with content filters. Office work, basic image editing and local videos are surprisingly good. For those activities, it's genuinely functional — slow, but not unusable and it can keep many things open at once (under Windows 7 I regularly ran into out of memory and swap usage which is a deathblow without SSD)
Everything else is off-limits: streaming video in browsers, gaming, and anything requiring GPU acceleration. The hardware limitations are real and unbridgeable without accepting security risks (proprietary drivers for an ancient GPU on outdated OSs like Lubuntu 16.04 or Windows 7).
Don't use systems this old for anything security-sensitive. Even with partial encryption (/home partition), the attack surface is vast. The inability to run modern defensive tools (like virtualization based security aka security by compartmentalization) make this a liability on any network. No FDE is and stays a real showstopper in the worst sense.
I did this because I'm stubborn old hag and this is a hobby project with no access to sensitive data.
Thanks for reading!
Sinchen is stubborn as a mule…
… and I couldn’t just accept my own verdict. Having read from other GBAtemp members that they are forced to use a Windows 8.1 laptop with 4GB of RAM and a slightly damaged screen… or even a PlayStation Vita as their means of accessing the internet I had to reconsider. Other members being forced to use unsuitable devices is a great motivation for looking into this deeper (and posting it here instead of my new blog).
Any innocent person with more than two working brain cells should avoid exposing personal data to rogue “law” enforcement. I can't even experiment without encryption. This leaves an unsatisfactory compromise: using an encrypted home partition while leaving the root partition vulnerable.
This method exposes lots and lots of metadata, log files, system configuration files and the local account password hashes to any attacker with physical access. It represents a insufficient “better than nothing”-approach. With a bit more care such leaks could at least be minimized (for example encrypted /var costing a bit of performance, avoiding hibernation…)DO NOT RESORT TO SUCH COMPROMISES ON MODERN PCS! What is certainly a bad idea is just ticking the box for encryption on a standard graphical Linux distro installer. Even if there is an option to limit it on /home this will have more negative impact on performance than manually creating a LUKS partition choosing Twofish algorithm over AES (Rjindael). On old CPUs without hardware acceleration (AES-NI) Twofish often shines as the most efficient algorithm. cryptsetup benchmark will show you what is the fastest on your system. On any modern system it will be AES.
Hardware and Software Overview
OS: Ubuntu 26.04.1 LTS (Resolute Raccoon) x86_64Kernel: Linux 7.0.0-30-generic
CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 3700+ @ 2.42 GHz
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce 6600 [Discrete]
Memory: 1.52 GiB / 3.82 GiB (40%)
Swap: 300.00 KiB / 1.91 GiB (0%)
Disk (/): 10.79 GiB / 97.37 GiB (11%) - ext4
Disk (/home): 5.86 GiB / 358.94 GiB (2%) - ext4
Disk (/unencrypted): 11.44 GiB / 595.63 GiB (2%) - xfs
Previous Findings
To not repeat everything from the last entry in full detail again, I’ll just list the roadblocks I encountered when trying to make my old PC usable – as well as their solutions/workarounds (if any).
Problem | Solution or Workaround |
CPU becoming way too hot | Renew 20+ year old thermal paste←obviously |
CPU is slow and single core | Solution not viable. Dual core Athlon or even Opteron CPUs for socket 939 are collectors items and too expensive. 10% overclock works |
RAM is limited to 4x1GB UDIMMs | Solution not viable. An Opteron might or might not reliably support 4x2GB ECC RDIMMs |
PCI Memory hole eats 768MB of the 4GB RAM | Activate memory hole remapping in BIOS |
Memory hole remapping makes Windows fail booting and Linux can’t use onboard NIC | Disable onboard NIC altogether. Windows 7 boots again |
Onboard NIC disabled for using all RAM | Install PCI network card from Windows 98 era |
Onboard SATA controller only detects SATA I devices | Install HDD that allows limiting itself to SATA I with a jumper. Install PCI SATA controller |
Additional PCI SATA controller is limited to SATA I speed (but does speed negotiation correctly detecting modern drives) | No solution. Limitation of PCI bus. Only server boards from that era with PCI-X can overcome this limit. |
No USB 3.0 | No solution. Limitation of PCI bus |
Operating System and Data Storage
Now it’s time to install an operating system. Since the last entry I decided to ditch Windows 7 completely. It is unsupported and unbearably slow without an SSD. I needed the 2TB WD Raid Edition from first attempt in a more modern PC. This left me with a Western Digital Caviar Blue (500GB) as main HDD. Installed Lubuntu 26.04.1 – a very recent OS.This HDD offers too little storage room and /home is speed limited by encryption. A situation demanding more storage space. A kind of scratchpad. A place for replaceable and non-personal data (like downloaded Linux images, software packages or video lessons… whatever). Goal: maximum performance and storage while maintaining the rule of using only heavily outdated hardware.
Two 320GB 2.5” laptop HDDs are suitable when used in dangerous RAID 0 configuration.
As you can see below my partitioning of the main HDD is minimalist. 100GB root partition (plenty of room for the OS), rest for /home – no swap and nothing else.
/dev/sda1 * 2048 209717247 209715200 100G 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 209717248 976773119 767055872 365,8G 83 Linux
Setting this up after default installation requires basic Linux knowledge and command line usage:
- Manually create LUKS container for /home using Twofish and create ext4 file system inside
- Copy existing home directory
- Add partition (UUID) to /etc/crypttab and /etc/fstab
- Activate zram instead of real swap file/partition to minimize leaking unencrypted data
- Create software RAID with mdadm and add it to fstab
/dev/sda1 98G 11G 82G 12% /
/dev/md0 596G 12G 585G 2% /unencrypted
/dev/mapper/Daten 359G 751M 340G 1% /home
Using the PC
Now, how does this old computer handle everyday tasks?
Browsing:
Main question: How good does browsing the web work? Answer: It depends. Running Firefox at defaults with all the bells an whistles just opening websites as intended either becomes a torturous patience test or outright fails. But with uBlock Origin taking care of ads and NoScript only selectively allowing scripts (try finding bare minimum for each site) browsing is okay. News sites, webmailers, forums. Shopping sites like eBay or Amazon are also usable although I won’t log in or even buy things. Sorry, the security level of this system is so much below my standards that I can’t justify logging into any important accounts.Video Streaming:
Nope! With a bit of luck YouTube will run when choosing 360p and using tiny window player (not full screen). Heavy stuttering regardless. Might be possible to find information from a video tutorial but enjoying entertaining content is impossible.Office Work:
LibreOffice works like a charm. A little slow startup, but I don’t see any noteworthy limitations. Nothing more to say.Image Editing:
I am not good at this and usually don’t do much in this regard. Tests are very limited. Gimp 3.2 starts up taking some time. I opened a photo and asked Gimp to upscale it to quadruple number of pixels. Took about 30 seconds and caused no errors. → Basic image editing is possibleGaming/Emulation:
Can't test this. The elephant in the room is GPU drivers. The Asus A8V is limited to AGP, and my GeForce 6600 is about as modern as you can get with that interface. The last official Linux driver is 304.1370 from September 19, 2017. Beyond that, you're stuck with the open-source nouveau driver.Here's where it gets frustrating: nouveau doesn't work with 3D acceleration on my system. It never has. I once attempted installing proprietary NVIDIA drivers on a current Linux distribution and it went horribly wrong — incompatibilities, broken dependencies, kernel module compilation failures. So gaming and emulation requiring hardware acceleration? Completely off the table.
Most frustrating about this: It worked back then with Linux distros from the early 2010s using proprietary drivers.
Local Video Playback:
Mostly works, with caveats. I'm confident about MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 files – these are ancient codecs and software decoding handles them fine. Playing a retail DVD in VLC did not even put stress on the single-core Athlon. The most widespread codec, H.264, was the question mark. I hoped lower resolution H.264 videos (720p and below) might play in VLC… and I was pleasantly surprised to see CPU-based decoding working. I just opened a talk from media.ccc.de and even full-hd video played without problems. I have to repeat that with a more demanding file (action movie at insanely high bitrate – source a Blu-Ray disc). I will not try H.265 → For heaven’s sake, NO!Updated Final Verdict:
So, what is the result? Can you actually use a 2004 PC with modern software more than twenty years later? The answer is: technically yes, but with significant compromises and you should not do this in practice unless you really have to because of missing access to anything more modern. A Raspberry Pi 4 or 5 will outperform a 2004 PC and cause less trouble while needing a tiny fraction of the energy this old monster demands.This system is somewhat usable for web browsing with content filters. Office work, basic image editing and local videos are surprisingly good. For those activities, it's genuinely functional — slow, but not unusable and it can keep many things open at once (under Windows 7 I regularly ran into out of memory and swap usage which is a deathblow without SSD)
Everything else is off-limits: streaming video in browsers, gaming, and anything requiring GPU acceleration. The hardware limitations are real and unbridgeable without accepting security risks (proprietary drivers for an ancient GPU on outdated OSs like Lubuntu 16.04 or Windows 7).
Don't use systems this old for anything security-sensitive. Even with partial encryption (/home partition), the attack surface is vast. The inability to run modern defensive tools (like virtualization based security aka security by compartmentalization) make this a liability on any network. No FDE is and stays a real showstopper in the worst sense.
I did this because I'm stubborn old hag and this is a hobby project with no access to sensitive data.
Thanks for reading!
