Problems while running 15.0 in an old pc

[Danyel]

I was running Salix 14.2 on an old Dell 540 desktop. It’s perfect, blazing fast and stable. Now, I upgraded it to Salix 15.0. It is also very stable and fast, but the temperature of the cores jump almost 10 degrees. While idle, the temperature is the same, while watching a Youtube video, Salix 14.2 stays at 54.0 Celsius, while Salix 15.0 goes to 67/69 Celsius; while writing something using LibreOffice, Salix 14.2 stays at 49/50 Celcius, 15.0 goes around 60 Celsius. What could I do? Stay with 14.2? Is this hardware becoming indeed very old for Linux kernels over 5.0?

[Papasot]

I see in the information about Dell 540 I found online that the specifications vary from model to model, all of them named "Dell 540", but I am assuming you have at least 2 Gb of RAM and a decent (for GNU/Linux standards) CPU and GPU.
Even without knowing your old PC's specifications, I can safely answer that no, definitely no, this hardware is not too old for kernels over 5.0. I run Salix and FreeBSD on a machine way weaker than a Dell 540 (1 Gb of RAM, Atom 2-core CPU, and crappy embedded GPU.) Even XFCE runs well in such a machine (but I prefer a more lightweight window manager).

I can tell you several things you could do to make your desktop easier on resources, but if I were to bet, I'd bet the problem is not Salix 15, it is just more apparent with Salix 15. You mention temperature raising, so the first thing I would do is to apply new thermal paste to the CPU. Admittedly, Salix 15 is somewhat "heavier" than 14.2, but not much to justify what you are experiencing.

[Danyel]

Thank you for the answer. But the thing is indeed stranger. The thermal past is new, I recently applied it. Now, for instance, with 14.2, I m watching a Youttube video, writing a doc in LibreOffice and doing little email, Sensors indicate 46 Celsius. In the 15.0, it would be around 65 Celsius. Its the same in Debian 11... high temperature. My 504 Dell has 4G, no performance problem using 14.2 at all.

[Papasot]

With 4Gb of RAM, it should be flying rather than running Salix 15, without stressing the machine that much to raise temperature. I am not sure what's going on here. But I'm sure the additional burden Salix 15 has compared to 14.2 is too small to justify such a temperature raising.

[gapan]

There shouldn't be such a difference. I haven't noticed anything like that. Some things to consider:

* Are you trying 14.2 and 15.0 at the same time? Maybe you were running 14.2 during the winter and now you're running your system in a hotter environment anyway?
* Is it an installation to the hard drive? Or are you running Salix live?
* Did you change any BIOS settings in the mean time? Maybe the fans should start working at a lower temperature? Or it could be that your CMOS battery has drained and the system reverted to BIOS defaults?
* Is anything else running in the background? Is it only libreoffice that you're running? Try to pinpoint if it is a specific process that is causing this. Try running htop or something like that and see if there is any process that consumes a lot of CPU.

[Danyel]

For this test, I ma running both on a USB drive, but I did install both on my HD with the same results, but to make things even, now testing on USB drive now. Also, Debian 11 returns the same high temperature that Salix 15.0. I m using Sensors to measure the temperature and running Top or Htop on the background to check the CPU usage, what is the very same both on Salix 14.2 and 15.0, no difference at all. It makes things worst, I guess, because same CPU consumption and one is cold and another is hot, I can't see the reason. Also, I m making this tests on a USB because I didn't install anything on both system, I didn't nothing, just using without any new software nor upgrade to make sure anything is disturbing the results. If I made some changes on the Bios, no, any at all.
Could it be a kind of hidden process? No, at idle, both indicates 45/46 Celsius. But using just YT or LibbreOffice, 14.5 goes to 51 and goes back to 46 and 15.0 stays at 60 to 65. So I guess it could be some hardware incompatibility with the new Kernel, but it is a guessing, I m not an engineer.

[gapan]

If there is nothing else running, then it could be just that newer versions of libreoffice or firefox are more heavy. Salix 14.2 originally came with firefox 45 and it's probably what you get when you run the live version (or something about as old anyway). I think the Salix 15.0 live iso has firefox 91? Similarly for libreoffice, it was something like version 5 in 14.2 and it is currently 7.5 in 15.0.

What happens if you upgrade the firefox package in 14.2 to the latest available, which is firefox 102?

[Danyel]

While using Salix 14.2, I can run the last Firefox version on the depositories, Brave using Brave-AppImage, Obsidian-0.15.9.AppImage, Stellarium-0.20.3.1-x86_64.AppImage, Pycharm and OpenShot. Its sweet and cool, no over heat. See the stuff: Firefox's CPU consumption while using 14.2 and 15.0 is the same, that intrigues me a bit.
Thank you for the help.

[sammy]

Have you tried to boot with different kernels?
You could try booting Salix 14.2 with kernel from 15.0 and vice versa.
On one of my boxes I'm running Salix 15.0 with kernel packages from 14.2 because the GPU maufacturer stopped supporting the old GPU that machine has and I faild to build the driver packages on 15.0.

[Danyel]

Sorry the long delay, but I have been doing some tests on this machine and I've found out that while using kernel 5.4, there is any problem of over heating. I tried it with Mint, Ubuntu and Debian, all LTS, and I've got the same results, and everything is alright. It is very strange because there is no performance degradation while using kernel 5.15, just the over heating. If I didn't test my systems using both Top and Sensors at same time, I wouldn't be able to see any difference between kernel 5.4 and 5.15.
Now, well, could I use Salix 15 or 14.2 with kernel 5.4? Just a little note, despite the fact that I like Linux and have been using it for years, I've never compile a kernel or something like that.
Thank for your help .
Danyel.