I apologize this is going to be a bit vague as I can’t really provide specifics at the moment, but I’ll try to do my best with what I know off the top of my head.
I recently picked up an old Dell Optiplex desktop from 2013 and refurbished it (new paste, switched out an HDD for an ssd etc) with the intent to sell it for a profit. It has no GPU, just using integrated graphics but I figured it’d be a great machine for basic web browsing and such. I figured I’d do an OEM install of Mint, but the only problem is the gui will not properly display after booting without nomodeset in the grub config. I don’t feel like that’s an ideal form for it to be in when I sell it to someone.
I’ve tried a couple different things to fix it, I made sure all the proper drivers are installed, tried i915 flags, I’m ashamed to admit it but I was turning to chatgpt for quick support and it seems to think that ivy bridge chips just don’t play nice with up to date kernels. It suggested I downgrade to mint 21.2 so I can use a 5.15 kernel which would hypothetically work. I’m out of ideas so I might give it a try I’m not super knowledgeable, but I figured I’d turn to real people before going forward with that, I’d much prefer selling something running the current release.
The CPU is a Intel i5 3470. I can provide more precise specs and information that’s helpful later when I can check. But for now I’m open to ideas if you’ve got em.
I was considering doing that as a last resort. My understanding is that nomodeset just pretty heavily nerfs GPU performance, you can’t do GPU acceleration, things will be a lower resolution etc, and again this machine doesn’t even have a dedicated GPU so for the use case I imagine the device in that shouldn’t really matter. I’ve been using it with nomodeset just fine and everything looks great and I don’t feel like I’m getting a lesser experience, but if I can get a permanent fix that works I’d rather go with that.
I for one appreciate your integrity in trying to set things up such that they’re working properly before you pass the machine off to someone else
Best of luck my friend!
Can it play Youtube in HD without lagging?
I guess that would be roughly my bar for what I’d feel OK with passing on to someone clueless.
Your bar is high! Does it boot to a GUI? That’s mine, and it sounds like it doesn’t – so no YT.
In that case I’d give it away for free. Or sell it without an OS to someone who knows what they’re getting and leave them to figure it out.
Me, I’m big on free, but I recently noticed something… What was it?.. Someone told an anecdote about something they valued, and it seemed clear that it was because they paid. And it got me to thinking money is effectively now what church was thru the 1990s. And, like, is that weird and probably dysfunctional? Yes. Does that make it less true? No.
OK?
I think 2013 gear and low-end hardware can still be useful in 2026. And that it can be win-win to give old gear a new home.
But it wouldn’t be honest selling stuff that can’t physically handle what a reasonable user would expect from a PC to someone who is not capable to install an OS themselves and doesn’t understand what the limitations are.
Not too dissimilar to marketing CMR HDDs as “NAS drives”, which I hope we all agree is a scam.
And just so I don’t get misread on that part, “HD” = 720p.