I have an old Laptop (MSI MS1721) that I want to repurpose as a media player on my TV. I have installed an old SSD on with Linux Mint XFCE.

Almost everything works well, with only one exception. The laptop’s graphics card (ATI HD3850) requires proprietary drivers that haven’t been supported since Kernel 3.4. The replacement open-source drivers cause stuttering while playing videos, which makes it useless for my purposes.

Are there Linux distribution options out there that would fit my needs?

Edit After trying a wide array of distros including Ubuntu 14.04, Linux Lite, Linux MX, Bohdi, Linux Mint Debian Edition, Nobara, Debian XFCE and CachyOS, I was pleasantly surprised to see that CachyOS performed very well and still feels like a modern OS and runs surprisingly smoothly with KDE. It looks like the open source drivers do work decently after all depending on the distro you’re running and how well optimized they are for your CPU.

  • Alphane MoonEnglish
    4•8 days ago

    I am not a pro with Linux, so people are welcome to correct me, but these would seem to be the viable options.

    1. Try and find a Linux distro release that can run on the last Kernel 3.4 LTS release.
    2. Search for a workaround/fix for the stuttering and/or reach out to the developers of the open source driver for the 3850.
    • @[email protected]OPEnglish
      4•8 days ago

      Thanks. I’m currently giving Ubuntu 14.04 LTS a try. Looks like it should work. We’ll know once it’s installed.