OC by @merci3@lemmy.world
Single core, 32 bit CPU, can't even do video playback on VLC. But it kinda works for some offline work, like text editing, and even emulation through zsnes! It's crazy how Linux keeps old hardware like this running.
Thankfully though, this laptop CPU is upgradable, and so is the ram, so I'm planning on revitalizing and bringing this old Itautec to the 21st century 😄
Have you tried antix? It's basically Debian for old computers.
Very weird it can't play videos at all. I installed Linux on a friend's old <1gb ram laptop and it's even able to play 480p YouTube.
Also, I wouldn't run xfce on it, it's barely lighter than KDE.
I'm sure it can. My guess: either VLC is broken and a different or lighter player would work, or OP is picking the wrong videos (for a really slow CPU, you want older/less compressed codecs—I bet it would do MPEG1 just fine, and might even have acceleration for it).