Need Help with running Blender on Old Thinkpad

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Hello There!

I need some help with Blender, If someone with Manjro on Old Hardware uses Blender, It’ll be helpful to me how you run it.

I have an old Thinkpad running Manjaro Linux, It has Intel® Core™ i5-4300U CPU @ 1.90GHz + Intel® HD Graphics 4400 (Integrated).

I used to run windows on it, and the latest version was giving error of graphical platform unsupported. So I uninstalled and installed the version I remember using few years ago, v3.1…

Now that I have ported over to Linux for System stability and lot more… I wanna know if latest version 4.5 is supported on this platform, or I have to get Older version of blender.

I only create basic 3D models for small projects or just a rough concept of a large project, so it’s actually perfectly fine doing it on this Thinkpad for now.

It’d be helpful if someone knows when the old hardware support was dropped from blender, and if I can make later versions run anyway as the hardware definitely is capable of running blender very smoothly.

I’ll be looking for AppImage of Blender different versions, just for easy cleanup if doesn’t work and easy operation ingeneral. I have found latest version AppImages online, and then 2.79 directly… so if anyone knows about Appimage source around version 3.1, that’ll be very helpful.

And yes, v2.79 runs nicely but the whole UI and stuff are a bit too old and unfamiliar.

I have created the same post on r/blender… I thought, manjaro is rolling release type of OS, I’ll be nice to know from other if I’d face other issues related to older apps being not able to run, the v2.79 runs so I guess 3.1 will run too.
Thanks!

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I do not use blender - barely know what it is.
But, looking for the program in the repositories tells me, that it can be simply installed as any other program.
On Arch the version would be 4.5.4
On Manjaro stable branch it would be version 4.5.3 and 4.5.4 eventually as well.

Branch compare for Manjaro

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Hi! I do know it can be simply installed from official repositories…
My issue is, Blender itself has probably dropped support for old hardware, or atleast what hardware I’m on. I was asking if anyone has similar problem…

The official download gave me some errors which I think is same as when I tried latest version on windows.
I’m mainly asking if someone who uses blender knows in what version some of the hardware platforms were made unsupported and if anyone knows source for AppImage of Blender 3.1 or versions around that.

Download Size from official repositories is above 5GB for me, that seems unusually high as well, (5GB including dependencies and stuff)

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Minimum requirements and recommendations for current and older versions are listed here.

ps:
it looks like the graphics (Broadwell as a minimum) could be a problem

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Regardless of the platform it’s installed on, Blender will obviously not run as expected on graphics and hardware that it no longer supports.

From the link given by @anon33601770:

These (I presume) are the minimum requirements to run the current version of Blender. If your system doesn’t have this minimum support, you might have problems.

A possible workaround is to use an older version of Blender that does support your machine’s capabilities. You would need to discover for yourself what the respective support for each Blender version would be, but it will likely be in the documentation for each version, or listed somewhere on the Blender site.

You could for example try installing older versions manually until one works.

Note that with respect Manjaro this resolution is unsupported as it tends to violate the concept of a rolling release distribution.

I’ll chime in again if I discover any other possible alternatives.

Regards.

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I have just found a solution, I tried bunch of AppImages and one of the AppImage for latest release v4.5.1 is working! seems like there was issue with installing from Official Repositories and Flathub…

I may properly document the errors and stuff on this when I get some free time later, but right now I’ll continue to my project!

For anyone facing similar issue in future and found this, I got the AppImage from KDE Store, Link to page - Blender Appimages - KDE Store
There is a users called FRUTINHA who made AppImage of official releases,… Trust them at your own risk, I’m only suggesting a possible solution, I do not know the person.
I personally have not found any change to the software, FRUTINHA states that they dont make any change to any binaries as well.

Well I think It’s for ideal user experience, I have been running Blender on old hardware below stated specs for years, I have faced issues only twice. Once with latest install on windows 10, I am not on windows, neither will I ever use it again, so not my problem anymore… and this was second time, which I assume some bug in dependencies and stuff form official repository (related to this hardware).

I am running latest release as AppImage on old i5 CPU, 4GB RAM and Integrated Graphics Thinkpad.

Thanks for your Assistance anyway! I’m new here but I like Linux community for this, people are always eager to help!

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Then your machine must clearly meet the minimum requirements.

Anecdotal:- I just installed blender 17:4.5.3 from the official Manjaro repository in a VM – approximately 2GB with dependencies – and it seems to install and run without issue.

Another possible option is to build a binary package (blender-bin) via the AUR; this one in particular seems consisantly updated:

pamac build blender-bin

Regards.

Of course the usual warnings apply:

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