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I installed CoreOS on a 9-year-old MacBook

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Re: I installed CoreOS on a 9-year-old MacBook

#11

Post by gh02t »

andreiw wrote: post #2

That "ugly white notebook" was one of the most usable laptops in its day, *nix or windows, and it still isn't that ancient - computing innovation really has slowed down significantly. Compare to notebooks from '96 and point out the novelty of running a 64-bit OS on a 64-bit machine.

I've got OpenBSD running on an old Dell Atom netbook that I use alongside my desktop for keeping notes/task lists/music control etc. It's quite usable apart from most browsers run like crap, which is impressive for a 6 year old laptop on a processor that was considered underpowered even when it came out.

Re: I installed CoreOS on a 9-year-old MacBook

#12

Post by pavement »

2006 era hardware [1] is actually still pretty relevant and current, in terms of the standards and features available on the motherboard and hard disk, so it's not surprising that this software works.

Once you go back as far as a machine that only provides PATA/IDE hard drive connectors, that's when I would expect to start seeing problems emerge.

[1] https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1956385

Re: I installed CoreOS on a 9-year-old MacBook

#15

Post by miah_ »

guylepage3 wrote: post #6

Awesome article. I have been thinking about setting up a RPi as a server lately as well. Do you know if RancherOS will run on the Pi2?

Check out TinyCore instead, its a modular Linux distribution. You can end up with ~15mb Images.

"The Core Project is a highly modular based system with community build extensions.

It starts with a recent Linux kernel, vmlinuz, and our root filesystem and start-up scripts packaged with a basic set of kernel modules in core.gz. Core (10MB) is simply the kernel + core.gz - this is the foundation for user created desktops, servers, or appliances. TinyCore is Core + Xvesa.tcz + Xprogs.tcz + aterm.tcz + fltk-1.3.tcz + flwm.tcz + wbar.tcz

TinyCore becomes simply an example of what the Core Project can produce, an 15MB FLTK/FLWM desktop. "

http://www.tinycorelinux.net/arm.html

Re: I installed CoreOS on a 9-year-old MacBook

#16

Post by kiddico »

NotOscarWilde wrote: post #10

Good work! We have a black MacBook from the same era at our house; my girlfriend uses Ubuntu on it as her main computer. Should have thought about blogging about it! That 32-bit EFI with 64-bit CPU is a real curse for installing recent Linux (although Ubuntu did release "amd64+mac" ISO images for these computers, I think even 14.04 is available this way). Additionally, my internal DVD drive for this MacBook failed, s…

Bugs like that are always so satisfying to figure out. It's confusing for so long, you get frustrated, move on, then later you see a slight correlation and a light bulb goes off in your head.

I love it. I had one of those experiences a few weeks ago with ,of all things, a desk. Turns out you gotta open the drawers in a certain series. Or alternatively rip out the tabs that create said series. The second is a lot more fun.

Re: I installed CoreOS on a 9-year-old MacBook

#17

Post by grubles »

gh02t wrote: post #11
andreiw wrote: post #2

That "ugly white notebook" was one of the most usable laptops in its day, *nix or windows, and it still isn't that ancient - computing innovation really has slowed down significantly. Compare to notebooks from '96 and point out the novelty of running a 64-bit OS on a 64-bit machine.

I've got OpenBSD running on an old Dell Atom netbook that I use alongside my desktop for keeping notes/task lists/music control etc. It's quite usable apart from most browsers run like crap, which is impressive for a 6 year old laptop on a processor that was considered underpowered even when it came out.

HP Mini (Intel Atom) with Gentoo here! With no X it sits pretty at 12MB RAM usage. Now to figure out what daemons to run on it...

Re: I installed CoreOS on a 9-year-old MacBook

#18

Post by BogusIKnow »

jakobegger wrote: post #8

This brings back memories of my first website. I hosted it on my white iBook G3, and I used dyndns to get a free hostname for my dynamic IP. The website was only accessible when I was at home, and plugged in (we had no Wifi yet). It was pretty popular with my classmates for some time -- there was a self-written forum on it where you could upload photos, and people used it to share holiday pictures (this was before Fa…

I feel so old, my first website run on a DEC Alpha.

Re: I installed CoreOS on a 9-year-old MacBook

#20

Post by jggonz »

This reminds me of some of my early linux boxes. As a poor high school student in the mid to late 90s I was only able to get free computer equipment. Some of it was pretty cool. In order to squeeze as much performance out of them, I ran slackware and debian.

Some of the most memorable were:

386DX AT&T Server tower (a huge case with a 40lb 1.2GB Hard drive) - got it to run slackware and serve files on a 10mbps network

486SX-40MHz desktop machine running linux with FVWM and Englightenment! :) Biggest achievement: Play a 128mbps Mp3 file streamed from an Apple LC475!

Apple LC475 (68040-25MHz) - The 68040 could decode an mp3 file. I used to use it to decode the MP3 files and send the audio over the network to a 486sx that lacked an FPU. I ran linux on this, not mac os.

Apple Quadra 660AV - awesome little machine. I ran linux and mac os on this.

Those were fun times!

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