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Why use old computers and operating systems?

john.ankarstrom.se

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Re: Why use old computers and operating systems?

#21

Post by lostlogin »

offtop5 wrote: post #17
hx2a wrote: post #13

A reason to use old computers that I don't see mentioned here has to do with accessibility. People in the US usually have current hardware such as the latest Mac laptop, but that is not the case in all other countries. Current hardware is a bit of a luxury that we don't fully appreciate. I have an open source project with global users, and one person in Mexico contacted me looking for help. He was trying to create 3D…

Technically, couldn't he install a very lightweight Linux distribution. I have a few Raspberry Pi zeros and I actually enjoy coding within the limitations of said hardware, when you know you only have 500 megs of RAM on the device you have to solve problems differently

There is something special about the Pi that makes an “oh well, time to reflash and start again” a non-disaster.

They are great and hacking about with them is fun, even when disaster strikes.

Re: Why use old computers and operating systems?

#22

Post by brabel »

All software is bound to keep changing forever unless people stop using it... even after it's past its "perfect" place in terms of usability and benefits it brings to its intended audience (I am not saying perfect in terms of having no bugs - though that may also be the case)... because we can only know that in hindsight and we have no way of measuring this objectively.

Some old Unix tools are perhaps the closest we have to that. (ls, cd, tail...) but in terms of UI, I can't think of anything. As the needs of users change, so does what the "perfect software" for such users looks like... however, I would think there's usually a decades-long period in which some software could stay just as it is without there being possible improvements one could make to it.

I think it would be really interesting if we could find a good way to tell when that "perfection" is reached and tried to intentionally stop changing what is literally already perfect (though that will never happen in a commercial product, for obvious reasons).

Re: Why use old computers and operating systems?

#24

Post by seniorivn »

akiselev wrote: post #18
grawprog wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Computers are general purpose in that they are capable of doing anything possible by a Turing machine with limited memory. Software built on top of that can be whatever we want within those limits. Even most proprietary operating systems are relatively general purpose. On windows and Mac os, you can generally acquire a wide range of software capable of doing many things and can create your own with relative ease. Sma…

I’m having a hard time coming up with anything that a modern OS on a modern CPU can’t do - they’re about as general purpose as can be for any nontrivial but nuanced definition of “general purpose.” The only exception I can think of is real-time IO, which we offload to specialized chips with buffers and queues through PCIe and other busses. However, that’s a physical limitation since these peripherals would be impract…

run a technologically secure code, with root of trust in cryptography/security model your software uses

On modern pc/server/mobile computers it's impossible, your root of trust there is manufacturer and their microcode/embedded security modules with separate operating system etc

Re: Why use old computers and operating systems?

#25

Post by jcelerier »

hx2a wrote: post #13

A reason to use old computers that I don't see mentioned here has to do with accessibility. People in the US usually have current hardware such as the latest Mac laptop, but that is not the case in all other countries. Current hardware is a bit of a luxury that we don't fully appreciate. I have an open source project with global users, and one person in Mexico contacted me looking for help. He was trying to create 3D…

my personal rule of thumb is that my software must be useable at -O0 with address sanitizers on my desktop - so far that has meant that at -O3 it stays useable on raspberry pi-3 level hardware.

A few months ago I tried to make a build which targetted ivybridge-level CPUs, it took no more than one day for a few users to report that it didn't work on their machines, turns out a lot of people still rock some old AMD Phenom or Q6600-era machines

Re: Why use old computers and operating systems?

#26

Post by grawprog »

seniorivn wrote: post #24
akiselev wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m having a hard time coming up with anything that a modern OS on a modern CPU can’t do - they’re about as general purpose as can be for any nontrivial but nuanced definition of “general purpose.” The only exception I can think of is real-time IO, which we offload to specialized chips with buffers and queues through PCIe and other busses. However, that’s a physical limitation since these peripherals would be impract…

run a technologically secure code, with root of trust in cryptography/security model your software uses On modern pc/server/mobile computers it's impossible, your root of trust there is manufacturer and their microcode/embedded security modules with separate operating system etc

Yeah...even 'general purpose' computers are shipped with hardware level 'software' that's beyond access from users. Intel and AMD have their management engines, Microsoft's got their in with uefi. I'm not sure if there even are any modern processors available with the kind of access allowed by 8 and 16-bit CPUs...

Re: Why use old computers and operating systems?

#27

Post by inetknght »

jimktrains2 wrote: post #20
offtop5 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically, couldn't he install a very lightweight Linux distribution. I have a few Raspberry Pi zeros and I actually enjoy coding within the limitations of said hardware, when you know you only have 500 megs of RAM on the device you have to solve problems differently

For some reason I find "only have 500megs of RAM" very amusing. Many/most modern laptops only have 8-16 times more RAM than that. I'm genuinely curious what problems you're working where that "limitation" is your bottleneck and not the processor speed (which at 1GHz is still pretty speedy for many/most tasks other than pure computation (e.g. machine learning training and processing large datasets for statistics)). I'…

Browsing "modern" websites for one

Re: Why use old computers and operating systems?

#29

Post by lelanthran »

b06tmm wrote: post #23

I recently inherited a 32-bit laptop that runs Vista, any recommendations of what version of Linux to try?

> I recently inherited a 32-bit laptop that runs Vista, any recommendations of what version of Linux to try?

I'll have to check to be sure that it is 32bit(l/top is downstairs and I'm lazy), but I do my personal projects on a 2008 Asus that came with Vista and 2GB of RAM. I literally use it daily using:

1. Emacs 2. Vim + every plugin you can think of for development 3. GCC + all the devtools for C development 4. Standard gui tools (browser, some solitaire games, dia for diagrams, etc).

I am pretty certain I am using this: https://www.linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=255

Once again, I might be wrong (although "pretty certain" covers that), but you can give it a try.

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