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Linux Has Largely Abandoned Still-Useful Near-Vintage Computers

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Re: Linux Has Largely Abandoned Still-Useful Near-Vintage Computers

#11

Post by Tepix »

selfhoster11 wrote: post #4

I'm as opposed to throwing away machines as the author is, but I also recognise that anything with less than 1 GB of RAM is unusable in this day and age. Modern websites are simply too large to handle on such equipment, and most people do their work online.

A Raspberry Pi 1 with 256MB works very well with Pi-hole. It has a lot of free RAM to spare.

I think your posts underlines an important fact: Nowadays more and more tasks require an up-to-date internet browser. These browsers need a lot of RAM. Both their complexity and the websites' is increasing all the time.

Re: Linux Has Largely Abandoned Still-Useful Near-Vintage Computers

#12

Post by sunsipples »

elmerfud wrote: post #3

This article strikes me largely as, someone else should be doing this for me so I can benefit from their hard work. It's as if they miss the point of Linux, free software, etc... This problem exists because people, like this author, who are in to vintage systems aren't taking up the mantle to maintain a distribution to support their old systems. It's like they want the benefit with zero effort. Become a leader, start…

I am also against a throwaway society but there comes a point where you need to accept old computers/vehicles/toys/instruments/tools are beyond your ability to maintain/use them. If you want to fork over some money semi-regularly or learn how to do it yourself, it becomes an ornament. Somehow expecting 20 year old computing hardware to be supported now, free of charge, in Linux is a valid criticism. 20 years ago, setting that computer up was a nightmare for non tech-savvy folk but current distributions need to support your horse and cart.

edit "but many over pay for the best of everything simply because they are unwilling to understand what they really need or learn how to make do with less" - old man yelling at clouds

Re: Linux Has Largely Abandoned Still-Useful Near-Vintage Computers

#14

Post by Tepix »

nbsande wrote: post #5

Keeping support for near 20 year old consumer grade machines in the kernel seems ridiculous to me. Doing so would bloat the size of the kernel even more than it already is. The more code you have the easier it is for bugs and vulnerabilities to creep in. When people write articles about moving old computers to windows to Linux they generally don't mean 20 year machines. You wouldn't even be able to run a modern brows…

Most of the hardware specific code is in loadable kernel modules, they increase the code size but not the system requirements.

Re: Linux Has Largely Abandoned Still-Useful Near-Vintage Computers

#16

Post by Tepix »

tinco wrote: post #7

Linux has done no such thing. The author is complaining about specifically Linux distributions with graphical user interfaces. "Linux developers are suffering from the Microsoft disease. Namely, they seem to be too busy chasing the latest fads" This is also a ridiculous statement. It has traditionally always been Microsoft that wasn't chasing the latest fads. Microsoft has always been late to any new developments and…

He's looking for operating systems that are up-to-date. A currently supported Windows will not run on a 20 year old computer with 256MB of RAM.

Re: Linux Has Largely Abandoned Still-Useful Near-Vintage Computers

#17

Post by dr-detroit »

This whole article is silly. Mac OS has breaking changes every 5 seconds and they don't tell anyone. Linux is fine. Microsoft has backward compatibility going back a thousand years fully supported for your pleasure sir. That is how it is and to argue otherwise with no supporting evidence is just zoomers bein zoomers.

Re: Linux Has Largely Abandoned Still-Useful Near-Vintage Computers

#19

Post by creshal »

elmerfud wrote: post #3

This article strikes me largely as, someone else should be doing this for me so I can benefit from their hard work. It's as if they miss the point of Linux, free software, etc... This problem exists because people, like this author, who are in to vintage systems aren't taking up the mantle to maintain a distribution to support their old systems. It's like they want the benefit with zero effort. Become a leader, start…

OP first needs to decide what the actual problem is they want to solve.

> Either they are filled with bugs, refuse to install on my computer's hard drive, require too much RAM, run too slowly, lack important drivers or codecs, are no longer actively supported, do not support 32-bit CPU's, are too difficult for novices to use, or have other highly-annoying problems like, for example, poor use of swap space.

Most of these problems could be tackled without having to invent a whole new distribution – bugs can be fixed, swap usage can be tuned, drivers can be packaged and added, etc. Any of these, apparently, would make one or several currently borderline useful distribution into a fully usable one.

Or maybe not, going by OP's other blog posts (e.g. https://cheapskatesguide.org/articles/surf-internet.html) they're proud of not understanding how Linux distributions work. ("the same number of bugs as the average Linux distribution"?!, Complaining that lightweight distributions don't have as many preinstalled programs as big ones, dpkg -i'ing random packages designed for other distributions, …)

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