41–50 of 101 posts
There is a perfectly modern Debian distribution available as 32bit. I put this on a 12 years old computer. Yes, that's not 20 years old, but the architecture is largely the same. GNU userspace as well as the Linux kernels have not abandoned 32bit x86.
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, set…
It has Windows 2000 installed and I tried many small Linux distributions. DSL runs fine.
You have to lower your expectations, but you can have a nice little system to play around with. You also won't have a modern browser, but, even if you did, you wouldn't have enough RAM or CPU to use most sites.
My conclusion is that if you want to keep such a machine working, you would have to find some specific job for it to do, such as monitoring, honeypot, playing a specific game, text editing, etc.
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 th…
If running new software is so important just buy a new computer!?
What’s wrong with installing WinXP+office and calling it a day? Even if someone fulfilled your request and got an up-to-date browser etc working on your 256MB laptop Would YouTube even work?
>256MB laptop Would YouTube even work? mpv + youtube-dl, yes, it would.
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, set…
The problem is, you need the whole system to support, say, 386. So one solution would be to use the last version of your distro supporting it, and then compile each new piece of software. Realistically, you would use another (modern) machine for cross-compilation of any significant piece of software, and you will definitely encounter some interesting quirks. Nevertheless, it's doable, as long as you are willing to accept you're running an unpatched kernel.
Here's the main problem with the article.
Nowadays, Linux is a profit-driven operating system. Probably not in the direct sense, yet it is.
You want people implementing hardware support? You need developers, and pay them.
You need integration between the various system components? Same.
And so on...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 th…
>I also found that I was able to play 480p Youtube videos in full-screen mode and listen to music on Pandora. Holy shit, he/she is very uninformed. Pandora plays perfectly with some CLI player (I can't remember it's name), and for youtube damn mpv with youtube-dl (my config for my trash machine) will play any 720p video fast as hell. ~/.config/mpv/config: vo=gpu,drm sws-fast=yes sws-allow-zimg=no zimg-dither=no vd-la…
The real issue I'm having is that with all the old 2D graphics acceleration API's being deprecated in X11, you are stuck with Glamor to accelerate desktop compositing, and that only works if you have a later fixed function GPU, or a modern programmable GPU. If you're stuck with an old ATI FireGL like I am, X11 will vomit an error about the GPU not having enough instruction slots to do the job.
Its kind of baffling, the hardware is capable enough to run Half Life 2, but it can't composite a few windows? I'm almost tempted to go compile X11 myself and remove that particular check.