can someone explain the use of the word vintage? is like something that apparently looks old? something that is actually old?
It’s for when you want to sell your useless old stuff on Ebay.
Linux Has Largely Abandoned Still-Useful Near-Vintage Computers
51–60 of 101 posts
Re: Linux Has Largely Abandoned Still-Useful Near-Vintage Computers
#52I'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.
While I don't agree with the tone, and the expectation that other should ensure that you can keep running a free OS on a 12 year old laptop, there is a point to this website.
I did all the thing I do now 15 years ago on my laptop. Sure video quality have improved, screen resolution have increased and I can do more stuff online, if I want to. All the daily stuff, browsing the web, hobby programming and paying my bills online, why can't I do that with 1 or 2GB of RAM?
We could do 100Mbit networking 15 years ago, or even 20 years ago, so the increased network speed shouldn't be an issue.
Re: Linux Has Largely Abandoned Still-Useful Near-Vintage Computers
#53The most important problem with keeping old computers running is their carbon footprint. Modern machines are much cheaper to run for the same performance, and even considering the construction of new devices an always on devices needs to be modern and lower power. I've replaced an old Asus nettop PC with a Raspberry Pi 4, and electricity usage has dropped from 30W to single digit power consumption. Old devices need r…
On the other hand, I saw some research that says that the power consumption of those older devices in use is dwarfed by the power used to make them, or to make a newer computer, so, as with cars, the right thing to do is keep them running as long as you can. I spent a little bit of time looking for the reference, but it was on gopher a couple of years ago, and I wasn't able to find it.
Re: Linux Has Largely Abandoned Still-Useful Near-Vintage Computers
#54I still run debian 32-bit on a P3 1GHz machine reasonably often - it's a legacy PC for gaming. Has 3DFX cards and everything!
Old windows of that vintage can no longer talk modern SMB but Debian i386 can just fine, so I boot debian on it to transfer data from the internet or other modern machines. LXDE is perfectly usable, although I admit I haven't tried a web browser in some time.
Re: Linux Has Largely Abandoned Still-Useful Near-Vintage Computers
#55Earlier 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…
Not a CLI, but Pithos [0] works great.
[0] https://pithos.github.io/
Re: Linux Has Largely Abandoned Still-Useful Near-Vintage Computers
#56I noticed this trend when Debian dropped 386 support in the i386 architecture... Thats already more then 5 years ago.
Re: Linux Has Largely Abandoned Still-Useful Near-Vintage Computers
#57I am finding NetBSD works better on old computers than Linux. The differences are not too great. They are basically all based on the same POSIX standards.
yes, both NetBSD and OpenBSD i386 works great on Old Computers and take very little space, I have OpenBSD on a Thinkpad R51e (circa 2007) and had NetBSD on a circa 1999 desktop (512 mb mem) which sadly is slowly fading away (hardware).
Also both have solved the 2038 problem on 32 bit systems years ago. I think Linux is very close to solving it (or may have already), but that is for newer kernels. I expect Linux will probably drop 32 bit support with in a few years.
Re: Linux Has Largely Abandoned Still-Useful Near-Vintage Computers
#58This 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 felt the same way.
I had a Dell C400 about 12yrs ago running on P3m. But, it was light and compact but dated back then and running Windows XP. So, I learned how to install back then Gentoo and it ran beautifully. I would of held onto it but the battery wouldn't last and couldn't find a good replacement.
I kinda having the same issue with my Samsung Chromebook XE303C12 today lol. But it's limited by soldered on hardware and I think the display driver is closed source.
Re: Linux Has Largely Abandoned Still-Useful Near-Vintage Computers
#59The most important problem with keeping old computers running is their carbon footprint. Modern machines are much cheaper to run for the same performance, and even considering the construction of new devices an always on devices needs to be modern and lower power. I've replaced an old Asus nettop PC with a Raspberry Pi 4, and electricity usage has dropped from 30W to single digit power consumption. Old devices need r…
On the other hand, I saw some research that says that the power consumption of those older devices in use is dwarfed by the power used to make them, or to make a newer computer, so, as with cars, the right thing to do is keep them running as long as you can. I spent a little bit of time looking for the reference, but it was on gopher a couple of years ago, and I wasn't able to find it.
But as with old cars, if you want to keep one running you might need to learn some more about how engines work. Or be willing to pay a mechanic.
Re: Linux Has Largely Abandoned Still-Useful Near-Vintage Computers
#60One and only problem with old Laptops is that you cannot just replace the CDROM-drive with Raspberry Pi and call it a day. Because VNC is too slow. There must be some handy way to connect the display. I know you can order HDMI-to-display boards from Alibaba, but this requires dismantling the laptop. Not handy enuff I say.
Edit: I know exactly what would be the optimal solution and it is two-port SATA drive. Rasberry and the old Laptop would share the same drive. Even I could write necessary routines starting from "scrot". And other I/O like keyboard and touchpad would be equally easy. But no two-port drives in Ebay.