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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

#71

Post by airhead969 »

ktpsns wrote: post #15

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 is true, however some devices including floppies, tape, and optical media have been made impossible, more difficult, and/or inconvenient to use with modern kernels.

And then there's throwing away 386 compatibility in 2012 and now they want to nuke a bunch more.

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=2021-Lin...

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

#72

Post by creshal »

detaro wrote: post #69
creshal wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

X220 is technically 9 years old, that gives you USB3, two SSDs, and a whopping 16GB RAM. The exactly ten years old X201 is limited to 8GB RAM, but you can retrofit USB3 with an ExpressCard adapter and it can take one SSD. Two with the optional docking station.

It's not 2020 anymore ;) X220 launched early 2011. Not all X220 models had USB3 though, only the i7 variant did.

That expands your options even more. Workstation laptops of that age could take 32 GB RAM, unlike the shitty little subcompact ultrabooks that could only take 16 GB.

Man, imagine buying a laptop with only 16 GB RAM today.

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

#73

Post by detaro »

NoGravitas wrote: post #53
gcthomas wrote: post #34

The 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.

On an individual level there's another angle: Wait to long and you run into the point where other people are scrapping newer, more efficient machines. At that point, picking one of those up is increasing your efficiency.

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

#74

Post by GuB-42 »

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…

This is a problem inherent to Linux, that is, you need maintainers, with APIs changing regularly.

Windows is a lot more stable in that regard, and mainframes are not even on the same league.

It is a choice made by the Linux community, it goes very well with its open source nature and it has advantage in terms of performance and ease of implementing new features, but the drawback is that you can't keep compatibility without active maintenance.

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

#75

Post by anthk »

amiga-workbench wrote: post #50
anthk wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

Yup, I've got mpv playing back 720p youtube on a 1.8Ghz Pentium M machine with no trouble at all. 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…

Disable Glamor and enable EXA rendering. My 10-radeon.conf:

    Section "OutputClass"
       Identifier "Radeon"
 MatchDriver "radeon"
 Driver "radeon"
 Option "AccelMethod" "EXA"
 Option "EXAVSync" "false"
 Option "SwapbuffersWait" "false"
    EndSection
My GPU: AMD RS690M [Radeon Xpress 1200/1250/1270]

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

#76

Post by soneil »

c22 wrote: post #31

So the author complains that there are linuxes that run on vintage hardware, but they're not usable by novice linux users . The problem, I guess, is that linux on vintage hardware is too inaccessible to people coming from windows, but all the accessible distros are bloated from too much "Microsoft disease?" Perhaps the features you want are a byproduct of this "disease" then? If you don't want bloated software you ma…

The irony for me is that they're not being asked to learn something new, they're being asked to learn something vintage.

A full modern gnome/KDE desktop environment might be a lot more user-friendly than, eg, blackbox - but they also price you out of the 20-year-old laptop. OP wants to have their cake and eat it - and they can, but it will require a bigger plate.

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

#77

Post by creshal »

GuB-42 wrote: post #74
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…

This is a problem inherent to Linux, that is, you need maintainers, with APIs changing regularly. Windows is a lot more stable in that regard, and mainframes are not even on the same league. It is a choice made by the Linux community, it goes very well with its open source nature and it has advantage in terms of performance and ease of implementing new features, but the drawback is that you can't keep compatibility w…

*inherent to the GNU/whatever userland.

Linux-the-kernel has not only a stable API, but also a stable ABI, and you can run 20 years old software compiled against that ABI just fine.

The problem is that the userland doesn't give a fuck and breaks itself every other day just for the lulz, starting with the glibc, which doesn't even allow fully static compilation.

So you'll have to use 20 years old versions of everything (but the kernel), which makes running one piece of old software nonviable… but that's hardly the kernel's fault.

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

#78

Post by anthk »

luke2m wrote: post #55
anthk wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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/

Now I remember: pianobar.

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

#79

Post by anthk »

forinti wrote: post #43

I've recently tried to give new life to and old Pentium 166MMX with 80MB of RAM. 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 ke…

This has software a bit newer than Damn Small Linux: http://delicate-linux.net/

Try compiling a modern TLS under /opt, compile and link a new mbedtls library, and try compiling Dillo from Mercurial.

Edit ~/.dillo/dillorc in order to set the User Agent to either PSP or Opera Mini 3. Or better, Lynx. The Lynx one. Web pages got lovely formatted where supported:

         http_user_agent="Lynx/2.8.9rel.1 libwww-FM/2.14 SSL-MM/1.4.1 OpenSSL/1.1.1k"
Also, edit ~/.dillo/dillorc in order to make cookies work. For example:

    DEFAULT DENY
   .news.ycombinator.com ACCEPT
   .news.ycombinator.com ACCEPT_SESSION
Bam!! Modernish web "support" for your browser. HN should work, and a lot more too.

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

#80

Post by Aeronwen »

FirstLvR wrote: post #35

can someone explain the use of the word vintage? is like something that apparently looks old? something that is actually old?

Vintage used to mean something 50+ years old, but now it means 20+ years old. Antique used to mean 100+ years old, but now it means something covered in dust.

If it looks old, but isn't, it's Retro.

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