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If you're happy with OpenBSD, probably any computer is good enough

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Re: If you're happy with OpenBSD, probably any computer is good enough

#71

Post by ornornor »

BizarreByte wrote: post #24
squarefoot wrote: post #20

I totally understand the nostalgia value, but energy doesn't grow on trees. A small mini-PC would consume a fraction of the current needed to run those old machines, offering much more computing power in return. Not to talk about the much better scaling achieved by modern processors; some iMac models would idle at almost 100 Watts.

I’m not suggesting one should use a setup like this daily, mostly commenting on how good the experience still is when running *BSD on it. At the end of the day if all you need is a computer, it’s nice to know that basically any computer can still be serviceable. In a world where you can get 4k series i5s in the trash though, I don’t actually think anyone will be using such an old Mac seriously.

Seriously, you should see the hardware companies are throwing away right now… i5/7 6xxx computers and up… what a waste. They’re fully functional but they’ve been amortized so thrown away to the landfill and replaced with todays model to be thrown away in 3–4 years.

What an incredible waste.

Re: If you're happy with OpenBSD, probably any computer is good enough

#72

Post by primis »

horsawlarway wrote: post #45
rakoo wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In digital, pollution happens during construction way more than usage. It still makes sense to use a decade-old computer. The second-hand market is filled with material that was built at same point; you having access to your nice second hand laptop is due to newer laptops being built all the time. It is still sending a signal upstream that such a computer can be sold. I do agree that buying second hand is much better…

> It still makes sense to use a decade-old computer. I don't really think it does, at least not some of them. A lot of those older machines are just running really, really high idle power draw. Ex: Pentium 4/5, Core 2 Duo, Athlon64, etc. Running from 40 to 100 watts idle. For comparison, a new RPI will go as low as ~1-3 watt idle, tops out at ~5-7 watts under full load, and will generally have better performance char…

A decade ago was 2013, the pentium 4 is at least 13 years old now, but entered production 23 years ago. There's still a lot of utility to be had from a 10 year old machine. My daily driver laptop os a lenovo t420 which came out in 2011. Sure it can't play games but it'll do fine with youtube, programming, etc.

My server box is also a 2012 era machine, it's a 3770k build. It's perfectly fine for what I use it for. Yeah it takes a bit more power than a modern intel chip, but it sure beats the alternative of throwing it in a landfill to save a few watts at idle.

Re: If you're happy with OpenBSD, probably any computer is good enough

#73

Post by vondur »

pdimitar wrote: post #6

The problem with arguments like these is to me two-fold: 1. Physical space. Most of the older tech takes too much space. I don't live in a mansion and I have no dedicated rooms just for big bulky computers. 2. Power consumption, heat, noise. I would love to be less consumerist and use stuff from 15 years ago and stop feeding greedy corporations but... the old stuff consumes 90 to 200 watts, heats up easily and notice…

I checked and it looks like the PowerPC's were power efficient. The 667Mhz model usually ran around 14W up to a maximum of 19W. The G5 processors were known to be hot and needed a lot of power. I remember having a PowerBook with a G4 back then, and remember closing the lid without shutting it down, and coming back days later with only a few percent's of battery draw. Of course, performance wise, the Intel mobile CPU's at the time were starting to really pull ahead of the mobile PowerPC chips at the point, except for a few very specific workloads.

Re: If you're happy with OpenBSD, probably any computer is good enough

#74

Post by doubled112 »

syntex wrote: post #65

The power usage is a serious issue, I recently scrapped an old PC. It was perfectly fine and usable, but I found it draws with graphics card more than 200W. And taking into account how much electricity rose in Europe it's super expensive to run. And the new one it's 15 times less. So let's take care at least a bit about the environment.

> take care at least a bit about the environment

I always take time to consider where the balance point is between replacing working, but less efficient equipment with newer, more efficient equipment.

It took materials and energy to produce the old one. I know electricity is expensive some places, but even then, sometimes the break even point is years in the future.

Despite all of this, I only realize its more complicated than I hope.

Re: If you're happy with OpenBSD, probably any computer is good enough

#75

Post by anthk »

andai wrote: post #17
sourcecodeplz wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard there's quite the group here on HN that browse the web on CLI browsers.

Been a while, but I had a better time with w3m. I think it was the only textmode browser I tried that preserved the nesting of comments on HN. Context: I was on a 3kbps connection and basically everything was unusable, so I ran a textmode browser on a VPS over Mosh.

I did that, literally the same, but with lynx/links instead of w3m over a pubnix with mosh.

Also, gopher sites thru gopher://hngopher.com and gopher://magical.fish.

I could even play some streaming radio with OPUS @16KBPS from http://dir.xiph.org once I set mplayer to cache the 90% of the stream.

Re: If you're happy with OpenBSD, probably any computer is good enough

#76

Post by Sakos »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #59
II2II wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends. My desktop PC, which is over a decade old, performs fine under current releases of Linux and Windows. My laptop PC is a bit over two years old. Performance is lacklustre under the current release of Windows. Newer isn't always better, particularly when you're comparing laptops to desktops. I also doubt that many laptops would have an equivalent lifespan to a desktop. They have more perilous lives due to t…

I agree with general gist of your laptop vs desktop argument. I will add though that there exist laptops that are / were built to last ; I am nowhere near the ThinkPad fanatic some people are :-) but I still have several t420s laptops, 11-12 years old I think, running as daily drivers with windows 10. That's about as long or longer as any desktop I've owner particularly considering how little I've changed it (mainly…

T420 would be perfect if it wasn't for the god awful displays manufacturers used. I'd still be using mine otherwise. Just going from a 1080p monitor back to it was a pain. After using my M1 MBP und my 4k monitor for the past year, I could never go back.

Re: If you're happy with OpenBSD, probably any computer is good enough

#77

Post by Sakos »

sourcecodeplz wrote: post #5
abricot wrote: post #4

If you are happy not surfing most of the Web, any computer is good enough. It's usually browsers and web pages that brings these older PCs down.

I've heard there's quite the group here on HN that browse the web on CLI browsers.

I used to use a CLI client for Reddit primarily. It was great. Maybe I should check that out again...something about the CLI really appeals to me.

Re: If you're happy with OpenBSD, probably any computer is good enough

#78

Post by anthk »

amelius wrote: post #3

> While I fully acknowledge there's a lot you can't do on a system like this (Docker, anything GPU related) it's still able to do a lot of productive work without feeling like a total dog to use. This, of course, is becoming less and less true.

How so? Celeron, 2GB of RAM, ~4GB with compressed ZRAM. Libreoffice works, most stuff works with GL 2.1, even 720p video with MPV. LibreOffice, Ted, Abiword, GNUMeric...

For the rest, UBlock Origin it's your friend and git://bitreich.org/privacy-haters to cut in half the realistical Chromium requeriments.

Re: If you're happy with OpenBSD, probably any computer is good enough

#79

Post by oriolid »

pdimitar wrote: post #63
rakoo wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we need to take a step back and see the big picture. There are 10-year olds computers sitting unused; as a whole, it can fill a percentage of usages. If it does then the people using them don't need to buy another one, new or refurbished. If they don't need to buy, other people can't sell as easily. If they can't sell as easily, they might use it longer, and not need/want to buy another one, old or refurbishe…

I believe many of us are aware of the bigger picture outlined by you, but you keep ignoring the point that the previous 10-year old computers burn much more electricity. And as I already said, the newer more efficient machines have been built already so we might as well use them and help the planet by using less watts. The process you describe is yet to happen e.g. the computers I have I don't want to replace unless…

I'm not completely convinced. The early PCs didn't need heat sinks or fans other than the 80mm PSU fan. They were inefficient, but the total power wasn't that huge. Even for newer computers, I have a Raspberry Pi 2 that draws 3 watts at maximum load and less when idle. It's powerful enough for what it does and even with this energy crisis it would need to run for years before the energy savings would cover the cost of a new model.

Re: If you're happy with OpenBSD, probably any computer is good enough

#80

Post by NikolaNovak »

Sakos wrote: post #76
NikolaNovak wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with general gist of your laptop vs desktop argument. I will add though that there exist laptops that are / were built to last ; I am nowhere near the ThinkPad fanatic some people are :-) but I still have several t420s laptops, 11-12 years old I think, running as daily drivers with windows 10. That's about as long or longer as any desktop I've owner particularly considering how little I've changed it (mainly…

T420 would be perfect if it wasn't for the god awful displays manufacturers used. I'd still be using mine otherwise. Just going from a 1080p monitor back to it was a pain. After using my M1 MBP und my 4k monitor for the past year, I could never go back.

T420s is the smaller version of t420; still modular and much more portable.

There were likely several versions of lcd panels with it - the t420s's I got were way better than the t480 and e580 I picked up recently, even though there's 6 years between them. I believe the ones I have are either 1920 x 1080 or 1600 x 900 (whereas the t480 is inexplicably only 1366 x 768 ; and e580 is 1080p but awful contrast or gamma or something)

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