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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

#141

Post by tux2bsd »

ibz wrote: post #90
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.

> let's take care at least a bit about the environment You know that producing that PC used way more energy than it would consume if you left it running? > taking into account how much electricity rose in Europe This seems like your main reason actually. Your wallet, not the environment. If the energy prices went down, you would have kept the old PC around rather than having it end up in a landfill or shipped to a po…

[dead]

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

#142

Post by contravariant »

harel wrote: post #127

You're only using 61 MB of your 512 MB RAM. Megabyte. I love it. Megabyte. I distinctly remember the happiness of attaching a 512KB RAM expansion card to my Amiga, bringing total RAM to 1MB. You have 512 of those!

I still think it's wild how much data can fit on a microSD nowadays. People would think you were crazy if you told them just a few decades ago.

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

#143

Post by anthk »

steponlego wrote: post #137
anthk wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which distro? Parabola and Arch Linux have the mesa-amber package, which enables OpenGL for legeacy chipsets.

OpenBSD, I will look in to this package though. Maybe I can get it running from source.

Sorry, but that's futile entire X.org and drivers are bundled under the Xenocara brand in base. If you don't have it, consider it lost forever.

If any, you can set

         machdep.allowaperture=2
in /etc/sysctl.conf

Also, /etc/fbtab needs some settings for MESA, too. Basically you need to set read write the files under /dev/dri* with fbtab from /dev/ttyC5 if I can recall it well.

EDIT: typo fix in /etc/sysctl.conf

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

#144

Post by anarazel »

Sesse__ wrote: post #88
mro_name wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

indeed, developing fast software requires slow hardware.

It does not. Slow hardware _can_ give you a certain amount of _motivation_ for speeding up your software, but this is by no means a given (if software running slowly on your own computer automatically made you optimize it, there would not be software that is really slow even on fast hardware, and there clearly is). If you care about making software fast, you invest time in the measurements-ideas-measurements loop, wh…

Strongly agreed.

In fact, I found an over-dimensioned workstation to be one of the best tools improving performance of non-trivial programs. There's a lot of performance issues that don't stand out sufficiently on today's common-place enduser hardware, that will be very visible on a current two socket system. And fixing the issues benefits the lower end hardware of today. More often than not, the large issue one can see in large machines today, are issues seen on lower-end hardware in a few years.

It's easy to see using too many cycles on enduser hardware. The effects of memory latency, various forms of cache contention, etc however, not so much.

> Since any sane measurement is based on benchmarking and not eyeballing, slower CPUs don't help you

I do find that somehow, to a non-rational degree, I have a considerably easier time getting a "feeling" for the performance bottlenecks when benchmarking on my workstation, than when benchmarking on a server. Which I guess kinda falls out of proper benchmarking.

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

#145

Post by LoganDark »

flenserboy wrote: post #81
mro_name wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

indeed, developing fast software requires slow hardware.

Excellent point. Software testing (not for stability but instead for usability, and certainly not for compiling , lol) ought to be done on minimal-spec systems (the specs of which might possibly be dialed-down further once optimization is done, which would be a bonus). Assuming that a faster system (or one with more RAM or storage) will cure the real problem has allowed all sorts of sloppiness to creep into software.

We once heard a story about how someone optimized their game engine for a crappy old netbook and ended up with some tens of thousands of frames per second on any vaguely modern system.

This works.

-Emily

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

#146

Post by aidenn0 »

johnklos wrote: post #33

There are lots of people in the comments here who appear to not get it. This isn't about replacing a contemporary computer with something old. It's about the usability of a decent OS on very modest hardware. One of the systems on which I run NetBSD is a 33 MHz m68030 Mac LC III+ ( http://elsie.zia.io - it's hosting a site about an LC II, which I'm still working on). It's quite useful to see how assumptions people mak…

Not nearly as low-end, but I ran a server off of a P3 450MHz for over a decade, then sold it to someone who was going to continue using it for a similar purpose. 4 of those years were in a college dorm room with no A/C.

The CPU fan died at some point, and I didn't notice until I opened it up to change a hard-drive. If it's not still running it's probably due to an exploded capacitor, because that thing was indestructible.

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

#147

Post by harel »

contravariant wrote: post #142
harel wrote: post #127

You're only using 61 MB of your 512 MB RAM. Megabyte. I love it. Megabyte. I distinctly remember the happiness of attaching a 512KB RAM expansion card to my Amiga, bringing total RAM to 1MB. You have 512 of those!

I still think it's wild how much data can fit on a microSD nowadays. People would think you were crazy if you told them just a few decades ago.

it's more than wild man. It's magical! Just yesterday or the day before my 700KB or so Amiga floppy seemed like it would last forever...

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

#148

Post by jkepler »

harel wrote: post #126
johnklos wrote: post #33

There are lots of people in the comments here who appear to not get it. This isn't about replacing a contemporary computer with something old. It's about the usability of a decent OS on very modest hardware. One of the systems on which I run NetBSD is a 33 MHz m68030 Mac LC III+ ( http://elsie.zia.io - it's hosting a site about an LC II, which I'm still working on). It's quite useful to see how assumptions people mak…

Absolutely this. I'll add that there is a certain kind of joy (to me at least) to see an old machine spring back to life and become useful again.

I heartily agree. I have an old Asus netbook (castoff from a family member who switched to computing nearly exclusively on her smartphone; the machine originally ran MeeGo Linux on a 8GB internal disk) that runs Debian stable, slowly, but I've been wondering if one of the BSDs might be slightly faster. I'm thinking of making it a kitchen computer primarily to serve as a recipe database.

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

#149

Post by rahen »

flenserboy wrote: post #81
mro_name wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

indeed, developing fast software requires slow hardware.

Excellent point. Software testing (not for stability but instead for usability, and certainly not for compiling , lol) ought to be done on minimal-spec systems (the specs of which might possibly be dialed-down further once optimization is done, which would be a bonus). Assuming that a faster system (or one with more RAM or storage) will cure the real problem has allowed all sorts of sloppiness to creep into software.

NetBSD is still routinely tested on 486s and old Vaxen, and developed on ARM SBCs or Pinebooks. It helps keep the code base light and efficient.

The latest minimal kernel will still boot on 4MB of memory on 32 bits machines, although it will take more than that to be usable.

Unfortunately NetBSD can only do so much considering the sad state of the Linux ecosystem. GCC has become so big it won't self host on most platform, making cross compilation mandatory for them. Switching to PCC would be a solution, but a lot of software won't compile with PCC and obviously their maintainers couldn't care less.

Then you have the newer behemoths like Rust and Go. Once they start creeping in some majors projects like GCC or OpenSSL, a lot of machines will turn into e-waste, and the resource requirements will climb even further.

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

#150

Post by wahern »

Sesse__ wrote: post #88
mro_name wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

indeed, developing fast software requires slow hardware.

It does not. Slow hardware _can_ give you a certain amount of _motivation_ for speeding up your software, but this is by no means a given (if software running slowly on your own computer automatically made you optimize it, there would not be software that is really slow even on fast hardware, and there clearly is). If you care about making software fast, you invest time in the measurements-ideas-measurements loop, wh…

In the case of OpenBSD itself, the popularity of the PCEngines APU2 has definitely provided motivation for improving the performance of PF.

Also, ironically, people elsewhere in this article thread keep mentioning that older hardware is too power intensive. But the reason the APU2 is still around is because neither Intel nor AMD offer modern chips with a maximum TDP as low as the AMD G series. At maximum load, with all 4 cores, DRAM, and NICs at full throttle, the APU2 only dissipates something like 10W of heat. Modern x86 chips are more power efficient, but their maximum TDPs are just too high. Some of the laptop and embedded series get close at ~15W (not sure if that includes DRAM and NICs), but that's too hot. The APU2 is designed to only require passive cooling, without finned cases, without conditioned air, and still provide years of reliable always-on service.

I see the same issue with higher-end AMD and Intel chips. Under light load their power draw is very low, but under load their chips are often more power hungry than comparable models from 10 years ago. Yes, they get more work done per watt, but there are many situations where I'd rather know that a server will never draw more than, say, 50-60W, even if that means requests end up being throttled. But I don't want to use their crippled low-end chips, either, especially when I can just continue using my 10+ year-old servers that provide better performance. (Theoretically you could manually throttle requests to maintain the power envelope, but I don't want to be burdened managing software configurations.) I prefer the "edge computing" series of chips from Intel and AMD, but over the years their max TDP has slowly crept up. Thankfully there are still a few options that work well, but it's definitely a niche that doesn't see much attention.

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