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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

#191

Post by bandrami »

Gigachad wrote: post #185
winter_blue wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's bloat caused by stuff like Electron, and people choosing to write desktop apps in HTML + JavaScript/TypeScript + some framework. If people even used a framework like Qt (a really mature and well-maintained desktop framework the favored framework of KDE Plasma, etc.), their memory usage would be so much lower. (I'm not counting the memory used by Qt's shared .so / dynamic library files.)

Is virtually every single company and developer wrong? Or is Qt actually not that good, forcing people to use Electron despite it's resource usage? I find it far easier to believe that Qt and GTK have fallen behind rather than the whole world is under a grand delusion and didn't know Qt exists.

Electron lets you write a graphical application without knowing what you're doing.

Whether this is "right" or "wrong" is a difficult question to answer.

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

#192

Post by bandrami »

mjhay wrote: post #8
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.

It's not something that's remotely practical on most modern sites. I hate everything new as well, but at some point it's easier to just suck it up and face the hell that is the modern internet.

When I'm on lynx I find I don't miss the rest of the Web. Reading documents without people constantly trying to sell me crap is kind of refreshing.

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

#193

Post by bandrami »

shp0ngle wrote: post #97
jamesgill wrote: post #52

A side note: I love this website. It makes me nostalgic for the early-mid 90s when web pages were basic, personal, and mostly text.

I tried to get into Gemini for a while - it’s like Gopher but reimagined with some more modern ideas. However I quickly figured out there is not much to actually do there. The way modern web works is horrible (I don’t want to click just another cookie banner thanks), but at least it’s easy for all people to contribute.

"It's a brave new world! Everyone can publish! No need for gatekeepers!"

(a few months later)

"Why is everything such unmitigated crap?"

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

#194

Post by snvzz »

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 distinctly remember the happiness of attaching a 512KB RAM expansion card to my Amiga, bringing total RAM to 1MB.

I thought the same (A500, new enough to have the Agnus variant and jumper to make it 1MB chip total). It happens a lot when it's about memory.

1MB was so much RAM, relative to just 512KB. It could suddenly run Monkey Island and Sherman M4, and it was suddenly much easier to work with Deluxe Paint and Prowrite.

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

#195

Post by Gigachad »

bandrami wrote: post #191
Gigachad wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is virtually every single company and developer wrong? Or is Qt actually not that good, forcing people to use Electron despite it's resource usage? I find it far easier to believe that Qt and GTK have fallen behind rather than the whole world is under a grand delusion and didn't know Qt exists.

Electron lets you write a graphical application without knowing what you're doing. Whether this is "right" or "wrong" is a difficult question to answer.

I have a hard time believing that companies like Discord are using Electron simply because they do not know what they are doing.

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

#196

Post by bandrami »

zozbot234 wrote: post #55

There's not much that's specific to OpenBSD wrt. this post, or to the G4. The RAM use (61MiB) is roughly in line with a super lightweight Linux install for any 32 bit system (requirements for a modern 64 bit system tend to be higher). So any computer really is good enough if it fits your end use, otherwise it's no good.

Dealing with some hardware is a lot easier on OpenBSD, at least for me. I spent the better part of a day on Debian trying to get ofono and connman to play well together after network-manager and modemmanager (side note: really?) failed to get my LTE modem to connect. In OpenBSD it was just

ifconfig umb0 apn hutch up

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

#197

Post by wk_end »

Gigachad wrote: post #185
winter_blue wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's bloat caused by stuff like Electron, and people choosing to write desktop apps in HTML + JavaScript/TypeScript + some framework. If people even used a framework like Qt (a really mature and well-maintained desktop framework the favored framework of KDE Plasma, etc.), their memory usage would be so much lower. (I'm not counting the memory used by Qt's shared .so / dynamic library files.)

Is virtually every single company and developer wrong? Or is Qt actually not that good, forcing people to use Electron despite it's resource usage? I find it far easier to believe that Qt and GTK have fallen behind rather than the whole world is under a grand delusion and didn't know Qt exists.

Qt is actually not that good. I used to work for a large, well-known software company that distributed an app using Qt; every day that I worked on the native client was a nightmare of framework bugs, quirks, and limitations. For all of CSS' quirks and limitations, it's still an order of magnitude less frustrating to develop with a TypeScript/React/HTML/CSS stack than it is to use Qt. TypeScript is also a vastly better language in most respects than C++ or Python, the only two blessed Qt languages.

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

#198

Post by HWR_14 »

Gigachad wrote: post #185
winter_blue wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's bloat caused by stuff like Electron, and people choosing to write desktop apps in HTML + JavaScript/TypeScript + some framework. If people even used a framework like Qt (a really mature and well-maintained desktop framework the favored framework of KDE Plasma, etc.), their memory usage would be so much lower. (I'm not counting the memory used by Qt's shared .so / dynamic library files.)

Is virtually every single company and developer wrong? Or is Qt actually not that good, forcing people to use Electron despite it's resource usage? I find it far easier to believe that Qt and GTK have fallen behind rather than the whole world is under a grand delusion and didn't know Qt exists.

> Is virtually every single company and developer wrong?

Virtually every company and developer opts for simpler development and worse runtimes. Is that "wrong"? I'm not sure how to answer that. You could probably make a case either way.

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

#199

Post by insanitybit »

Gigachad wrote: post #185
winter_blue wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's bloat caused by stuff like Electron, and people choosing to write desktop apps in HTML + JavaScript/TypeScript + some framework. If people even used a framework like Qt (a really mature and well-maintained desktop framework the favored framework of KDE Plasma, etc.), their memory usage would be so much lower. (I'm not counting the memory used by Qt's shared .so / dynamic library files.)

Is virtually every single company and developer wrong? Or is Qt actually not that good, forcing people to use Electron despite it's resource usage? I find it far easier to believe that Qt and GTK have fallen behind rather than the whole world is under a grand delusion and didn't know Qt exists.

> Is virtually every single company and developer wrong?

Would it be surprising to find that they were? It's not like developers have a lot of credibility.

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

#200

Post by amatecha »

fsckboy wrote: post #183
amatecha wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do have basically latest Firefox on OpenBSD. But yeah, to be fair, I have to restart Firefox frequently on my X230's running OpenBSD. It either just stops rendering altogether (literally even application UI fails to render) or eats up so much memory and CPU the cooling fan is just always running at a kinda high level. Otherwise, it's super solid and a great OS for older machines IMO.

> restart Firefox frequently on my X230's running OpenBSD what wildly multithreaded memory hogs are you running? I love my x230s, and I have dozens and dozens of windows open all the time. probably I benefit a good bit from running ublock Origin and uMatrix, but I have gigabytes of RAM free. I don't think running a newer machine would give me any benefits at all.

The problem of Firefox "freezing" (rendering no longer working and UI elements like menu/scroll broken) and requiring a restart I don't think relates to memory. For example the browser is only using around 1.8gb at this moment and the machine has 8gb of RAM. I've been in contact with the Firefox OpenBSD maintainer (landry@) and he didn't have any certain indication from the logs/data I provided. He says he runs into the same problem, and simply quits/reopens. He's given a couple other steps to try getting more debugging data but otherwise, the cause is thus far unknown.

(oh and yeah I have no intention of using a newer system, I bought four X230's and an X220 for dirt cheap lol)

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