Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

muezza.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 357 posts

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

#231

Post by couchand »

HWR_14 wrote: post #198
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.

> 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.

Yeah, if you're needlessly burning dinosaurs in a warming planet it's wrong.

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

#232

Post by arcanemachiner »

steponlego wrote: post #94

Typing this on my T420 running OpenBSD. It does everything I really need it to do. I don't play (new) games, and I have a more powerful server tucked away here in case I have any CPU-intensive jobs I need done. Honestly after seeing the absolute state of Linux on the desktop over the last decade, there is no reason for me to even consider it any more.

> Honestly after seeing the absolute state of Linux on the desktop over the last decade, there is no reason for me to even consider it any more.

What is wrong with Linux on the desktop, and how is OpenBSD better?

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

#233

Post by Santosh83 »

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.

They're not wrong, but that also doesn't mean Qt is not good. It just means they're optimising for ease & speed of shipping software over resource usage. Building on top of a modern web browser (Electron basically) gets you a ton of stuff for free that you'd otherwise have to wire together painstakingly with frameworks like Qt. Also the language limitation. Far easier to throw a ton of JS devs on to a project than a ton of C++ devs.

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

#234

Post by MobiusHorizons »

Ygg2 wrote: post #220
Gigachad wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Question is, if you want to do cross platform UI what choice do you have?

There are a few options depending on your application type. Fltk is old and ugly, but may work for you. There are others that come from the world of game UIs. Things like sdl2, Nuklear, and dear imgui. I’ve also seen some vulkan based frameworks (mostly from the rust community)

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

#235

Post by genidoi »

NovaPenguin wrote: post #225
emodendroket wrote: post #212

What I found is that you can get an old computer to work great with an old OS right up until you open the Web browser and start visiting Web sites.

There are some hacky ways of getting a little distance on modern OS's, like using terminal based browsers. I'm thinking Links/Elinks but that will only get you so far and so long as the security certificates are available.

Carbonyl runs pretty well (YouTube videos / WASM powered apps like figma et al) https://github.com/fathyb/carbonyl

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

#236

Post by johnklos »

snvzz wrote: post #229
johnklos wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Running sshd on a 33 MHz m68030 (OpenSSH_9.1), and connecting to it from a modern(ish) machine (OpenSSH_8.1p1) takes about six minutes to complete when the system is otherwise idle. Right now it's busy with lots of http requests due to putting the link here, so it's taking about 9 minutes or so ;)

Is that Linux? It takes too long, but much less than that, on Netbsd @ A1200 with 030, albeit 50MHz.

NetBSD 10.0_BETA.

I'd expect a 50 MHz '030 to be faster than a 33 MHz one ;) But running newer ssh and sshd means more expensive default ciphers. I can speed it up a bit by being more deliberate about the choice of cipher, but I want to run things by default, generally speaking.

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

#237

Post by emodendroket »

jamiek88 wrote: post #226
emodendroket wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or to put it another way, HN users tend to strongly value things that aren't important to most people, and not much value other things that most people do care about.

Or to condense it further, HN users are human. No matter how much we deny it! :D

That's true. But I think that many people here share such a similar perspective that they don't realize how fringe their priorities really are.

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

#238

Post by ibz »

bilinguliar wrote: post #69
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.

> energy doesn’t grow on trees I think this statement may be wrong.

Indeed! I am heating myself exclusively with wood every winter for 10 years now, since I moved to the countryside. Energy does literally grow on trees.

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

#239

Post by Gigachad »

couchand wrote: post #231
HWR_14 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Yeah, if you're needlessly burning dinosaurs in a warming planet it's wrong.

The average consumer running electron apps on a MacBook is using far less power than the average HN user with a 1000w home lab made out of salvaged obsolete parts.

Not to mention half the users here rally against EVs, public transport, and probably own an F150. The environment only matters when we are talking about a 1w savings with election vs qt.

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

#240

Post by ibz »

arcanemachiner wrote: post #232
steponlego wrote: post #94

Typing this on my T420 running OpenBSD. It does everything I really need it to do. I don't play (new) games, and I have a more powerful server tucked away here in case I have any CPU-intensive jobs I need done. Honestly after seeing the absolute state of Linux on the desktop over the last decade, there is no reason for me to even consider it any more.

> Honestly after seeing the absolute state of Linux on the desktop over the last decade, there is no reason for me to even consider it any more. What is wrong with Linux on the desktop, and how is OpenBSD better?

Can't comment for all aspects of a Linux desktop versus an OpenBSD desktop, but one example that comes to mind is the sound system. Just try reading the design paper of sndio [1]. It is a pure joy to read. A beautiful architecture.

Now compare that with ALSA / PulseAudio / JACK / PipeWire... The audio system in Linux is fragmented and incomprehensible.

[1] https://www.openbsd.org/papers/asiabsdcon2010_sndio.pdf

Post reply on HN