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Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

howtogeek.com

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Re: Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

#201

Post by asddubs »

akuji1993 wrote: post #125
II2II wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a bit of a fuss over it a few years back. You can find mention of it in the Wikipedia article on Wordstar.[0] Robert J. Sawyer maintains a page on using Wordstar on modern computers.[1] Authors have been seeking ways to avoid distractions for decades, and it goes well beyond pervasive connectivity. Sometimes the very features that aid them in their work can also hinder them. For example: computers vastly si…

> one of the earliest pieces of advice I saw was to turn off the computer monitor while writing in order to avoid editing prematurely I do this by closing my eyes while writing. Makes the writing more descriptive and easier to imagine big scenes with a lot of color and vibrance. Using the 10 finger writing system, I am really fast doing this.

probably also good for eye strain

Re: Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

#202

Post by SwiftyBug »

ulzeraj wrote: post #91
toadi wrote: post #61

because I didn't have a lot of money I was working on a 486 when pentiums were the normal. I used a pentium when most where on pentium 3. thank god for linux to make my computers workable. Mail: mutt, Editor: vim, actually most like newsgroups, irc, .. all had cli clients. Only netscape was run in a very lightweight window manager like blackbox. good thing about that in my teens is that I learned a shit load about co…

Same here. I was using a Pentium 3 Coppermine with a Voodoo 3 PCI GPU running Slackware while all my friends had fancy Athlon XPs and Geforces. The motherboard went bad (back then the capacitor plague was a thing) and after a few months without a computer I said fuck it and just soldered a new capacitor where the old one was bloated. I'm so bad at soldering and it was such an ugly job. But then it booted! I was so pr…

Of course it's not the same accomplishment as yours, but when I was 15 I found a computer in the trash with all the parts still in it. I took off the RAM sticks and put them in my sister's computer. It got much faster, she was very pleased and I was very proud.

Re: Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

#203

Post by verytrivial »

golergka wrote: post #187
verytrivial wrote: post #126

Old games, old productivity software. If they were good when they were new, I've never understood how they become "bad" just because time passes. It's a weird marketing and social undermining of comfort and control. Sure there is the 'security' argument, and an accretion of various quirks, but people were often happy dealing with these quirks in the day, and as OP says, making interoperability frictionful has an defi…

> I've never understood how they become "bad" just because time passes Because your needs grow, and you want to able to do more stuff with it. A great workstation from 00s won't render your 4k video project or compile Chromium from source in reasonable time, or let you mix an entire virtual orchestra with several dozens of Kompakt sample libraries at all. All of those things are just something you couldn't do on the…

Slight straw man there. :-) I referred explicitly to games and productivity software.

The problems you cite here, namely 4k video and Chromium are both arguments in favor of retro computing in my opinion -- Both are solutions looking for a problem that succeed only in perpetuating the churn in hardware, no intrinsic value added, like the 100th re-imagining FPS machine gun splatter fest game. Yawn! :-)

Re: Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

#204

Post by petepete »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #181
scarface74 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MkLinux? https://www.mklinux.org/

I seem to recall Ubuntu Mate being the OS of choice for PowerPC users back in the day, but I lost track of what they all switched to when Ubuntu dropped 32-bit architecture.

I'd say that Yellow Dog Linux was the most influential of the PowerPC distros. I ran it for years on my first generation Mac Mini.

YUM, the package manager used until recently on RedHat/Fedora, was based on Yellow Dog's YUP:

[Y]ellow Dog [UP]dater -> [Y]ellow Dog [U]pdater, [M]odified

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Dog_Linux

Re: Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

#205

Post by novaleaf »

For those finding this route interesting, just spend 4x more ($200) and get a modern-ish laptop, used, off craigslist or offerup.

I'm typing on a Lenovo X1 Carbon (gen2) I bought for $200 last week. Win10, 1440p touchscreen, ssd, bitlocker encrypted with fingerprint biometrics.

I've seen macbooks at the same pricerange, but I'm a windows guy.

Re: Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

#206

Post by Wandfarbe »

anthk wrote: post #196
Wandfarbe wrote: post #195

"I have a completly outdated system with internet connectivity because i'm not using what an average user is doing at all and now i'm writing an article about it" I have upgraded from a X220 to a X390 for a single reason: YouTube Videos, which i like to watch on my laptop, started to put the x220 under high load. I'm just not writing an Article about it. Ah and one generic reason for not having something with is 20 y…

> started to put the x220 under high load. invidio.us, mpv + youtube-dl, smplayer...

Sry i'm a software engineer, i like hardware and i don't have any issue upgrading my laptop to be able to just watch a youtube video on my browser without any manual hardware optimized workaround.

...

Re: Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

#208

Post by beckyb »

golergka wrote: post #187
verytrivial wrote: post #126

Old games, old productivity software. If they were good when they were new, I've never understood how they become "bad" just because time passes. It's a weird marketing and social undermining of comfort and control. Sure there is the 'security' argument, and an accretion of various quirks, but people were often happy dealing with these quirks in the day, and as OP says, making interoperability frictionful has an defi…

> I've never understood how they become "bad" just because time passes Because your needs grow, and you want to able to do more stuff with it. A great workstation from 00s won't render your 4k video project or compile Chromium from source in reasonable time, or let you mix an entire virtual orchestra with several dozens of Kompakt sample libraries at all. All of those things are just something you couldn't do on the…

Of course, that only matters if your needs include rendering 4k video or compiling Chromium.

If they don't, then the old hardware is still good.

Re: Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

#209

Post by [deleted] »

dschooh wrote: post #129
RalfWausE wrote: post #122

Why not use old(er) Systems when they fulfill your needs? A computer is a tool, such as a typewriter, printing press, paintbrush or hammer. Would anyone argue about the age of a typewriter or hammer if its in good working condition? In fact, i am using an Atari 520ST as my main computer since my laptop died a while ago. It started as an experiment, but now "it just works". I got network connectivity, email and (limit…

This sounds interesting. Would you mind to elaborate on your workflow and what you do with it specifically? I'd love to see some screen shots.

[deleted]

Re: Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

#210

Post by johnklos »

novaleaf wrote: post #205

For those finding this route interesting, just spend 4x more ($200) and get a modern-ish laptop, used, off craigslist or offerup. I'm typing on a Lenovo X1 Carbon (gen2) I bought for $200 last week. Win10, 1440p touchscreen, ssd, bitlocker encrypted with fingerprint biometrics. I've seen macbooks at the same pricerange, but I'm a windows guy.

An old Mac is infinitely more usable than a Windows machine for those of us that can't warp our brains enough to try to understand Windows.
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