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But can your calculator run Linux?

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Re: But can your calculator run Linux?

#3

Post by stackghost »

These calculators are, without question, excellent little devices and the HP ones in particular had great engineering behind them. I had an HP48 in undergrad, which was considered pretty much mandatory for engineering. There was a thriving student sneakernet of programs you could get that would trivialize certain problems. Some friends had the HP49G which was, in my opinion, a step down in terms of build quality. Years later I bought an HP50 which was the best of both worlds.

I still have my HP50 but there's just no reason to use it. Anywhere I go I either have my phone or a computer. When I was in the air force I would have to go into EMSEC zones where you couldn't bring external devices, such as SCIFs, but the number of people with needs to be running engineering calculations in such an environment rounds down to 0. Certainly I wasn't one of them.

Even "in the field" nowadays, you're likely to have satellite connectivity and a laptop. There's just not really a use case for graphing calculators that I can think of. It's too bad, because they're awesome.

Re: But can your calculator run Linux?

#6

Post by DrewADesign »

I use the Prime G2 daily. I VERY much prefer RPN, love that I can program it with Python (and occasionally PPL,) and am often in environments where having a backlit screen is a lot more convenient than pulling out a flashlight. Linux on it would be a fun novelty, but the clunkiness would make it a lot less useful to me. The big collection of physical buttons behaving predictably without needing to look at the screen is super useful. Otherwise I’d just use my phone.

Re: But can your calculator run Linux?

#7

Post by NetMageSCW »

stackghost wrote: post #3

These calculators are, without question, excellent little devices and the HP ones in particular had great engineering behind them. I had an HP48 in undergrad, which was considered pretty much mandatory for engineering. There was a thriving student sneakernet of programs you could get that would trivialize certain problems. Some friends had the HP49G which was, in my opinion, a step down in terms of build quality. Yea…

I still have my 50g on my work desk for one reason - to do calculations with units. Admittedly I use emulation on my phone mostly, but the 48-50 units calculations are still the best I’ve used. (But if I don’t need units I use my SM 42).

Re: But can your calculator run Linux?

#8

Post by jagged-chisel »

shevy-java wrote: post #4

If a toaster can run on Linux, so can a calculator. (NetBSD used to have that slogan with regards to toasters. I have not followed it for several years, so I don't know which operating system dominates toasters nowadays.)

A toaster can run Linux. Linux can run on a toaster.
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