[elmerfud]

This article strikes me largely as, someone else should be doing this for me so I can benefit from their hard work. It's as if they miss the point of Linux, free software, etc...

This problem exists because people, like this author, who are in to vintage systems aren't taking up the mantle to maintain a distribution to support their old systems. It's like they want the benefit with zero effort. Become a leader, start the work and organize a community to take your favorite distribution and make it work on your legacy system.

[creshal]

OP first needs to decide what the actual problem is they want to solve.

> Either they are filled with bugs, refuse to install on my computer's hard drive, require too much RAM, run too slowly, lack important drivers or codecs, are no longer actively supported, do not support 32-bit CPU's, are too difficult for novices to use, or have other highly-annoying problems like, for example, poor use of swap space.

Most of these problems could be tackled without having to invent a whole new distribution – bugs can be fixed, swap usage can be tuned, drivers can be packaged and added, etc. Any of these, apparently, would make one or several currently borderline useful distribution into a fully usable one.

Or maybe not, going by OP's other blog posts (e.g. https://cheapskatesguide.org/articles/surf-internet.html) they're proud of not understanding how Linux distributions work. ("the same number of bugs as the average Linux distribution"?!, Complaining that lightweight distributions don't have as many preinstalled programs as big ones, dpkg -i'ing random packages designed for other distributions, …)

[mrweasel]

The article about surfing the internet on an old machine made me look up the SlimJet browser mentioned. The SlimJet website (https://www.slimjet.com/) is either extremely funny, or extremely suspicious. It has an late 90' early 2000' vibe going on.

[anthk]

>I also found that I was able to play 480p Youtube videos in full-screen mode and listen to music on Pandora.

Holy shit, he/she is very uninformed. Pandora plays perfectly with some CLI player (I can't remember it's name), and for youtube damn mpv with youtube-dl (my config for my trash machine) will play any 720p video fast as hell.

~/.config/mpv/config:

    vo=gpu,drm
    sws-fast=yes
    sws-allow-zimg=no
    zimg-dither=no
    vd-lavc-skiploopfilter=all

[amiga-workbench]

Yup, I've got mpv playing back 720p youtube on a 1.8Ghz Pentium M machine with no trouble at all.

The real issue I'm having is that with all the old 2D graphics acceleration API's being deprecated in X11, you are stuck with Glamor to accelerate desktop compositing, and that only works if you have a later fixed function GPU, or a modern programmable GPU. If you're stuck with an old ATI FireGL like I am, X11 will vomit an error about the GPU not having enough instruction slots to do the job.

Its kind of baffling, the hardware is capable enough to run Half Life 2, but it can't composite a few windows? I'm almost tempted to go compile X11 myself and remove that particular check.

[anthk]

Disable Glamor and enable EXA rendering. My 10-radeon.conf:

    Section "OutputClass"
       Identifier "Radeon"
 MatchDriver "radeon"
 Driver "radeon"
 Option "AccelMethod" "EXA"
 Option "EXAVSync" "false"
 Option "SwapbuffersWait" "false"
    EndSection

My GPU: AMD RS690M [Radeon Xpress 1200/1250/1270]

[luke2m]

Not a CLI, but Pithos [0] works great. [0] https://pithos.github.io/

[anthk]

Now I remember: pianobar.

[kodah]

> poor use of swap space

Swap is configured by the user. You do need to know what you're doing in order to configure it to your usecase.

[sunsipples]

I am also against a throwaway society but there comes a point where you need to accept old computers/vehicles/toys/instruments/tools are beyond your ability to maintain/use them. If you want to fork over some money semi-regularly or learn how to do it yourself, it becomes an ornament. Somehow expecting 20 year old computing hardware to be supported now, free of charge, in Linux is a valid criticism. 20 years ago, setting that computer up was a nightmare for non tech-savvy folk but current distributions need to support your horse and cart.

edit "but many over pay for the best of everything simply because they are unwilling to understand what they really need or learn how to make do with less" - old man yelling at clouds

[Freak_NL]

It's also trivially easy to pick up five year old computer parts for a few of whichever monetary unit you use. Ten year old stuff will run perfectly and is often free. Twenty year old? That's entering hobbyist territory. The effort required to support those with modern OS'es is completely out of proportion, and makes little sense, and in terms of power consumption such an old computer is not a very sustainable choice either for the performance you'll get.

[creshal]

5 year old enterprise hardware is only now leaving its warranty cycle.

10 year old laptops can take either 8 or 16 GB RAM and have at least 2 cores + hyperthreading. It'll not just run perfectly, but it'll run even the most bloated Linux distributions or Win 10 just fine.

[detaro]

Right, 10 years ago is e.g. Sandy Bridge Core 2 Duo systems. Thinkpad X220, things like that. Potentially even has USB3 and an SSD already, or can be upgraded.

20 years ago is AMD Duron and Pentium 4, pretty much just getting past single-core 1 Ghz (various 1.x GHz variants were announced during 2001). very different world.

[creshal]

X220 is technically 9 years old, that gives you USB3, two SSDs, and a whopping 16GB RAM.

The exactly ten years old X201 is limited to 8GB RAM, but you can retrofit USB3 with an ExpressCard adapter and it can take one SSD. Two with the optional docking station.

[detaro]

It's not 2020 anymore ;) X220 launched early 2011.

Not all X220 models had USB3 though, only the i7 variant did.

[dvfjsdhgfv]

It's a bit complicated. Linux the kernel no longer supports certain machines for valid reasons. However, many if not most userland tools (with the exception of these that actually use certain CPU extensions) would gladly run on an 386 if compiled for it even if the current kernel version doesn't support it.

The problem is, you need the whole system to support, say, 386. So one solution would be to use the last version of your distro supporting it, and then compile each new piece of software. Realistically, you would use another (modern) machine for cross-compilation of any significant piece of software, and you will definitely encounter some interesting quirks. Nevertheless, it's doable, as long as you are willing to accept you're running an unpatched kernel.

[bruce343434]

So in a nutshell, install gentoo

[LargoLasskhyfv]

Almost infeasible because of much longer compile times and higher memory requirements for doing so.

If you have access to systems capable of doing that, usually the need for using such old systems doesn't exist. Except if you'd like to have some X-terminals, or hand them down (refurbished) to relatives, some community projects, or similar.

I'd go for something like Antix because that way you have access to the almost infinite binary package repositories.

[tgeorge]

I felt the same way.

I had a Dell C400 about 12yrs ago running on P3m. But, it was light and compact but dated back then and running Windows XP. So, I learned how to install back then Gentoo and it ran beautifully. I would of held onto it but the battery wouldn't last and couldn't find a good replacement.

I kinda having the same issue with my Samsung Chromebook XE303C12 today lol. But it's limited by soldered on hardware and I think the display driver is closed source.

[GuB-42]

This is a problem inherent to Linux, that is, you need maintainers, with APIs changing regularly.

Windows is a lot more stable in that regard, and mainframes are not even on the same league.

It is a choice made by the Linux community, it goes very well with its open source nature and it has advantage in terms of performance and ease of implementing new features, but the drawback is that you can't keep compatibility without active maintenance.

[creshal]

*inherent to the GNU/whatever userland.

Linux-the-kernel has not only a stable API, but also a stable ABI, and you can run 20 years old software compiled against that ABI just fine.

The problem is that the userland doesn't give a fuck and breaks itself every other day just for the lulz, starting with the glibc, which doesn't even allow fully static compilation.

So you'll have to use 20 years old versions of everything (but the kernel), which makes running one piece of old software nonviable… but that's hardly the kernel's fault.

[GuB-42]

I would rather say, the kernel-userland interface is stable. I think it is one of the strongest rule regarding the Linux kernel: don't break userland.

In the kernel itself, however, drivers have to be constantly maintained, which is a PITA if your driver is not in the mainline, but very nice if it is, especially if there is someone to do the job of maintaining it for you.

Again, choices are made, you can't have everything. The ones that led to Linux are good, we know that with the power of hindsight, seeing how successful it has became, not because everything about it is positive (it can't).