[Donckele]

I think I have the first or second gen ipad. For some years now the OS and apps are frozen in time. I have basically some old games and the old safari browser.

The old safari is slow and, can you believe it, HN does not fully function!

Now, we all know the hardware is premium and this device would probably run linux very smoothly and the touch interface would be a dream. But we can only dream right?

WTF? Apple won’t allow us to use another OS or open software on old non-supported devices? What a waste of physical material!

What a waste of human creativity! What a waste of my money! What a waste of my time! I don’t give a shit how its enabled the masses to be able to do selfies.

This also mostly applies to android devices as well - which is another shit show.

For fucks sake - its 2023 and occasionally we have HN posts that are announcing how we are getting closer to run linux on the latest macs with the new processors. Holy shit! Even with more access and control to the apple macs we still don’t have full linux capability.

Apple has the best mathematicians to optimise for pure profit and as you can see they have done a great job. Apple 1 - Rest of the world 0.

Woz, please have have a talk with Tim (Nice but dim) and tell him the wonders that can be unlocked by allowing apple devices to run linux natively without jailbreaks or hacks. Don’t give me any shit they can’t do that by next month. Until then I can only dream.

Thank god we have surplus machines (eg thinkpads XNNN) available that show us the light of truth.

[thefz]

> This also mostly applies to android devices as well - which is another shit show.

Totally not true, I am at my second "out of support" device on which I install LineageOS and enjoy current Android. Just unlock the bootloader.

If you are tired of Apple selling basically hardware-as-a-service with strong planned obsolescence, don't buy their products, problem solved.

[kaba0]

So which devices actually support LineageOS, though? The one that wipes its proprietary firmware for the camera, leaving you with one that is orders of magnitude worse than the day you bought it?

This may not matter as much for a tablet, but let’s not give the impression as if the android side of things were better. Especially that that ipad will have insane lifetime. That android tablet may not in the first place.

[Donckele]

Android? Nah. I want my vanilla flavoured linux. Without biscuits.

[jrmg]

The old safari is slow and, can you believe it, HN does not fully function! Now, we all know the hardware is premium and this device would probably run linux very smoothly and the touch interface would be a dream. But we can only dream right?

Safari is not known for being slow.

That machine is _old_. The iPad was released in 2010 - 13 years ago. And even when new it was substantially slower than contemporary PCs or Macs - Apple then was not the CPU powerhouse it is today. It has 256Mb RAM and early (so, slow) NAND flash storage.

I really think you would (or, at least, most people would) be very disappointed at how well it would run Linux now. Things like web browsing and running recent applications, and more ‘HN’ things like coding, would be very sluggish.

[Donckele]

Nah. I have older netbooks (remember them?) and they are still more usable (with linux) than my old ipad.

[scarface_74]

Does your old Netbook have only 256MB of RAM and 500Mhz processor?

[smoldesu]

Because if so, that's enough to run 4 simultaneous instances of Linux!

[scarface_74]

How well will that work with the modern web and modern web browsers?

[smoldesu]

Great! On paper it could handle Apache and NGINX like a charm, your modern web browsers would have no trouble accessing it.

[bunga-bunga]

> Safari is not known for being slow.

Yes it is slow on older hardware. It was slow even back then. You must have forgotten the time it took to paint the rest of the page if you scrolled or zoomed out a liiittle too fast.

Sure this was due to the minuscole amount of RAM Apple ships their product with, but “Safari is slow” is appropriate.

Also “Safari is slow” on my i9 as well, I just need to open a GitHub PR with 10+ files to see it come to a crawl, whereas Chrome never feels it. But hey, its scrolling is buttery smooth even if clicking doesn’t work.

[hospitalJail]

>This also mostly applies to android devices as well - which is another shit show.

What do you mean? I have been using my old androids for a ton of purposes.

Admittedly 2 of them are for my kids who are play video games and watch youtube.

I have one for my kitchen for recipes.

Heck, you just gave me an idea when my wife's phone dies, I can use it for our gym crew to track weights.

[DennisAleynikov]

ah yes, the e-waste conundrum when you run an OS that is completely user hostile

[arcticbull]

A first-gen iPad is 13 years old. How many tablets running a 'user-friendly' OS from 13 years ago do you still think are actually out there, being used? The only old tablets I see are running iOS/iPad OS. Probably because they're built on solid metal and glass skeletons.

While I agree things could be better, Apple also does a commendable job of providing updates and support for devices much longer and much more consistently than their competitors. They are after all incentivized to do so thanks to their cut of App Store revenue.

[sofixa]

The Google Nexus 7 is from 2012, so 11 years ago, and is still perfectly usable with a battery upgrade (possible because it's not glued/soldered) and a custom ROM (possible because the bootloader is open).

[wkat4242]

Hmm I would beg to differ. I have some N7s and they are too slow to even run as a panel for home assistant. Apps have really got much heavier since then.

Of course they are running only a mid-range SoC from 2012 so that makes sense.

[sofixa]

From what I've read, it's mostly a battery issue (the battery is so dead the CPU gets heavily throttled).

[wkat4242]

I don't think so, the battery on one still works fine, and on the other I have replaced the internal battery with a DC-DC converter, so according to the tablet there is a "battery" which works fine and never runs dead :)

I always do this when I use tablets as wall panels, because eventually the battery will bloat and possibly catches fire. This way I can remove the battery altogether. None of the tablets and phones I have tested are capable of even starting up on USB power alone: With a dead battery or removed battery they simply won't even power on.

[__MatrixMan__]

I have a N7 with Ubuntu on it. It's my distraction-free writing box. Runs vim great.

[bunga-bunga]

It’s true, but also it would cost little to unlock the device after they add it to the Vintage category.

I’m sure that the EU will eventually come up with legislation that forces some larger manufactures to open artificial gates automatically after they declare the products “obsolete”

[klausa]

How do you see this being viable without completely compromising the security of people who, for whatever reason, still use those devices?

[melvyn2]

The pixel, for example, already has a secure yet user-unlockable bootloader. So do modern x86_64 PC's. Statements like these, claiming that only apple can properly secure a device (and hence that users deserve to be locked out), simply show astounding ignorance.

[kaba0]

The M-series Macs also have similarly open, but secure bootloaders.

[ChuckNorris89]

>A first-gen iPad is 13 years old. How many tablets running a 'user-friendly' OS from 13 years ago do you still think are actually out there, being used?

How many first gen iPads do you think are still being used. Those were slow as a sloth from their first year and quickly stopped getting support from Appel. Most users gave up on them and upgraded. So yeah, they're also e-waste.

[DennisAleynikov]

just saying they could be better, dual booting support for one.

that would already fix the e-waste complaints

[bloqs]

Tim nice but dim, now thats a quote I havent heard in a while...

[raverbashing]

> hardware is premium and this device would probably run linux very smoothly and the touch interface would be a dream

No, no it wouldnt. Because between Wayland infighting and DE infighting and what not and UX quirks and more blah blah blah it would run like molasses

Just see how well a touchpad works on linux.

[Donckele]

You think with apples human resources they couldn’t write the software to get their hardware to work?

[jiggywiggy]

Okay but now you are expecting them to manage another OS? Im with you on allowing more freedom, but to expect them to maintain linux for tablets?

[Donckele]

Software for hardware components is not like maintaining a linux distro.

I don’t want to ignite programming language wars but, seriously, would it be that hard to get the current software “compatible” with a linux setup?

If it is that hard then fire the software “engineers” and hire ones who will do a better job.

[kaba0]

Yes? Have you ever touched any code or wtf are you talking about? Literally every component’s driver has to be rewritten for a different operating system.

[realusername]

Maybe Linux DEs would work better on touch devices if we could install them in the first place...

Right now you either have niche near-obsolete devices which are unlocked, mainstream locked devices or mainstream unlocked but technically messy.

So why and how to improve something you can't install?

[raverbashing]

> So why and how to improve something you can't install?

They can install it on any x86 laptop and yet it runs worse than windows a lot of times

Sure, drivers play a part, but user-level software is also an issue

[sofixa]

> They can install it on any x86 laptop and yet it runs worse than windows a lot of times

Spoken like someone who hasn't been near a Linux desktop/laptop for more than a decade.

This is flat out false. FFS even gaming has massively advanced to the point where most games just work out of the box with Proton (some even run better than on Windows, like Elden Ring). What issues are there with user-level software outside of certain vendors not porting their software, for which usually there's a FOSS/cross-platform alternative which is usually good enough (of course it can't cover every scenario, but nobody is saying it should).

Some drivers are still shit, but funnily the last one I had issues with is a MediaTek WiFi/BT chip, which also has a shitty driver on Windows..

[raverbashing]

Funnily enough none of this is really news to me (and no it hasn't been more than a decade)

But I always went back to XFCE or Gnome2 because the slowness was palpable (Unity was a very bad OotB experience).

[realusername]

Mainstream distros are absolutely fine on desktop, especially compared to Windows which has been declining a lot since Windows 7 due to Microsoft pushing hard for extra monetization.

I'm using PopOS and it's as good as it gets. I have a few minor I18n complaints because I'm picky on that but Windows is much worse in this area.

[golergka]

For 99% of the users, “human creativity” would mean installing malware.

[beefield]

Hiding the option to allow "human creativity" behind two layers of menu hierarchy would mean 99% of users would never allow it.

[golergka]

Really? Try opening console on Facebook and tell me what prompted them to put that huge disclaimer there.

[camillomiller]

The amount of misconceptions about Apple in this post is staggering. It shows you know nothing about the company and how it operates. Yet, like chatGPT, you wrote it in a convincing enough way, so here you are with a post full of wrong inferences and segues at the top of a comment section. Disheartening.

[max51]

>linux very smoothly and the touch interface would be a dream

linux distros have not yet managed to get proper interface for mouse+keyboard. Linux desktop is still a shitshow. They can't even provide an experience as good as what windows was doing back in the XP era. Even if Apple allowed alternative OS, I doubt linus would be good on it.

[Donckele]

Ha ha. That never gets old.

You know my XFCE is way better than the latest Windows 11 or macOS whatever.

Sure, I don’t have an instagram app that controls my desktop background but I don’t give a shit about that.

[sofixa]

Not only is it pretty good with enormous amounts of flexibility in terms of looks, keyboard combinations, etc. but it's actually better than macOS which is so lauded for it's UX. For one, you can have a different scroll direction between mouse and touchpad; and for two, you can do custom keyboard shortcuts without installing a third party keylogger.

[slow_typist]

Even in the XP era the Linux desktop experience was way better. Windows behaves consistently inconsistent and destroys productivity instead of staying out of my way. Now, in a business environment, add network drives and endpoint protection and see where you end up …

[letrowekwel]

I guess you last tried Linux on desktop in XP era. Choose the right distro and it's perfectly fine, much better than Win 10 / 11 and fairly similar to XP.

[realusername]

There's no issues whatsoever with mouse+keyboard interfaces on mainstream distros nowadays.

I'm using PopOS personally and I encourage you to try it.