5 ms·

I believe I purchased my present desktop in 2010. Perpetual donations to debian and apt update; apt dist-upgrade keep it in tip-top shape. The same cannot be

by ISL 6y ago

I believe I purchased my present desktop in 2010. Perpetual donations to debian and apt update; apt dist-upgrade keep it in tip-top shape. The same cannot be said for a growing drawer of phones/tablets that are no longer supported/updated. (I was glad to see that partial postmarketos support is present for at least some of those devices now. Looking forward to trying that out when I get a chance.)

dehrmann 6y ago
To be fair, x86 Debian will happily run on a Pentium II from 1998.
- akerro 6y ago
  Yes, I still have AMD Duron 800 which runs on Linux
- mrguyorama 6y ago
  "Happily" is a stretch. I ran Damn Small Linux (because puppy actually wouldn't fit) on a 233mhz pentium II, with 32mb of RAM and it was..... semi functional (including allowing the USB 1.0 ports on the motherboard to work!) but multitasking or complex tasks caused it to hard lock up and I was too young and uneducated to diagnose the problems
  - dehrmann 6y ago
    I think my 440BX motherboard supported up to 384 MB of RAM--that would have helped a lot. You can still get PCI SATA controllers for fast swap. You're still capped at 133 MBps because of PCI, but PC100 RAM only runs at 800 MBps, anyway. What's amazing about the PII is it's the oldest "modern" computer in a few ways. USB came out around the same time, and i686 is the oldest x86 architecture still supported by modern distros out-of-the-box. i686 will be 25 years old in November. The fact that it's still supported is incredible.
deelowe 6y ago
Is all of the hardware in that desktop still supported by the vendors? I'd imagine not. Go check the ram compatibility list for the motherboard and see when the newest module was manufactured. This is always the first thing that gets dropped from support.
- ISL 6y ago
  I installed a couple of new sticks of RAM in the Spring. In terms of security updates for motherboards and other hardware, they're very rare. For my phones/tablets, some are literally pinned to ~Android 6, with just oodles of known security holes.
  - fulafel 6y ago
    rowhammer?
qchris 6y ago
Alternatively, depending on your hardware requirements, you might want to consider taking a look at the Mobian (mobile Debian) project. Only the Pinephone is currently supported, but you get things like `apt` instead of `apk` on pmOS, which is based on Alpine Linux. Both are great projects, of course, and I think pmOS is focused on more devices. [1] https://mobian-project.org/ https://mobian-project.org/
rsync 6y ago
"I believe I purchased my present desktop in 2010." My daily driver desktop, from which I do all of the rsync.net CEO things - from terminal to VMWare - is an octo-mac-pro from early 2009. Currently running el-cap. Nothing is ever slow. 11 years and counting ...
ptman 6y ago
Those phones really should be recycled instead of collecting dust. Of course being usable and secure would be the best, but you can't have everything.

by ISL 6y ago

dehrmann 6y ago

To be fair, x86 Debian will happily run on a Pentium II from 1998.

akerro 6y ago
Yes, I still have AMD Duron 800 which runs on Linux
mrguyorama 6y ago
"Happily" is a stretch. I ran Damn Small Linux (because puppy actually wouldn't fit) on a 233mhz pentium II, with 32mb of RAM and it was..... semi functional (including allowing the USB 1.0 ports on the motherboard to work!) but multitasking or complex tasks caused it to hard lock up and I was too young and uneducated to diagnose the problems
- dehrmann 6y ago
  I think my 440BX motherboard supported up to 384 MB of RAM--that would have helped a lot. You can still get PCI SATA controllers for fast swap. You're still capped at 133 MBps because of PCI, but PC100 RAM only runs at 800 MBps, anyway. What's amazing about the PII is it's the oldest "modern" computer in a few ways. USB came out around the same time, and i686 is the oldest x86 architecture still supported by modern distros out-of-the-box. i686 will be 25 years old in November. The fact that it's still supported is incredible.

deelowe 6y ago

Is all of the hardware in that desktop still supported by the vendors? I'd imagine not. Go check the ram compatibility list for the motherboard and see when the newest module was manufactured. This is always the first thing that gets dropped from support.

ISL 6y ago
I installed a couple of new sticks of RAM in the Spring. In terms of security updates for motherboards and other hardware, they're very rare. For my phones/tablets, some are literally pinned to ~Android 6, with just oodles of known security holes.
- fulafel 6y ago
  rowhammer?

qchris 6y ago

Alternatively, depending on your hardware requirements, you might want to consider taking a look at the Mobian (mobile Debian) project. Only the Pinephone is currently supported, but you get things like `apt` instead of `apk` on pmOS, which is based on Alpine Linux. Both are great projects, of course, and I think pmOS is focused on more devices. [1] https://mobian-project.org/ https://mobian-project.org/

rsync 6y ago

"I believe I purchased my present desktop in 2010." My daily driver desktop, from which I do all of the rsync.net CEO things - from terminal to VMWare - is an octo-mac-pro from early 2009. Currently running el-cap. Nothing is ever slow. 11 years and counting ...

ptman 6y ago

Those phones really should be recycled instead of collecting dust. Of course being usable and secure would be the best, but you can't have everything.