4 ms·

My favorite is Geos for the Commodore 64: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEOS_(8-bit_operating_system) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEOS_(8-bit_operating_s

by api 4y ago

My favorite is Geos for the Commodore 64: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEOS_(8-bit_operating_system) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEOS_(8-bit_operating_system... Obviously there were huge limitations but it shows what can be done. This fit on one 170K floppy and ran on a 1.44mhz 8 bit machine with 64K of RAM. In the 1990s I ran both Linux and Windows on less than 64M of RAM with IDEs, web browsers, games, and more. If I had to guess what were possible today I’d fall back on the fairly reliable 80/20 rule and posit that 20% of todays bloat is intrinsic to increases in capability and 80% is incidental complexity and waste.

weinzierl 4y ago
For me also the Commodore came to mind. It had 64K RAM and a 64K address range, because other things had to fit in there not all RAM was usable at the same time. Clock frequency of the PAL model was 985kHz (yes KILO), so not even a full MHz. Yet, I could do * word processing * desktop publishing * working with scanned documents * spreadsheets * graphics * digital painting * music production * gaming (even chess) * programming (besides BASIC and ASM I had a Pascal compiler) * CAD and 3D design (Giga CAD [1], fascinated me to no end) * Video creation [2] For all this tasks there were standalone applications [3] with their own GUI [4]. GEOS was an integrated GUI environment with its own applications and way ahead of its times [5]. It still blows my mind how all this could work. My first Linux ran on a 386DX with 4M of RAM, but this probably as low as on can get. Even the installer choked on that little RAM and one had to create a swap partition and swapon manually after booting but before the installer ran. In text mode it was pretty usable though, X11 worked and I remember having GNU chess runnning, but it was quite slow. [1] https://youtu.be/ZEf9XMrc5u8 https://youtu.be/ZEf9XMrc5u8 [2] OK, this one is a bit of a stretch but there actually was Videofox for creating video titles and shopping window animations: https://www.pagetable.com/docs/scanntronik_manuals/videofox.pdf https://www.pagetable.com/docs/scanntronik_manuals/videofox.... [3] Some came on extension modules which saved RAM or brought a bit of extra RAM, but we are still talking kilobytes. For examples see https://www.pagetable.com/?p=1730 https://www.pagetable.com/?p=1730 [4] Or sort of TUI if you like; the strict separation of text and graphics mode wasn't a thing in the home computer era. [5] The standalone apps were still better. So, as advanced GEOS was, I believe it was not used productively much.
- nine_k 4y ago
  Sure, Commodore could do all that! But if you had to use that software now, you'd say (justly) that it's extremely basic and limited, and that interoperability with other systems is not great. What can be done ≠ what's comfortable to use.
  - api 4y ago
    That doesn’t account for the sheer monstrosity of modern software. You don’t need gigabytes of RAM for those things.
    - brewdad 4y ago
      The state of things would seem to suggest otherwise.
  - weinzierl 4y ago
    Fully agreed. When I tried my old Commodore a while ago I couldn't stand the 50Hz screen flicker for long. Unbelievable that back in the day I spent hours on hours in front of that stroboscope. For me it's more about the excitement that the bright future lay ahead of us so clearly mixed with a slight disappointment that I sometimes feel we could have made more out of it.
alpaca128 4y ago
To me the most impressive recent example is a video editor developed for Haiku OS [0]. It fits on a 1.44MB floppy disk. [0] https://github.com/smallstepforman/Medo https://github.com/smallstepforman/Medo

by api 4y ago

weinzierl 4y ago

For me also the Commodore came to mind. It had 64K RAM and a 64K address range, because other things had to fit in there not all RAM was usable at the same time. Clock frequency of the PAL model was 985kHz (yes KILO), so not even a full MHz. Yet, I could do * word processing * desktop publishing * working with scanned documents * spreadsheets * graphics * digital painting * music production * gaming (even chess) * programming (besides BASIC and ASM I had a Pascal compiler) * CAD and 3D design (Giga CAD [1], fascinated me to no end) * Video creation [2] For all this tasks there were standalone applications [3] with their own GUI [4]. GEOS was an integrated GUI environment with its own applications and way ahead of its times [5]. It still blows my mind how all this could work. My first Linux ran on a 386DX with 4M of RAM, but this probably as low as on can get. Even the installer choked on that little RAM and one had to create a swap partition and swapon manually after booting but before the installer ran. In text mode it was pretty usable though, X11 worked and I remember having GNU chess runnning, but it was quite slow. [1] https://youtu.be/ZEf9XMrc5u8 https://youtu.be/ZEf9XMrc5u8 [2] OK, this one is a bit of a stretch but there actually was Videofox for creating video titles and shopping window animations: https://www.pagetable.com/docs/scanntronik_manuals/videofox.pdf https://www.pagetable.com/docs/scanntronik_manuals/videofox.... [3] Some came on extension modules which saved RAM or brought a bit of extra RAM, but we are still talking kilobytes. For examples see https://www.pagetable.com/?p=1730 https://www.pagetable.com/?p=1730 [4] Or sort of TUI if you like; the strict separation of text and graphics mode wasn't a thing in the home computer era. [5] The standalone apps were still better. So, as advanced GEOS was, I believe it was not used productively much.

nine_k 4y ago
Sure, Commodore could do all that! But if you had to use that software now, you'd say (justly) that it's extremely basic and limited, and that interoperability with other systems is not great. What can be done ≠ what's comfortable to use.
- api 4y ago
  That doesn’t account for the sheer monstrosity of modern software. You don’t need gigabytes of RAM for those things.
  - brewdad 4y ago
    The state of things would seem to suggest otherwise.
- weinzierl 4y ago
  Fully agreed. When I tried my old Commodore a while ago I couldn't stand the 50Hz screen flicker for long. Unbelievable that back in the day I spent hours on hours in front of that stroboscope. For me it's more about the excitement that the bright future lay ahead of us so clearly mixed with a slight disappointment that I sometimes feel we could have made more out of it.

alpaca128 4y ago

To me the most impressive recent example is a video editor developed for Haiku OS [0]. It fits on a 1.44MB floppy disk. [0] https://github.com/smallstepforman/Medo https://github.com/smallstepforman/Medo