25 ms·

If you're happy with OpenBSD, probably any computer is good enough

417 points by BizarreByte 4y ago

AprilArcus 4y ago
Would love know more about the "dire state" of ppc32 linux
- goosedragons 4y ago
  No big distro supports it and I can only think of one that still does (Adelie). Modern web browsers won't easily compile for it, probably other packages. And soon support for GPUs like the ATI Rage commonly used in 1998-2001ish era Macs will be removed from the kernel.
  - zozbot234 4y ago
    Isn't there an unofficial Debian port? Stuff can be added back to the kernel if people commit to maintain it and keep it in line with the evolving code base.
  - ndesaulniers 4y ago
    We still do ppc32 kernel build+boot tests in CI. Wonder if we should consider spinning those down...
- UncleSlacky 4y ago
  MintPPC is quite good (or was last time I tried it): http://mintppc.nl http://mintppc.nl
amelius 4y ago
> While I fully acknowledge there's a lot you can't do on a system like this (Docker, anything GPU related) it's still able to do a lot of productive work without feeling like a total dog to use. This, of course, is becoming less and less true.
- anthk 4y ago
  How so? Celeron, 2GB of RAM, ~4GB with compressed ZRAM. Libreoffice works, most stuff works with GL 2.1, even 720p video with MPV. LibreOffice, Ted, Abiword, GNUMeric... For the rest, UBlock Origin it's your friend and git://bitreich.org/privacy-haters to cut in half the realistical Chromium requeriments.
  - hochmartinez 4y ago
    ... Add Linux with a 6.1 kernel with MGLRU, enable ext4 fast_commit, stop unnecessary services. Switch Chrome by Brave. Add a tab suspender. If you have 4GB or more, set the browser cache to RAM (a tmpfs directory). You'll be surprised of how speedy and usable is your old Celeron computer. And this CPU is very power efficient, so no heat and no fan. Silence. My 2016 Lenovo laptop was almost unusable with windows 10 and its myriad of processes hogging the CPU. Manjaro Linux brought this little laptop to life and now it's my daily driver, more than enough for my needs (browsing, coding).
    - anthk 4y ago
      Avoid brave. It' s spyware. If any, Chromium-Ungoogle with the settings from: git clone git://bitreich.org/privacy-haters Copy the file in the chromium subdir to /etc/profile.d/chromium.sh. Chmod +x it. Change CHROMIUM_FLAGS to UNGOOGLED_CHROMIUM_FLAGS or whatever flag shows up in /usr/bin/ungoogled-chromium script. That and UBlock Origin with the country specific ad blocking rules will cut down a good bunch of crap.
      - GeorgeWBasic 4y ago
        Bullshit, it's not spyware. It seems it's no longer possible to discuss it here without the trolls coming out.
        anthk 4y ago
        https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/brave https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/brave Whatever. The GitHub repo I posted has sane defaults for both Chromium based browsers (adapt the environment variable for the custom fork, you have it at /usr/bin/chrom file) and Mozilla under *Nix. If something "clean" as Mozilla has a good chunk to be tweaked, just imagine the amount of telemetry Brave has. I lived the 90's and 00's in computing. I pretty surely know the spyware and adware terms. And Brave it's spyware, period.
abricot 4y ago
If you are happy not surfing most of the Web, any computer is good enough. It's usually browsers and web pages that brings these older PCs down.
- caycep 4y ago
  I remember the first time I saw it, "we have to run it on a Sun workstation or else..."
- sourcecodeplz 4y ago
  I've heard there's quite the group here on HN that browse the web on CLI browsers.
  - canadianfella 4y ago
    [dead]
  - mjhay 4y ago
    It's not something that's remotely practical on most modern sites. I hate everything new as well, but at some point it's easier to just suck it up and face the hell that is the modern internet.
    - prmoustache 4y ago
      The thing is w3m really filter yourself out of the shitty web. Most interesting websites are quite readable on w3m. The ones that aren't are usually the worst ones or thoses that provide an api for which better gui and tui clients exist.
    - bandrami 4y ago
      When I'm on lynx I find I don't miss the rest of the Web. Reading documents without people constantly trying to sell me crap is kind of refreshing.
      - nortonham 4y ago
pdimitar 4y ago
The problem with arguments like these is to me two-fold: 1. Physical space. Most of the older tech takes too much space. I don't live in a mansion and I have no dedicated rooms just for big bulky computers. 2. Power consumption, heat, noise. I would love to be less consumerist and use stuff from 15 years ago and stop feeding greedy corporations but... the old stuff consumes 90 to 200 watts, heats up easily and noticeably, and can get loud. Both parts of this problem are trivially solved by modern tech. I got a 13" Chinese fanless laptop second hand for 160 euro; it has a Celeron J CPU with 12GB RAM and 256GB SATA SSD. It can do anything I need that's not programming or rendering -- including playing 60FPS video -- and last time I checked it, it consumed 30W under full load (all CPU cores at 100%) and idled at 11W or so. Modern tech is not only about its buyers being mindless consumerist drones. It offers tangible benefits, including long-term environmental sustainability. Yes a lot of CO2 was likely released due to its production but I'd wager that tech that heats up less and uses less power can last 10-13 years and will pay off its environmental footprint with a generous interest on top. So unless you're a retro collector or want to write compilers for older CPUs, there are zero reasons to be excited about older computers. (That being said, if somebody finally creates a modern 6502 CPU computer e.g. in the shape of a 10" netbook I'll buy it immediately, provided I can also program it through USB from my workstation.)
- doublepg23 4y ago
  I think there’s something to be said for the fundamentals of modern computers too. A 4K screen, excellent keyboard, blazing fast NVMe, etc are all attainable on a budget now with CPUs using less power, as you said.
- deleted 4y ago
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- deleted 4y ago
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- hedora 4y ago
  This. The thing I dislike the most about openbsd is the lack of modern, supported hardware. One notable exception is the PC Engines APU 2, though that’s stretching the definition of modern. Seriously: Pick a laptop SKU that is still being manufactured and has similar ergonomics to a MacBook Pro or classic thinkpad (centered keyboard + trackpad, 4K screen, all the other bits in the right spots, reasonably quiet, 8 hour real world battery), and mark it up by $200. Sell it from a site that OpenBSD links to. Make sure the manufacturer agrees to build that exact laptop for at least 5 years. (Moore’s law is dead, after all.) Have the project test 100% of the hardware devices in that laptop on each point release, and donate the $200 markup to the project.
anthk 4y ago
The blog's author might like this dillo fork. It needs autoconf, automake, gmake, mbedtls and ftlk. https://github.com/w00fpack/dilloNG https://github.com/w00fpack/dilloNG Mpv it's recommended, at it has a context menu to play videos with it and the help of youtube-dl or yt-dlp. A config for it: ~/.config/mpv/config ytdl-format="bestvideo[height<=?420]+bestaudio[height<=?420]" vo=xv,drm audio-pitch-correction=no quiet=yes pause=no vd-lavc-skiploopfilter=all Also, for X.Org, you can set the config for the ATI driver so it loads the DRI2 drivers among the EXA rendering module. /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-ati.conf Section "Device" Identifier "ati" Driver "ati" Option "AccelMethod" "EXA" Option "DRI" "2" EndSection
- steponlego 4y ago
  Any advice on how to get Intel 855 working with Mesa? X.org had an update and they removed or deprecated the engine it used. Thanks.
  - anthk 4y ago
    Which distro? Parabola and Arch Linux have the mesa-amber package, which enables OpenGL for legeacy chipsets.
    - steponlego 4y ago
      OpenBSD, I will look in to this package though. Maybe I can get it running from source.
      - anthk 4y ago
        Sorry, but that's futile entire X.org and drivers are bundled under the Xenocara brand in base. If you don't have it, consider it lost forever. If any, you can set machdep.allowaperture=2 in /etc/sysctl.conf Also, /etc/fbtab needs some settings for MESA, too. Basically you need to set read write the files under /dev/dri* with fbtab from /dev/ttyC5 if I can recall it well. EDIT: typo fix in /etc/sysctl.conf
doublepg23 4y ago
I have plenty of criticisms of OpenBSD but that wide array of support is why I end up running it on hobby systems. I’ve got a Lemote netbook (which uses a homegrown Chinese MIPS chip) and a PPC Mac of similar vintage in the post. It is really cool to boot up these oddball systems and use familiar programs on them.
squarefoot 4y ago
I totally understand the nostalgia value, but energy doesn't grow on trees. A small mini-PC would consume a fraction of the current needed to run those old machines, offering much more computing power in return. Not to talk about the much better scaling achieved by modern processors; some iMac models would idle at almost 100 Watts.
- BizarreByte 4y ago
  I’m not suggesting one should use a setup like this daily, mostly commenting on how good the experience still is when running *BSD on it. At the end of the day if all you need is a computer, it’s nice to know that basically any computer can still be serviceable. In a world where you can get 4k series i5s in the trash though, I don’t actually think anyone will be using such an old Mac seriously.
  - ornornor 4y ago
    Seriously, you should see the hardware companies are throwing away right now… i5/7 6xxx computers and up… what a waste. They’re fully functional but they’ve been amortized so thrown away to the landfill and replaced with todays model to be thrown away in 3–4 years. What an incredible waste.
    - amatecha 4y ago
      Ohh.. I've always wondered how to get my hands on this "garbage". The machine I use every day is from like 2013... the fastest PC I own has a processor that was launched in 2014. It's partly because I'm frugal and partly because I don't believe in constantly replacing hardware that works just fine. But it sounds like by this point companies are throwing away stuff far newer than what I use! haha
      - voltagex_ 4y ago
        Depending on where you are, there'll either be local auctions of surplus tech, or eBay / refurbishing stores selling these kinds of things. I always went for Dell Optiplex, but there are HP and Lenovo equivalents too
nativecoinc 4y ago
I mostly use my work computer in my free time. The ultimate test: can you develop Java on it? (In practice, not in principle.)
- gorky1 4y ago
  Intellij Idea on Linux runs surprisingly well on 15 year old T400 Thinkpads. It's actually pleasant to use for small hobby Java projects.
tambourine_man 4y ago
Something that aged poorly are browsers. Can you run contemporary Chromium, Firefox, WebKit decently on a 800mhz G4? And I doubt it could handle more than a few open tabs with 512MB of RAM. Most everything else I use computers for have been fast enough for 20 years or so.
- deleted 4y ago
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- meindnoch 4y ago
  The proliferation of browser-based crap was a godsend for hardware manufacturers.
- thedriver 4y ago
  Even something like Debian with the Mate DE can be pretty lightweight. Modern web crap is really the biggest resource hog for most users.
- prmoustache 4y ago
  Netsurf works well on low spec and render most pages well enough. Also, switching to lite or mobile versions of websites when they exist render them much lighter and more readable.
- adrianmsmith 4y ago
  Last time I used a computer with 1GB RAM was in 2014, with 32-bit Windows XP. The computer had 512MB in use after startup and could only handle 2-3 tabs in the Chrome of the time, everything (e.g. Gmail at the time) seemed to use about 100MB. So 2014 Chrome with webapps like 2014 Gmail wasn't really practical on 1GB. So I very much doubt that 2023 Chrome with 2023 webapps would be practical on 512MB RAM.
- amatecha 4y ago
  Yeah, I was running Firefox on my iMac G4 with OpenBSD. It was being killed frequently though by hitting the memory limit (which at the time I didn't know how to raise). I'm intending to go back and try again with my deeper knowledge of the OS. I have MANY old machines which could benefit from having a latest-features OS to use.
johnklos 4y ago
There are lots of people in the comments here who appear to not get it. This isn't about replacing a contemporary computer with something old. It's about the usability of a decent OS on very modest hardware. One of the systems on which I run NetBSD is a 33 MHz m68030 Mac LC III+ (http://elsie.zia.io http://elsie.zia.io - it's hosting a site about an LC II, which I'm still working on). It's quite useful to see how assumptions people make about "acceptable" performance regressions bear out in the real world. Sure, not much can be done about taking six or seven minutes to ssh, but when bad coding causes a shell script to take twice as long, it's much more obvious on hardware like this than on a modern Ryzen system. Nobody is telling others to forego your modern computer and your Windows needs. It's just interesting to some of us that we can still run modern things on very modest and, in some cases, very non-mainstream hardware in 2023.
- BizarreByte 4y ago
  Thank you for getting it, this was my entire point and I’m glad it came across to someone. Obviously I would never suggest someone replace their modern daily driver computer with one of this age.
- deleted 4y ago
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- mro_name 4y ago
  indeed, developing fast software requires slow hardware.
  - flenserboy 4y ago
    Excellent point. Software testing (not for stability but instead for usability, and certainly not for compiling, lol) ought to be done on minimal-spec systems (the specs of which might possibly be dialed-down further once optimization is done, which would be a bonus). Assuming that a faster system (or one with more RAM or storage) will cure the real problem has allowed all sorts of sloppiness to creep into software.
    - 4y ago
AstixAndBelix 4y ago
When I really think about the kinds of things I find essential in a computer, almost everything could be achieved with a TUI or a very light GUI. Unfortunately, the problem of proprietary software and APIs is always around the corner. I can use a TUI client for Telegram, but I can't if I want to message someone on Facebook. I can use a simple newsreader for blogs, but I can't for my friends' Instagram posts. I could honestly scrap by with a 20yo computer if the world was more open sourced. Such a shame
- ciupicri 4y ago
  What Telegram client are you using?
c-smile 4y ago
> computer e.g. in the shape of a 10" netbook I'll buy it immediately Haven't tried OpenBSD but Windows 11 works quite well Samsung Galaxy Book 2 (ARM): https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/26/18024696/samsung-galaxy-book-2-tablet-laptop-review-specs-price-features https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/26/18024696/samsung-galaxy-... It has superb monitor, touchpad, touchscreen, pen and detachable keyboard. I am running Visual Studio 2022 on it to build Sciter - quite convenient to test and debug handling of those input devices. It is really quite good machine for mobile use. You can buy second hand Samsung Galaxy Book 2 for ~200-300 USD
jamesgill 4y ago
A side note: I love this website. It makes me nostalgic for the early-mid 90s when web pages were basic, personal, and mostly text.
- shp0ngle 4y ago
  I tried to get into Gemini for a while - it’s like Gopher but reimagined with some more modern ideas. However I quickly figured out there is not much to actually do there. The way modern web works is horrible (I don’t want to click just another cookie banner thanks), but at least it’s easy for all people to contribute.
  - bandrami 4y ago
    "It's a brave new world! Everyone can publish! No need for gatekeepers!" (a few months later) "Why is everything such unmitigated crap?"
    - anthk 4y ago
      gemini://medusae.space has gems.
  - dangus 4y ago
    Just use an ad blocker to block cookie banners. Annoyances list built-in to uBlock Origin should work.
zozbot234 4y ago
There's not much that's specific to OpenBSD wrt. this post, or to the G4. The RAM use (61MiB) is roughly in line with a super lightweight Linux install for any 32 bit system (requirements for a modern 64 bit system tend to be higher). So any computer really is good enough if it fits your end use, otherwise it's no good.
- bandrami 4y ago
  Dealing with some hardware is a lot easier on OpenBSD, at least for me. I spent the better part of a day on Debian trying to get ofono and connman to play well together after network-manager and modemmanager (side note: really?) failed to get my LTE modem to connect. In OpenBSD it was just ifconfig umb0 apn hutch up
  - anthk 4y ago
    No dhclient :D?
    - bandrami 4y ago
      Not for a 3G/LTE modem, no; the IP configuration is part of the carrier discipline.
irusensei 4y ago
I wish it had something like jails/lxc and a modern file system like ZFS or BTRFS.
- steponlego 4y ago
  They recently upgraded FFS for 64-bit. I think they have the right philosophy, these FS's you mention are FAAATTTTT and would probably at least double to size of the tree. You can always set up a NAS with ZFS and simply use it with NFS.
syntex 4y ago
The power usage is a serious issue, I recently scrapped an old PC. It was perfectly fine and usable, but I found it draws with graphics card more than 200W. And taking into account how much electricity rose in Europe it's super expensive to run. And the new one it's 15 times less. So let's take care at least a bit about the environment.
- doubled112 4y ago
  > take care at least a bit about the environment I always take time to consider where the balance point is between replacing working, but less efficient equipment with newer, more efficient equipment. It took materials and energy to produce the old one. I know electricity is expensive some places, but even then, sometimes the break even point is years in the future. Despite all of this, I only realize its more complicated than I hope.
- ibz 4y ago
  > let's take care at least a bit about the environment You know that producing that PC used way more energy than it would consume if you left it running? > taking into account how much electricity rose in Europe This seems like your main reason actually. Your wallet, not the environment. If the energy prices went down, you would have kept the old PC around rather than having it end up in a landfill or shipped to a poor country where people literally burn the PCBs to recover tiny bits of rare metals.
  - tux2bsd 4y ago
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- sgt 4y ago
  I think your priorities are a bit off. If you want to help the environment, look at your other habits first that have impacts that are orders of magnitude more. Flying, driving, plastic, food, etc
Glyptodon 4y ago
The sad thing that trips me up is that I can easily run out of memory web browsing on most machines w/ less than 16gb just by forgetting to close tabs. But my desktop is has a CPU from over a decade ago and I don't really foresee needing a new one soon.
steponlego 4y ago
Typing this on my T420 running OpenBSD. It does everything I really need it to do. I don't play (new) games, and I have a more powerful server tucked away here in case I have any CPU-intensive jobs I need done. Honestly after seeing the absolute state of Linux on the desktop over the last decade, there is no reason for me to even consider it any more.
- arcanemachiner 4y ago
  > Honestly after seeing the absolute state of Linux on the desktop over the last decade, there is no reason for me to even consider it any more. What is wrong with Linux on the desktop, and how is OpenBSD better?
  - ibz 4y ago
    Can't comment for all aspects of a Linux desktop versus an OpenBSD desktop, but one example that comes to mind is the sound system. Just try reading the design paper of sndio [1]. It is a pure joy to read. A beautiful architecture. Now compare that with ALSA / PulseAudio / JACK / PipeWire... The audio system in Linux is fragmented and incomprehensible. [1] https://www.openbsd.org/papers/asiabsdcon2010_sndio.pdf https://www.openbsd.org/papers/asiabsdcon2010_sndio.pdf
    - arcanemachiner 4y ago
      Thanks for the perspective. Audio in Linux can definitely be _ahem_ somewhat flaky.
  - steponlego 4y ago
    [dead]
verytrivial 4y ago
I love the idea of OpenBSD but have only had a couple of sad reintroductions over the years and never spent the time apparently required to "get it just right" before needing to get something else done. It feels like a base install leaves you in several hours of configuration debt, and I apparently don't have the concentration span to dig my way out to somewhere interesting and not just half way back to productive on the systems I already use. My newest computer is from 2014 for reference, oldest from around 2008 and I emulate older stuff. I know I'm "doing it wrong" and perhaps it isn't a right fit for everyone but ... That's how it is.
- gnubison 4y ago
  What configuration debt does OpenBSD bring to your mind?
  - jnye131 4y ago
    The ability to plug and unplug external monitors.
- toyg 4y ago
  I have a love-hate relationship with OpenBSD but I don't feel this "configuration debt". The whole point of it is that you don't enable stuff you don't really need; and if you really need something, then you should make the effort to actually understand what it does and how to configure it. For this same reason, it's simply a poor desktop OS. A modern UNIX-like desktop is a very complex system, with so many moving parts held together with hacks and duct tape. As OpenBSD effectively forces you to familiarise yourself with such duct tape solutions, it also forces you to do more work than you'd want - or to stick with environments that feel somewhat basic.
- nortonham 4y ago
  What did you need to configure before being able to be productive?
hamstrunghuman 4y ago
I couldn't agree more. I've been using OpenBSD on a RaspberryPi 4 B for the past few months as a nginx, uwsgi, dnsmasq, ftp (for 4x security cameras) and squid proxy server for the past few months. This replaced a debian install that keep annoying me with it's systemd/networkmanager crap. Not only am I impressed with the performance, the simplicity and confidence I get in it's security is a breath of fresh air.
deleted 4y ago
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gorgoiler 4y ago
That’s a fine piece of hardware and a fine OS to run on it. I would feel a bit hampered without a good browser though. So much of my work involves trawling GitHub for bug reports and stack overflow for bug mitigations. Very little modern software development, for me at least, happens in isolation. There’s a third-party dependency or two in almost everything I do. I try to use w3m a lot for that stuff. Many sites still have a cheeseburger menu made out of a tree of <ul> lists up the top of the page, and require CSS indentation or borders to render discussions nicely. Are there terminal browsers that support these features better?
zokier 4y ago
On PC side something like 2004-2005 vintage desktop wouldn't necessarily be all that impractical to use even today. I'm basing this on Anands "buyers guide" to get a feeling what the general lineup was like then: https://www.anandtech.com/show/1692/11 https://www.anandtech.com/show/1692/11 You got 64-bit CPU, SATA HDD, PCIe graphics with OpenGL 2, USB 2.0 connectors, and DVI flat panel display. Its something I'd expect you can just throw Debian Stable in and be perfectly usable with lightweight WM, or maybe even something like XFCE for full graphical desktop. Of course as others have mentioned, browser is the real problem, but 1GB might be enough to browse HN at least?
harel 4y ago
You're only using 61 MB of your 512 MB RAM. Megabyte. I love it. Megabyte. I distinctly remember the happiness of attaching a 512KB RAM expansion card to my Amiga, bringing total RAM to 1MB. You have 512 of those!
- contravariant 4y ago
  I still think it's wild how much data can fit on a microSD nowadays. People would think you were crazy if you told them just a few decades ago.
  - harel 4y ago
    it's more than wild man. It's magical! Just yesterday or the day before my 700KB or so Amiga floppy seemed like it would last forever...
    - ezconnect 4y ago
      We now have 1TB microSD cards.
      - harel 4y ago
        I still finding it hard to trust 1TB worth of important data stored in that medium. I'm half joking but still, only half joking. The other half is dead serious.
        alwayslikethis 4y ago
        You're right. SD lacks things like overprovisioning and wear leveling that would reduce failure rates. It's also rather slow to read/write from. On another note, it's incredibly easy to lose them.
        bharathyes 4y ago
        It is always a bad idea to store any amount of important data on a single medium. Seen too many (including myself at some point) have all their data in one external HDD and pass it around friends with a caution to be safe with their data. I've lost most of my photo and video collection due to two HDD failures between 2017-2020.
cassepipe 4y ago
Fourth generation Intel i5 laptop from around 2013 is still kicking hard provided enough Ram (8Go or 16Go depending on your needs) and a SSD. Not "usable (but read the fine print)". Comfortable to use (running Linux at least). IMac G5 from 2004 on the contrary? Too heavy, too hot, two slow (single thread cpu doesn't cut it) Late 2007 Intel core 2 duo? RAM maxes out at 4Go but surprisingly usable. Not comfortable but usable. That should give you an idea of where to set your expectations. I do recommend buying second hand but I wouldn't go under 2012 for a daily driver personally, for peace of mind.
ellyagg 4y ago
> Because frankly the iMac wasn't really useful in a modern or a retro sense, though I expect some will debate its retro merits. Can it run OS 9 natively? The earliest iMac G4 could, I've heard. I bought a Mac G4 a couple years ago so I could have the most powerful computer that runs Mac OS 9 natively which then enables me to run Symantec's MORE. MORE is this ancient, super dope outliner editor, which is just so fast and ergonomic at the keyboard. It's go all these features that have never really been replicated since, like cascading styles and presentation mode. https://tidbits.com/1993/10/18/more-more-dinosaur/ https://tidbits.com/1993/10/18/more-more-dinosaur/ I use Workflowy, which I love, but I kind of want to play with porting MORE's UI to the web and see if it could perform.
- BizarreByte 4y ago
  It can run OS 9, but it’s not amazing. I tried and it was relatively unstable even for OS 9 and I could never pin down why.
- cellularmitosis 4y ago
  > the iMac wasn't really useful in a modern or a retro sense I've been trying to fight that a bit myself: https://github.com/cellularmitosis/leopard.sh https://github.com/cellularmitosis/leopard.sh
sgtnoodle 4y ago
This week I've been "rejuvenating" my 11 year old i7 2600k desktop. I built a zen 3 based computer a couple years ago, purely as a luxury, after spending 5 days in the hospital ICU. The i7 was chugging along just fine doing whatever I needed it to do, and it seemed a waste to just forget about it. I fully disassembled it and cleaned out the dust. I spent an evening lapping the CPU and heat sink down to 2000 grit. I put it in a new case, as the old one's front panel fell off. I installed my old GTX 970 GPU, which seems like a perfect pairing. Maybe I'll gift it to a young nephew, or maybe I'll set it to easily boot up into a mentally stimulating game for my 4 year old daughter. Her knowledge of computer games right now is beamng.drive and tux racer!
- serf 4y ago
  The worst part isn't that the old hardware isn't worthwhile; it's that it has to be hobbled so much in order to be secure on todays' net. Things like Spectre created a lot of additional obsolescence.
  - Sunspark 4y ago
    I think you can still be secure on the net with the Spectre and Meltdown mitigations disabled on a personal system. If your browser is current, it already has mitigations built into it. Are there any mathematical calculations showing the risk % of disabling mitigations? Or is this just herd activity where everyone sets it as a default because they don't want to accept the liability for the remote chance of lightning striking?
    - dijit 4y ago
      This is dangerous, and maybe not in the way you expect. Personal systems are running a lot more untrusted code than, for example, servers. Mitigations are more necessary on personal computers than on servers. As for "it's mitigated in the browser", the issue is that there's no "one" mitigation for anything, you have to mitigate it on the OS, in the browser, in the microcode for the CPU. Everything. You can't just apply one mitigation and be done. FWIW the "mitigation" in browsers was to disable high precision timers; which seems to be making its way back, and was never necessary, it just made the exploit easier. I highly recommend keeping mitigations enabled for personal machines; when it comes to servers with a decent WAF that are not shared amongst users that can run code: disabling mitigations makes more sense. (dedicated databases, for example). Someone described the mitigations as: "Surrounding a drunk person with trampolines in the hope that when they collapse they will be corrected into the right position", I think this is the most apt example I can think of. For personal systems that run a lot of untrusted code (due mostly to the web): I wouldn't personally advocate for removing a trampoline.
tux2bsd 4y ago
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emodendroket 4y ago
What I found is that you can get an old computer to work great with an old OS right up until you open the Web browser and start visiting Web sites.
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  You can get an old computer to work great with an old OS right up until you ... open the inner OS
- hulitu 4y ago
  Not only an old OS. An older web browser has the same issues. I think we need to come back to gopher and ftp because http is a rolling target. But we are https (s comes from encription).
  - emodendroket 4y ago
    I actually meant a lightweight OS but I guess the parallel construction was so tempting I wrote the wrong thing. Everything seems great until you ask the computer to render the modern Web.
  - anthk 4y ago
    Windows 9x/2x/XP users have RetroZilla as a libre browser. Mac 8-9 users have Classilla. Linux users can compile gcc 4.x and pkgsrc just fine on any > 2001 distro.
- NovaPenguin 4y ago
  There are some hacky ways of getting a little distance on modern OS's, like using terminal based browsers. I'm thinking Links/Elinks but that will only get you so far and so long as the security certificates are available.
  - genidoi 4y ago
    Carbonyl runs pretty well (YouTube videos / WASM powered apps like figma et al) https://github.com/fathyb/carbonyl https://github.com/fathyb/carbonyl
NovaPenguin 4y ago
"How much computing power do I really need on a day to day basis?" I guess this is a kind of Computational Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Basic needs can be covered by the vast majority of computer hardware. But once you get to large scale web browsing and gaming - more complex hardware is required. The difference between a hermit living content in a cave and a billionaire in a 42 bed room mansion. Both could be happy but it really depends on their perspective.
real_queil 4y ago
I think MorphOS should run on it too https://www.morphos-team.net/hardware https://www.morphos-team.net/hardware
ArcMex 4y ago
Dell Optiplex 3020 w/ i5 but running FreeBSD to build prototypes. Runs alright. I have used OpenBSD on a Pentium box for similar projects before and the support was good too. So *BSDs are now among my considerations when it comes to get usage out older machines.
cranium 4y ago
Speaking of good enough computers, I'm really happy with the power of mobile processors right now. With my usage (dev, some Docker, browsing, on a light Manjaro+i3), I can shop for form factor and utility and know it won't feel sluggish. Replaced my 2017 15" Dell workstation with a 8" GPD Pocket 3 that feels more snappy and sharper. I thought it would be my couch/on-the-go/emergency computer but it became my mobile workstation as well. Only grip with the form factor: it's too small to fit on both laps so I have to use my bag to have a "laptop".
snazz01 4y ago
The only reason it was a screamer back then and a dog now is that software is much more shit today.
1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago
Kinda sad that the top comment is something about a web browser. There's much more to computers and the internet than web browsers. I use links text-only browser coupled with stunnel or haproxy for TLS. Unlike the "tech" company browsers, this software compiles quickly and easily, it's relatively small and it works great on older computers. Here is what no one is mentioning. Currently, 90% of the world's most advanaced chips are made by one manufacturer, TSMC. If something hapens to TSMC, then the ability to utilise older chips and older computers is going to become relevant. Personally, I think "modern" web browsers suck for using the web recreationally, e.g., visiting random websites, i.e., usage that is not banking, shopping or other commercially-related activity. However, when applied to local files, these "browsers" can be useful as PDF readers, audio and video players. Whether older computers can handle today's media files is left as a question for the reader. Reading websites is easy without a big, bloated "tech" company browser. Using a text-only browser on a daily basis, I have been doing this for decades.
- lannisterstark 4y ago
  >There's much more to computers and the internet than web browsers. For most common people, is there really?
- piva00 4y ago
  If something happens to TSMC there will be a global effort to lift all that knowledge back into stable, developed countries to continue production as fast as humanly possible. Just like the lifting of Nazi rocket scientists, it's a technology that is directly intertwined with the existence of contemporary advanced economies/societies, if TSMC ceases to exist there will be a concerted effort from major economies to re-gain that knowledge. Right now it's just too expensive to do it instead of outsourcing it, the moment it becomes an existential threat it won't be relatively that expensive anymore. I don't think old computers as such will ever be relevant as you envision, if it happens it will be a blip during a gap of 3-5 years until production restarts somewhere else.
  - JohnFen 4y ago
    > 3-5 years until production restarts somewhere else. If you're talking about production of modern chips here, it will take a lot longer than 3-5 years.
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rubin55 4y ago
Can relate, a while ago (around 2016) we bought 7 second-hand dual opteron 8439 (12 cores! no ht) desktops with 64GiB of ram in them, added pcie nvme adapter, for about ~850 EUR (including 21% vat) a piece. We have been using those systems since then and they are really amazing performers (linux and bsd, many java apps, jetbrains IDEs, etc). This is totally because of how efficient and minimal modern Linux and BSD distros can be, by the way - even with modern desktop environment like Gnome 43! Only downside is the powerdraw. They idle at 180 watts, s3 sleep is still 150 watts and on BSD idle is 240 watts! This wasn't too much of a problem before the whole energy crisis thing, because electricity was quite cheap (around 0.19cts per kwh). But with prices touching 0.80cts pet kwh, it becomes untenable quickly. We currently Wake-on-LAN these boxes only when we need them and they auto turn off after 1 hour of idle.

417 points by BizarreByte 4y ago

AprilArcus 4y ago

Would love know more about the "dire state" of ppc32 linux

goosedragons 4y ago
No big distro supports it and I can only think of one that still does (Adelie). Modern web browsers won't easily compile for it, probably other packages. And soon support for GPUs like the ATI Rage commonly used in 1998-2001ish era Macs will be removed from the kernel.
- zozbot234 4y ago
  Isn't there an unofficial Debian port? Stuff can be added back to the kernel if people commit to maintain it and keep it in line with the evolving code base.
- ndesaulniers 4y ago
  We still do ppc32 kernel build+boot tests in CI. Wonder if we should consider spinning those down...
UncleSlacky 4y ago
MintPPC is quite good (or was last time I tried it): http://mintppc.nl http://mintppc.nl

amelius 4y ago

> While I fully acknowledge there's a lot you can't do on a system like this (Docker, anything GPU related) it's still able to do a lot of productive work without feeling like a total dog to use. This, of course, is becoming less and less true.

anthk 4y ago
How so? Celeron, 2GB of RAM, ~4GB with compressed ZRAM. Libreoffice works, most stuff works with GL 2.1, even 720p video with MPV. LibreOffice, Ted, Abiword, GNUMeric... For the rest, UBlock Origin it's your friend and git://bitreich.org/privacy-haters to cut in half the realistical Chromium requeriments.
- hochmartinez 4y ago
  ... Add Linux with a 6.1 kernel with MGLRU, enable ext4 fast_commit, stop unnecessary services. Switch Chrome by Brave. Add a tab suspender. If you have 4GB or more, set the browser cache to RAM (a tmpfs directory). You'll be surprised of how speedy and usable is your old Celeron computer. And this CPU is very power efficient, so no heat and no fan. Silence. My 2016 Lenovo laptop was almost unusable with windows 10 and its myriad of processes hogging the CPU. Manjaro Linux brought this little laptop to life and now it's my daily driver, more than enough for my needs (browsing, coding).
  - anthk 4y ago
    Avoid brave. It' s spyware. If any, Chromium-Ungoogle with the settings from: git clone git://bitreich.org/privacy-haters Copy the file in the chromium subdir to /etc/profile.d/chromium.sh. Chmod +x it. Change CHROMIUM_FLAGS to UNGOOGLED_CHROMIUM_FLAGS or whatever flag shows up in /usr/bin/ungoogled-chromium script. That and UBlock Origin with the country specific ad blocking rules will cut down a good bunch of crap.
    - GeorgeWBasic 4y ago
      Bullshit, it's not spyware. It seems it's no longer possible to discuss it here without the trolls coming out.
      - anthk 4y ago
        https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/brave https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/brave Whatever. The GitHub repo I posted has sane defaults for both Chromium based browsers (adapt the environment variable for the custom fork, you have it at /usr/bin/chrom file) and Mozilla under *Nix. If something "clean" as Mozilla has a good chunk to be tweaked, just imagine the amount of telemetry Brave has. I lived the 90's and 00's in computing. I pretty surely know the spyware and adware terms. And Brave it's spyware, period.

abricot 4y ago

If you are happy not surfing most of the Web, any computer is good enough. It's usually browsers and web pages that brings these older PCs down.

caycep 4y ago
I remember the first time I saw it, "we have to run it on a Sun workstation or else..."
sourcecodeplz 4y ago
I've heard there's quite the group here on HN that browse the web on CLI browsers.
- canadianfella 4y ago
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- mjhay 4y ago
  It's not something that's remotely practical on most modern sites. I hate everything new as well, but at some point it's easier to just suck it up and face the hell that is the modern internet.
  - prmoustache 4y ago
    The thing is w3m really filter yourself out of the shitty web. Most interesting websites are quite readable on w3m. The ones that aren't are usually the worst ones or thoses that provide an api for which better gui and tui clients exist.
  - bandrami 4y ago
    When I'm on lynx I find I don't miss the rest of the Web. Reading documents without people constantly trying to sell me crap is kind of refreshing.
    - nortonham 4y ago

pdimitar 4y ago

The problem with arguments like these is to me two-fold: 1. Physical space. Most of the older tech takes too much space. I don't live in a mansion and I have no dedicated rooms just for big bulky computers. 2. Power consumption, heat, noise. I would love to be less consumerist and use stuff from 15 years ago and stop feeding greedy corporations but... the old stuff consumes 90 to 200 watts, heats up easily and noticeably, and can get loud. Both parts of this problem are trivially solved by modern tech. I got a 13" Chinese fanless laptop second hand for 160 euro; it has a Celeron J CPU with 12GB RAM and 256GB SATA SSD. It can do anything I need that's not programming or rendering -- including playing 60FPS video -- and last time I checked it, it consumed 30W under full load (all CPU cores at 100%) and idled at 11W or so. Modern tech is not only about its buyers being mindless consumerist drones. It offers tangible benefits, including long-term environmental sustainability. Yes a lot of CO2 was likely released due to its production but I'd wager that tech that heats up less and uses less power can last 10-13 years and will pay off its environmental footprint with a generous interest on top. So unless you're a retro collector or want to write compilers for older CPUs, there are zero reasons to be excited about older computers. (That being said, if somebody finally creates a modern 6502 CPU computer e.g. in the shape of a 10" netbook I'll buy it immediately, provided I can also program it through USB from my workstation.)

doublepg23 4y ago
I think there’s something to be said for the fundamentals of modern computers too. A 4K screen, excellent keyboard, blazing fast NVMe, etc are all attainable on a budget now with CPUs using less power, as you said.
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hedora 4y ago
This. The thing I dislike the most about openbsd is the lack of modern, supported hardware. One notable exception is the PC Engines APU 2, though that’s stretching the definition of modern. Seriously: Pick a laptop SKU that is still being manufactured and has similar ergonomics to a MacBook Pro or classic thinkpad (centered keyboard + trackpad, 4K screen, all the other bits in the right spots, reasonably quiet, 8 hour real world battery), and mark it up by $200. Sell it from a site that OpenBSD links to. Make sure the manufacturer agrees to build that exact laptop for at least 5 years. (Moore’s law is dead, after all.) Have the project test 100% of the hardware devices in that laptop on each point release, and donate the $200 markup to the project.

anthk 4y ago

The blog's author might like this dillo fork. It needs autoconf, automake, gmake, mbedtls and ftlk. https://github.com/w00fpack/dilloNG https://github.com/w00fpack/dilloNG Mpv it's recommended, at it has a context menu to play videos with it and the help of youtube-dl or yt-dlp. A config for it: ~/.config/mpv/config ytdl-format="bestvideo[height<=?420]+bestaudio[height<=?420]" vo=xv,drm audio-pitch-correction=no quiet=yes pause=no vd-lavc-skiploopfilter=all Also, for X.Org, you can set the config for the ATI driver so it loads the DRI2 drivers among the EXA rendering module. /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-ati.conf Section "Device" Identifier "ati" Driver "ati" Option "AccelMethod" "EXA" Option "DRI" "2" EndSection

steponlego 4y ago
Any advice on how to get Intel 855 working with Mesa? X.org had an update and they removed or deprecated the engine it used. Thanks.
- anthk 4y ago
  Which distro? Parabola and Arch Linux have the mesa-amber package, which enables OpenGL for legeacy chipsets.
  - steponlego 4y ago
    OpenBSD, I will look in to this package though. Maybe I can get it running from source.
    - anthk 4y ago
      Sorry, but that's futile entire X.org and drivers are bundled under the Xenocara brand in base. If you don't have it, consider it lost forever. If any, you can set machdep.allowaperture=2 in /etc/sysctl.conf Also, /etc/fbtab needs some settings for MESA, too. Basically you need to set read write the files under /dev/dri* with fbtab from /dev/ttyC5 if I can recall it well. EDIT: typo fix in /etc/sysctl.conf

doublepg23 4y ago

I have plenty of criticisms of OpenBSD but that wide array of support is why I end up running it on hobby systems. I’ve got a Lemote netbook (which uses a homegrown Chinese MIPS chip) and a PPC Mac of similar vintage in the post. It is really cool to boot up these oddball systems and use familiar programs on them.

squarefoot 4y ago

I totally understand the nostalgia value, but energy doesn't grow on trees. A small mini-PC would consume a fraction of the current needed to run those old machines, offering much more computing power in return. Not to talk about the much better scaling achieved by modern processors; some iMac models would idle at almost 100 Watts.

BizarreByte 4y ago
I’m not suggesting one should use a setup like this daily, mostly commenting on how good the experience still is when running *BSD on it. At the end of the day if all you need is a computer, it’s nice to know that basically any computer can still be serviceable. In a world where you can get 4k series i5s in the trash though, I don’t actually think anyone will be using such an old Mac seriously.
- ornornor 4y ago
  Seriously, you should see the hardware companies are throwing away right now… i5/7 6xxx computers and up… what a waste. They’re fully functional but they’ve been amortized so thrown away to the landfill and replaced with todays model to be thrown away in 3–4 years. What an incredible waste.
  - amatecha 4y ago
    Ohh.. I've always wondered how to get my hands on this "garbage". The machine I use every day is from like 2013... the fastest PC I own has a processor that was launched in 2014. It's partly because I'm frugal and partly because I don't believe in constantly replacing hardware that works just fine. But it sounds like by this point companies are throwing away stuff far newer than what I use! haha
    - voltagex_ 4y ago
      Depending on where you are, there'll either be local auctions of surplus tech, or eBay / refurbishing stores selling these kinds of things. I always went for Dell Optiplex, but there are HP and Lenovo equivalents too

nativecoinc 4y ago

I mostly use my work computer in my free time. The ultimate test: can you develop Java on it? (In practice, not in principle.)

gorky1 4y ago
Intellij Idea on Linux runs surprisingly well on 15 year old T400 Thinkpads. It's actually pleasant to use for small hobby Java projects.

tambourine_man 4y ago

Something that aged poorly are browsers. Can you run contemporary Chromium, Firefox, WebKit decently on a 800mhz G4? And I doubt it could handle more than a few open tabs with 512MB of RAM. Most everything else I use computers for have been fast enough for 20 years or so.

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meindnoch 4y ago
The proliferation of browser-based crap was a godsend for hardware manufacturers.
thedriver 4y ago
Even something like Debian with the Mate DE can be pretty lightweight. Modern web crap is really the biggest resource hog for most users.
prmoustache 4y ago
Netsurf works well on low spec and render most pages well enough. Also, switching to lite or mobile versions of websites when they exist render them much lighter and more readable.
adrianmsmith 4y ago
Last time I used a computer with 1GB RAM was in 2014, with 32-bit Windows XP. The computer had 512MB in use after startup and could only handle 2-3 tabs in the Chrome of the time, everything (e.g. Gmail at the time) seemed to use about 100MB. So 2014 Chrome with webapps like 2014 Gmail wasn't really practical on 1GB. So I very much doubt that 2023 Chrome with 2023 webapps would be practical on 512MB RAM.
amatecha 4y ago
Yeah, I was running Firefox on my iMac G4 with OpenBSD. It was being killed frequently though by hitting the memory limit (which at the time I didn't know how to raise). I'm intending to go back and try again with my deeper knowledge of the OS. I have MANY old machines which could benefit from having a latest-features OS to use.

johnklos 4y ago

There are lots of people in the comments here who appear to not get it. This isn't about replacing a contemporary computer with something old. It's about the usability of a decent OS on very modest hardware. One of the systems on which I run NetBSD is a 33 MHz m68030 Mac LC III+ (http://elsie.zia.io http://elsie.zia.io - it's hosting a site about an LC II, which I'm still working on). It's quite useful to see how assumptions people make about "acceptable" performance regressions bear out in the real world. Sure, not much can be done about taking six or seven minutes to ssh, but when bad coding causes a shell script to take twice as long, it's much more obvious on hardware like this than on a modern Ryzen system. Nobody is telling others to forego your modern computer and your Windows needs. It's just interesting to some of us that we can still run modern things on very modest and, in some cases, very non-mainstream hardware in 2023.

BizarreByte 4y ago
Thank you for getting it, this was my entire point and I’m glad it came across to someone. Obviously I would never suggest someone replace their modern daily driver computer with one of this age.
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mro_name 4y ago
indeed, developing fast software requires slow hardware.
- flenserboy 4y ago
  Excellent point. Software testing (not for stability but instead for usability, and certainly not for compiling, lol) ought to be done on minimal-spec systems (the specs of which might possibly be dialed-down further once optimization is done, which would be a bonus). Assuming that a faster system (or one with more RAM or storage) will cure the real problem has allowed all sorts of sloppiness to creep into software.
  - 4y ago

AstixAndBelix 4y ago

When I really think about the kinds of things I find essential in a computer, almost everything could be achieved with a TUI or a very light GUI. Unfortunately, the problem of proprietary software and APIs is always around the corner. I can use a TUI client for Telegram, but I can't if I want to message someone on Facebook. I can use a simple newsreader for blogs, but I can't for my friends' Instagram posts. I could honestly scrap by with a 20yo computer if the world was more open sourced. Such a shame

ciupicri 4y ago
What Telegram client are you using?

c-smile 4y ago

> computer e.g. in the shape of a 10" netbook I'll buy it immediately Haven't tried OpenBSD but Windows 11 works quite well Samsung Galaxy Book 2 (ARM): https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/26/18024696/samsung-galaxy-book-2-tablet-laptop-review-specs-price-features https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/26/18024696/samsung-galaxy-... It has superb monitor, touchpad, touchscreen, pen and detachable keyboard. I am running Visual Studio 2022 on it to build Sciter - quite convenient to test and debug handling of those input devices. It is really quite good machine for mobile use. You can buy second hand Samsung Galaxy Book 2 for ~200-300 USD

jamesgill 4y ago

A side note: I love this website. It makes me nostalgic for the early-mid 90s when web pages were basic, personal, and mostly text.

shp0ngle 4y ago
I tried to get into Gemini for a while - it’s like Gopher but reimagined with some more modern ideas. However I quickly figured out there is not much to actually do there. The way modern web works is horrible (I don’t want to click just another cookie banner thanks), but at least it’s easy for all people to contribute.
- bandrami 4y ago
  "It's a brave new world! Everyone can publish! No need for gatekeepers!" (a few months later) "Why is everything such unmitigated crap?"
  - anthk 4y ago
    gemini://medusae.space has gems.
- dangus 4y ago
  Just use an ad blocker to block cookie banners. Annoyances list built-in to uBlock Origin should work.

zozbot234 4y ago

There's not much that's specific to OpenBSD wrt. this post, or to the G4. The RAM use (61MiB) is roughly in line with a super lightweight Linux install for any 32 bit system (requirements for a modern 64 bit system tend to be higher). So any computer really is good enough if it fits your end use, otherwise it's no good.

bandrami 4y ago
Dealing with some hardware is a lot easier on OpenBSD, at least for me. I spent the better part of a day on Debian trying to get ofono and connman to play well together after network-manager and modemmanager (side note: really?) failed to get my LTE modem to connect. In OpenBSD it was just ifconfig umb0 apn hutch up
- anthk 4y ago
  No dhclient :D?
  - bandrami 4y ago
    Not for a 3G/LTE modem, no; the IP configuration is part of the carrier discipline.

irusensei 4y ago

I wish it had something like jails/lxc and a modern file system like ZFS or BTRFS.

steponlego 4y ago
They recently upgraded FFS for 64-bit. I think they have the right philosophy, these FS's you mention are FAAATTTTT and would probably at least double to size of the tree. You can always set up a NAS with ZFS and simply use it with NFS.

syntex 4y ago

The power usage is a serious issue, I recently scrapped an old PC. It was perfectly fine and usable, but I found it draws with graphics card more than 200W. And taking into account how much electricity rose in Europe it's super expensive to run. And the new one it's 15 times less. So let's take care at least a bit about the environment.

doubled112 4y ago
> take care at least a bit about the environment I always take time to consider where the balance point is between replacing working, but less efficient equipment with newer, more efficient equipment. It took materials and energy to produce the old one. I know electricity is expensive some places, but even then, sometimes the break even point is years in the future. Despite all of this, I only realize its more complicated than I hope.
ibz 4y ago
> let's take care at least a bit about the environment You know that producing that PC used way more energy than it would consume if you left it running? > taking into account how much electricity rose in Europe This seems like your main reason actually. Your wallet, not the environment. If the energy prices went down, you would have kept the old PC around rather than having it end up in a landfill or shipped to a poor country where people literally burn the PCBs to recover tiny bits of rare metals.
- tux2bsd 4y ago
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sgt 4y ago
I think your priorities are a bit off. If you want to help the environment, look at your other habits first that have impacts that are orders of magnitude more. Flying, driving, plastic, food, etc

Glyptodon 4y ago

The sad thing that trips me up is that I can easily run out of memory web browsing on most machines w/ less than 16gb just by forgetting to close tabs. But my desktop is has a CPU from over a decade ago and I don't really foresee needing a new one soon.

steponlego 4y ago

Typing this on my T420 running OpenBSD. It does everything I really need it to do. I don't play (new) games, and I have a more powerful server tucked away here in case I have any CPU-intensive jobs I need done. Honestly after seeing the absolute state of Linux on the desktop over the last decade, there is no reason for me to even consider it any more.

arcanemachiner 4y ago
> Honestly after seeing the absolute state of Linux on the desktop over the last decade, there is no reason for me to even consider it any more. What is wrong with Linux on the desktop, and how is OpenBSD better?
- ibz 4y ago
  Can't comment for all aspects of a Linux desktop versus an OpenBSD desktop, but one example that comes to mind is the sound system. Just try reading the design paper of sndio [1]. It is a pure joy to read. A beautiful architecture. Now compare that with ALSA / PulseAudio / JACK / PipeWire... The audio system in Linux is fragmented and incomprehensible. [1] https://www.openbsd.org/papers/asiabsdcon2010_sndio.pdf https://www.openbsd.org/papers/asiabsdcon2010_sndio.pdf
  - arcanemachiner 4y ago
    Thanks for the perspective. Audio in Linux can definitely be _ahem_ somewhat flaky.
- steponlego 4y ago
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verytrivial 4y ago

I love the idea of OpenBSD but have only had a couple of sad reintroductions over the years and never spent the time apparently required to "get it just right" before needing to get something else done. It feels like a base install leaves you in several hours of configuration debt, and I apparently don't have the concentration span to dig my way out to somewhere interesting and not just half way back to productive on the systems I already use. My newest computer is from 2014 for reference, oldest from around 2008 and I emulate older stuff. I know I'm "doing it wrong" and perhaps it isn't a right fit for everyone but ... That's how it is.

gnubison 4y ago
What configuration debt does OpenBSD bring to your mind?
- jnye131 4y ago
  The ability to plug and unplug external monitors.
toyg 4y ago
I have a love-hate relationship with OpenBSD but I don't feel this "configuration debt". The whole point of it is that you don't enable stuff you don't really need; and if you really need something, then you should make the effort to actually understand what it does and how to configure it. For this same reason, it's simply a poor desktop OS. A modern UNIX-like desktop is a very complex system, with so many moving parts held together with hacks and duct tape. As OpenBSD effectively forces you to familiarise yourself with such duct tape solutions, it also forces you to do more work than you'd want - or to stick with environments that feel somewhat basic.
nortonham 4y ago
What did you need to configure before being able to be productive?

hamstrunghuman 4y ago

I couldn't agree more. I've been using OpenBSD on a RaspberryPi 4 B for the past few months as a nginx, uwsgi, dnsmasq, ftp (for 4x security cameras) and squid proxy server for the past few months. This replaced a debian install that keep annoying me with it's systemd/networkmanager crap. Not only am I impressed with the performance, the simplicity and confidence I get in it's security is a breath of fresh air.

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gorgoiler 4y ago

That’s a fine piece of hardware and a fine OS to run on it. I would feel a bit hampered without a good browser though. So much of my work involves trawling GitHub for bug reports and stack overflow for bug mitigations. Very little modern software development, for me at least, happens in isolation. There’s a third-party dependency or two in almost everything I do. I try to use w3m a lot for that stuff. Many sites still have a cheeseburger menu made out of a tree of <ul> lists up the top of the page, and require CSS indentation or borders to render discussions nicely. Are there terminal browsers that support these features better?

zokier 4y ago

On PC side something like 2004-2005 vintage desktop wouldn't necessarily be all that impractical to use even today. I'm basing this on Anands "buyers guide" to get a feeling what the general lineup was like then: https://www.anandtech.com/show/1692/11 https://www.anandtech.com/show/1692/11 You got 64-bit CPU, SATA HDD, PCIe graphics with OpenGL 2, USB 2.0 connectors, and DVI flat panel display. Its something I'd expect you can just throw Debian Stable in and be perfectly usable with lightweight WM, or maybe even something like XFCE for full graphical desktop. Of course as others have mentioned, browser is the real problem, but 1GB might be enough to browse HN at least?

harel 4y ago

You're only using 61 MB of your 512 MB RAM. Megabyte. I love it. Megabyte. I distinctly remember the happiness of attaching a 512KB RAM expansion card to my Amiga, bringing total RAM to 1MB. You have 512 of those!

contravariant 4y ago
I still think it's wild how much data can fit on a microSD nowadays. People would think you were crazy if you told them just a few decades ago.
- harel 4y ago
  it's more than wild man. It's magical! Just yesterday or the day before my 700KB or so Amiga floppy seemed like it would last forever...
  - ezconnect 4y ago
    We now have 1TB microSD cards.
    - harel 4y ago
      I still finding it hard to trust 1TB worth of important data stored in that medium. I'm half joking but still, only half joking. The other half is dead serious.
      - alwayslikethis 4y ago
        You're right. SD lacks things like overprovisioning and wear leveling that would reduce failure rates. It's also rather slow to read/write from. On another note, it's incredibly easy to lose them.
      - bharathyes 4y ago
        It is always a bad idea to store any amount of important data on a single medium. Seen too many (including myself at some point) have all their data in one external HDD and pass it around friends with a caution to be safe with their data. I've lost most of my photo and video collection due to two HDD failures between 2017-2020.

cassepipe 4y ago

Fourth generation Intel i5 laptop from around 2013 is still kicking hard provided enough Ram (8Go or 16Go depending on your needs) and a SSD. Not "usable (but read the fine print)". Comfortable to use (running Linux at least). IMac G5 from 2004 on the contrary? Too heavy, too hot, two slow (single thread cpu doesn't cut it) Late 2007 Intel core 2 duo? RAM maxes out at 4Go but surprisingly usable. Not comfortable but usable. That should give you an idea of where to set your expectations. I do recommend buying second hand but I wouldn't go under 2012 for a daily driver personally, for peace of mind.

ellyagg 4y ago

> Because frankly the iMac wasn't really useful in a modern or a retro sense, though I expect some will debate its retro merits. Can it run OS 9 natively? The earliest iMac G4 could, I've heard. I bought a Mac G4 a couple years ago so I could have the most powerful computer that runs Mac OS 9 natively which then enables me to run Symantec's MORE. MORE is this ancient, super dope outliner editor, which is just so fast and ergonomic at the keyboard. It's go all these features that have never really been replicated since, like cascading styles and presentation mode. https://tidbits.com/1993/10/18/more-more-dinosaur/ https://tidbits.com/1993/10/18/more-more-dinosaur/ I use Workflowy, which I love, but I kind of want to play with porting MORE's UI to the web and see if it could perform.

BizarreByte 4y ago
It can run OS 9, but it’s not amazing. I tried and it was relatively unstable even for OS 9 and I could never pin down why.
cellularmitosis 4y ago
> the iMac wasn't really useful in a modern or a retro sense I've been trying to fight that a bit myself: https://github.com/cellularmitosis/leopard.sh https://github.com/cellularmitosis/leopard.sh

sgtnoodle 4y ago

This week I've been "rejuvenating" my 11 year old i7 2600k desktop. I built a zen 3 based computer a couple years ago, purely as a luxury, after spending 5 days in the hospital ICU. The i7 was chugging along just fine doing whatever I needed it to do, and it seemed a waste to just forget about it. I fully disassembled it and cleaned out the dust. I spent an evening lapping the CPU and heat sink down to 2000 grit. I put it in a new case, as the old one's front panel fell off. I installed my old GTX 970 GPU, which seems like a perfect pairing. Maybe I'll gift it to a young nephew, or maybe I'll set it to easily boot up into a mentally stimulating game for my 4 year old daughter. Her knowledge of computer games right now is beamng.drive and tux racer!

serf 4y ago
The worst part isn't that the old hardware isn't worthwhile; it's that it has to be hobbled so much in order to be secure on todays' net. Things like Spectre created a lot of additional obsolescence.
- Sunspark 4y ago
  I think you can still be secure on the net with the Spectre and Meltdown mitigations disabled on a personal system. If your browser is current, it already has mitigations built into it. Are there any mathematical calculations showing the risk % of disabling mitigations? Or is this just herd activity where everyone sets it as a default because they don't want to accept the liability for the remote chance of lightning striking?
  - dijit 4y ago
    This is dangerous, and maybe not in the way you expect. Personal systems are running a lot more untrusted code than, for example, servers. Mitigations are more necessary on personal computers than on servers. As for "it's mitigated in the browser", the issue is that there's no "one" mitigation for anything, you have to mitigate it on the OS, in the browser, in the microcode for the CPU. Everything. You can't just apply one mitigation and be done. FWIW the "mitigation" in browsers was to disable high precision timers; which seems to be making its way back, and was never necessary, it just made the exploit easier. I highly recommend keeping mitigations enabled for personal machines; when it comes to servers with a decent WAF that are not shared amongst users that can run code: disabling mitigations makes more sense. (dedicated databases, for example). Someone described the mitigations as: "Surrounding a drunk person with trampolines in the hope that when they collapse they will be corrected into the right position", I think this is the most apt example I can think of. For personal systems that run a lot of untrusted code (due mostly to the web): I wouldn't personally advocate for removing a trampoline.

tux2bsd 4y ago

[dead]

emodendroket 4y ago

What I found is that you can get an old computer to work great with an old OS right up until you open the Web browser and start visiting Web sites.

quickthrower2 4y ago
You can get an old computer to work great with an old OS right up until you ... open the inner OS
hulitu 4y ago
Not only an old OS. An older web browser has the same issues. I think we need to come back to gopher and ftp because http is a rolling target. But we are https (s comes from encription).
- emodendroket 4y ago
  I actually meant a lightweight OS but I guess the parallel construction was so tempting I wrote the wrong thing. Everything seems great until you ask the computer to render the modern Web.
- anthk 4y ago
  Windows 9x/2x/XP users have RetroZilla as a libre browser. Mac 8-9 users have Classilla. Linux users can compile gcc 4.x and pkgsrc just fine on any > 2001 distro.
NovaPenguin 4y ago
There are some hacky ways of getting a little distance on modern OS's, like using terminal based browsers. I'm thinking Links/Elinks but that will only get you so far and so long as the security certificates are available.
- genidoi 4y ago
  Carbonyl runs pretty well (YouTube videos / WASM powered apps like figma et al) https://github.com/fathyb/carbonyl https://github.com/fathyb/carbonyl

NovaPenguin 4y ago

"How much computing power do I really need on a day to day basis?" I guess this is a kind of Computational Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Basic needs can be covered by the vast majority of computer hardware. But once you get to large scale web browsing and gaming - more complex hardware is required. The difference between a hermit living content in a cave and a billionaire in a 42 bed room mansion. Both could be happy but it really depends on their perspective.

real_queil 4y ago

I think MorphOS should run on it too https://www.morphos-team.net/hardware https://www.morphos-team.net/hardware

ArcMex 4y ago

Dell Optiplex 3020 w/ i5 but running FreeBSD to build prototypes. Runs alright. I have used OpenBSD on a Pentium box for similar projects before and the support was good too. So *BSDs are now among my considerations when it comes to get usage out older machines.

cranium 4y ago

Speaking of good enough computers, I'm really happy with the power of mobile processors right now. With my usage (dev, some Docker, browsing, on a light Manjaro+i3), I can shop for form factor and utility and know it won't feel sluggish. Replaced my 2017 15" Dell workstation with a 8" GPD Pocket 3 that feels more snappy and sharper. I thought it would be my couch/on-the-go/emergency computer but it became my mobile workstation as well. Only grip with the form factor: it's too small to fit on both laps so I have to use my bag to have a "laptop".

snazz01 4y ago

The only reason it was a screamer back then and a dog now is that software is much more shit today.

1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago

Kinda sad that the top comment is something about a web browser. There's much more to computers and the internet than web browsers. I use links text-only browser coupled with stunnel or haproxy for TLS. Unlike the "tech" company browsers, this software compiles quickly and easily, it's relatively small and it works great on older computers. Here is what no one is mentioning. Currently, 90% of the world's most advanaced chips are made by one manufacturer, TSMC. If something hapens to TSMC, then the ability to utilise older chips and older computers is going to become relevant. Personally, I think "modern" web browsers suck for using the web recreationally, e.g., visiting random websites, i.e., usage that is not banking, shopping or other commercially-related activity. However, when applied to local files, these "browsers" can be useful as PDF readers, audio and video players. Whether older computers can handle today's media files is left as a question for the reader. Reading websites is easy without a big, bloated "tech" company browser. Using a text-only browser on a daily basis, I have been doing this for decades.

lannisterstark 4y ago
>There's much more to computers and the internet than web browsers. For most common people, is there really?
piva00 4y ago
If something happens to TSMC there will be a global effort to lift all that knowledge back into stable, developed countries to continue production as fast as humanly possible. Just like the lifting of Nazi rocket scientists, it's a technology that is directly intertwined with the existence of contemporary advanced economies/societies, if TSMC ceases to exist there will be a concerted effort from major economies to re-gain that knowledge. Right now it's just too expensive to do it instead of outsourcing it, the moment it becomes an existential threat it won't be relatively that expensive anymore. I don't think old computers as such will ever be relevant as you envision, if it happens it will be a blip during a gap of 3-5 years until production restarts somewhere else.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  > 3-5 years until production restarts somewhere else. If you're talking about production of modern chips here, it will take a lot longer than 3-5 years.

deleted 4y ago

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rubin55 4y ago

Can relate, a while ago (around 2016) we bought 7 second-hand dual opteron 8439 (12 cores! no ht) desktops with 64GiB of ram in them, added pcie nvme adapter, for about ~850 EUR (including 21% vat) a piece. We have been using those systems since then and they are really amazing performers (linux and bsd, many java apps, jetbrains IDEs, etc). This is totally because of how efficient and minimal modern Linux and BSD distros can be, by the way - even with modern desktop environment like Gnome 43! Only downside is the powerdraw. They idle at 180 watts, s3 sleep is still 150 watts and on BSD idle is 240 watts! This wasn't too much of a problem before the whole energy crisis thing, because electricity was quite cheap (around 0.19cts per kwh). But with prices touching 0.80cts pet kwh, it becomes untenable quickly. We currently Wake-on-LAN these boxes only when we need them and they auto turn off after 1 hour of idle.