7 ms·

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 n

• 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.
  • peatmoss 4y ago
    My desktop is a new-ish AMD CPU, brand-new intel wifi, brand new AMD GPU computer, and I didn't so much as think about anything related to compatibility with OpenBSD. For laptops, I'd assume the Framework laptop works without issue? Hard to compete with Apple on portables for sure, but anything but macOS is a WIP there. For me the thing that keeps me from running OpenBSD 100% of the time is my Steam library, but I'm considering demoting my PC to a living room gaming device and handling my modest desktop computing needs via something small and fanless running OpenBSD.
  • dman 4y ago
    Thinkpad X1 is a phenomenal device to run OpenBSD on. The last couple of times I tried it, things worked out of the box perfectly.
  • refuse 4y ago
    I really want to see something like this. I'd honestly be happy with something like a RaspPi with an SSD and a huge battery in a laptop with good build quality. My system reqs are really low; a laptop that would survive 20 years with regular use would be fantastic.
    • johnklos 4y ago
      The Pinebook Pro is well supported by NetBSD (not sure about OpenBSD), and it can take eMMC, at least. It's quite affordable, battery life is excellent, and my Pinebook feels pretty rugged. It has a six core RK3399 and 4 gigs of memory. I don't think you can get a better laptop for the price ($220 US).
  • busterarm 4y ago
    The biggest things that OpenBSD doesn't support (well) are Bluetooth, some wifi cards and TPM modules. And you can literally fix all of these issues with a supported USB device. Been running OpenBSD on multiple generations of Thinkpad laptops without issue. Using the Protectli 6 port device as an OpenBSD router (Intel NICs are well-supported).
• jokethrowaway 4y ago
  How/where did you purchase the Chinese laptop? Does it have a name? Most stuff I can buy is overpriced branded crap
  • goosedragons 4y ago
    My guess is AliExpress or a site like BangGood. You can also find some lurking around Amazon.
    • pdimitar 4y ago
      Yep, from AliExpress indeed.
  • pdimitar 4y ago
    https://www.chuwi.com/product/items/Chuwi-GemiBook.html https://www.chuwi.com/product/items/Chuwi-GemiBook.html The guy bought it from AliExpress. Since then I bought a bunch of electronics from there and was always satisfied. And Chuwi have official store there btw.
• rakoo 4y ago
  In digital, pollution happens during construction way more than usage. It still makes sense to use a decade-old computer. The second-hand market is filled with material that was built at same point; you having access to your nice second hand laptop is due to newer laptops being built all the time. It is still sending a signal upstream that such a computer can be sold. I do agree that buying second hand is much better than buying new, but not even buying is still better here
  • rrdharan 4y ago
    > It still makes sense to use a decade-old computer. Economically the incentives are not aligned this way though, if you pay for grid power... you still have to pay for the electricity, and there's also the opportunity cost of that payment (e.g. you could spend the money you save on your electric bill on carbon credits or green charities or whatever).
    • rakoo 4y ago
      It might make less economical sense, true, but if reducing pollution or environmental impact made economic sense we wouldn't even be talking about it. Economic sense is not always relevant. I might even argue that economic sense is at odds with environmental sense
  • horsawlarway 4y ago
    > It still makes sense to use a decade-old computer. I don't really think it does, at least not some of them. A lot of those older machines are just running really, really high idle power draw. Ex: Pentium 4/5, Core 2 Duo, Athlon64, etc. Running from 40 to 100 watts idle. For comparison, a new RPI will go as low as ~1-3 watt idle, tops out at ~5-7 watts under full load, and will generally have better performance characteristics. I run a lot of old machines in my basement because it can make sense (I throw them in a k8s farm), but I also generally have them spend a week on an electricity meter first (honestly, just a function of the UPS I run down there) and anything drawing more than 20 watts idle gets sent to the recycling instead. The bad ones tend to run high + hot + loud, and they absolutely aren't worth it.
• hirako2000 4y ago
  I took your concerns to some extreme. Idle at 4 watts, about 10 watts maxing the 4 cores. 88 dollars. Keyboard excluded. https://streamable.com/roro2y https://streamable.com/roro2y
  • pdimitar 4y ago
    lol. :D Appreciate the dedication!
• II2II 4y ago
  It depends. My desktop PC, which is over a decade old, performs fine under current releases of Linux and Windows. My laptop PC is a bit over two years old. Performance is lacklustre under the current release of Windows. Newer isn't always better, particularly when you're comparing laptops to desktops. I also doubt that many laptops would have an equivalent lifespan to a desktop. They have more perilous lives due to their portability and portability means they are frequently built with more compact and less robust components. That is especially true when you consider that laptops are more difficult to repair (due to more integration and more difficult to obtain parts). Granted, the iMac G4 is in a different league since it is a 20 year old machine that was produced when performance jumps were more meaningful. I can see it being a useful machine for someone who has limited interest and use for computers or simply wants something disconnected to get work done. I took the latter approach in the early 2000's and it worked quite well. (The fastest machine I had was a 68040, and I did run NetBSD on it.)
  • NikolaNovak 4y ago
    I agree with general gist of your laptop vs desktop argument. I will add though that there exist laptops that are / were built to last ; I am nowhere near the ThinkPad fanatic some people are :-) but I still have several t420s laptops, 11-12 years old I think, running as daily drivers with windows 10. That's about as long or longer as any desktop I've owner particularly considering how little I've changed it (mainly adding an ssd).
    • Sakos 4y ago
      T420 would be perfect if it wasn't for the god awful displays manufacturers used. I'd still be using mine otherwise. Just going from a 1080p monitor back to it was a pain. After using my M1 MBP und my 4k monitor for the past year, I could never go back.
      • NikolaNovak 4y ago
        T420s is the smaller version of t420; still modular and much more portable. There were likely several versions of lcd panels with it - the t420s's I got were way better than the t480 and e580 I picked up recently, even though there's 6 years between them. I believe the ones I have are either 1920 x 1080 or 1600 x 900 (whereas the t480 is inexplicably only 1366 x 768 ; and e580 is 1080p but awful contrast or gamma or something)
• 1over137 4y ago
  >the old stuff consumes 90 to 200 watts, heats up easily and noticeably Which is great when it's -30 outside, like today. :)
  • josephcsible 4y ago
    Even then it's not really great. If your goal with electric power is heating, heat pumps are a much more efficient way to do so.
    • reisse 4y ago
      Not when it's -30 outside.
  • girvo 4y ago
    Sadly where I live it never really gets below 15 degrees C, and is normally around or above 30C for most of the year, so computers heating up my office is a real problem.
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• vondur 4y ago
  I checked and it looks like the PowerPC's were power efficient. The 667Mhz model usually ran around 14W up to a maximum of 19W. The G5 processors were known to be hot and needed a lot of power. I remember having a PowerBook with a G4 back then, and remember closing the lid without shutting it down, and coming back days later with only a few percent's of battery draw. Of course, performance wise, the Intel mobile CPU's at the time were starting to really pull ahead of the mobile PowerPC chips at the point, except for a few very specific workloads.
  • pdimitar 4y ago
    Seems I thought of the G5 indeed, thanks for the correction!
• karteum 4y ago
  > It offers tangible benefits Yes, you listed them and they are valid, except > including long-term environmental sustainability Err... no not really ! The environmental impact of pretty much all consumer electronics is by (very) far dominated by the impact of its manufacturing (mining, water for manufacturing the chips, oil for transport, robots for assembly in countries where electricity is made with coal, etc), therefore anyone trying to be serious about "environmental sustainability" understands that it mostly implies to extend as much as possible existing equipment and avoid buying new ones (even if the old ones are bulky, noisy and consume a lot of electricity compared to the new)
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• NovaPenguin 4y ago
  My White Whale... the Dual 2Ghz PowerMac G5 I bought for $50. Sure it took months until I finally figured out how to get the OS to install properly. Having to delve into the patch work of information on Open Firmware and even then I am not entirely sure how I did it. And in the end I was left with a machine that ran well over 300 watts to do what a Raspberry Pi4 can easy do in well under 5 watts. I should have known, I was there when the 1st Intel Mac Mini came along running as fast as these things on launch - I knew they were a slouch even then. I should have known better. Eventually something went wrong with the power supply and I ended up scrapping everything but the case which now has my PC mounted in it.
  • amatecha 4y ago
    Dang, yeah it's unfortunate how high the power usage is. I didn't realize this when I bought a couple for ~$75 each. They are really cool-looking systems, but definitely not too efficient :\
    • NovaPenguin 4y ago
      Oh yeah, I consider them some of the peak of case design. As much as it is cool to run these as a G5, keeping the case is a neat homage to what they were.
• jack_pp 4y ago
  You don't need old as in 20 year old. just cheap / second hand fanless computers like 2nd or 3rd gen NUCs, raspberry Pi's etc
  • Gigachad 4y ago
    Is anyone actually using the pi as a desktop? Feels like most people need a laptop for portability, which is already many times more powerful than the pi, and then if you do have a non portable desktop, it's for gaming.
    • jack_pp 4y ago
      I've read comments in the past of people adventuring into these kinds of scenarios though I haven't tried to use a pi as a desktop. I use old laptops. My daily driver until a year ago was a Dell e7470 which worked well enough for browsing and coding in VSCode.. until the keyboard broke, twice. Now it's gathering dust because I'm too lazy to change the keyboard again but it should work fine on linux atleast. My current daily driver is a thinkpad t490 with an i7-8565U and 16 GB of ram that was provided for me at work and which I can buy used for 500$ atm. But if what you want is fanless and decent hardware I'd recommend a NUC.
• userbinator 4y ago
  The old stuff is far more open and documented, which is very important from a freedom perspective. Repairability is really low for anything even slightly recent. I'm not sure which Celeron J you're referring to, but I know some models were affected by the infamous LPC clock bug --- which might explain why there seems to be a surplus of machines with those CPUs available for amazingly low prices. I like computers the same way I like my cars, loud and hot ;-) Eco-virtue-signaling, the other modern plague...
  • pdimitar 4y ago
    It's 100% a fact that 1 million of us can't make the difference that 5-10 plants will make if they modernize their processes and are less toxic to the environment. Facts are facts. But I also don't like paying a lot for electricity. :) Virtue signalling is dumb and I hate it. In this case I happen to also have a personal interest.
• Jaywalker9988 4y ago
  Its always odd to hear people complain about noise or power consumption to me.. It's just never a thought that even crosses my mind.. much less the co2 emissions haha. My concerns are generally about my compile times on older hardware and nothing else.
  • Gigachad 4y ago
    It's not the end of the world but I hated the 2019 Intel Macbook I had at a previous job. The thing would be roasting hot, fans blasting constantly if you had docker open. Now I run docker and a million other things on my 2021 Macbook in total silence and a cold laptop. Feels like we jumped 10 years forward in a single iteration.