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The old safari is slow and, can you believe it, HN does not fully function! Now, we all know the hardware is premium and this device would probably run linux ve
by jrmg 3y ago
The old safari is slow and, can you believe it, HN does not fully function!
Now, we all know the hardware is premium and this device would probably run linux very smoothly and the touch interface would be a dream. But we can only dream right?
Safari is not known for being slow.
That machine is _old_. The iPad was released in 2010 - 13 years ago. And even when new it was substantially slower than contemporary PCs or Macs - Apple then was not the CPU powerhouse it is today. It has 256Mb RAM and early (so, slow) NAND flash storage.
I really think you would (or, at least, most people would) be very disappointed at how well it would run Linux now. Things like web browsing and running recent applications, and more ‘HN’ things like coding, would be very sluggish.
- Donckele 3y agoNah. I have older netbooks (remember them?) and they are still more usable (with linux) than my old ipad.
- scarface_74 3y agoDoes your old Netbook have only 256MB of RAM and 500Mhz processor?
- smoldesu 3y agoBecause if so, that's enough to run 4 simultaneous instances of Linux!
- scarface_74 3y agoHow well will that work with the modern web and modern web browsers?
- smoldesu 3y agoGreat! On paper it could handle Apache and NGINX like a charm, your modern web browsers would have no trouble accessing it.
- scarface_74 3y agoWhat does that have to do with running a modern web browser on a device with 256MB RAM and a single core 500Mhz processor?
- smoldesu 3y agoNothing. Linux isn't a web browser. It will still work just fine with your modern web browsers though, as a server.
- scarface_74 3y agoSo now I’m going to put an open source operating system on my first gen 256MB RAM iPad to run a web server and that’s the same functionality I had in 2010 when I was using it to browse the then modern web?
- smoldesu 3y agoYou could arrange it like that, sure. Webkit ships Linux builds, there are DEs that will give you a miserable but usable experience on those specs. If you really want to condemn yourself to a fate Apple doesn't support, there's no technical reason you couldn't. Replacing the same functionality was never an inherent part of the deal though. There will never be Find My Linux or the Linux Store. The overall idea is that we put older hardware to use instead of recycling it for marginal returns on scrap. It's why they put "Reuse" before "Recycle" in the EPA maxim.
- scarface_74 3y agoSo your alternative to mean old Apple not allowing you to run Linux is to have a shitty experience running Linux on hardware that wouldn’t meet the needs of a modern consumer ?
- smoldesu 3y ago
- bunga-bunga 3y ago> Safari is not known for being slow. Yes it is slow on older hardware. It was slow even back then. You must have forgotten the time it took to paint the rest of the page if you scrolled or zoomed out a liiittle too fast. Sure this was due to the minuscole amount of RAM Apple ships their product with, but “Safari is slow” is appropriate. Also “Safari is slow” on my i9 as well, I just need to open a GitHub PR with 10+ files to see it come to a crawl, whereas Chrome never feels it. But hey, its scrolling is buttery smooth even if clicking doesn’t work.