3 ms·

In what year? Which Linux kernel version? I also ran Windows with 16Mb of RAM.

by Rinzler89 2y ago

unleaded 2y ago
window maker will happily run on debian 12 with 256MB of RAM!
- Rinzler89 2y ago
  And do what with it? Type novels in vim? The moment you open Firefox empty tab, let alone Reddit/Youtube, everything goes to swap.
  - shaky-carrousel 2y ago
    I used to have a specialized YouTube graphical client at that time. You don't need to load the bloated YouTube website to watch YouTube videos. Probably same applies to Reddit.
    - Rinzler89 2y ago
      Sure, but the average user won't put up with all this: seek lightweight alternative to Windows/Mac/Ubuntu, then seek lightweight alternative to Gnome/KDE, then seek lightweight alternative to Chrome/FF, then seek lightweight alternative clients to youtube and reddit, just so they can watch youtube and browse reddit. People are busy with work, life, etc, and life is too short, and sometimes going the quick and convenient way of having a system that can run Chrome/FF and Youtube/reddit out of the box, saves you time that you can spend with your loved ones or doing hobbies you like outdoors, instead spending hours/days faffing around learning and fiddling with niche obscure SW, just to feel triumphant that you found workarounds to running modern bloated SW on ancient obsolete HW people throw in the trash. Not promoting wastefulness here, but sometimes there are points of diminishing returns, even for techies on a budget. I just try to see if LinuxLite or Lubuntu can save the system. If it's too slow even for those then it goes in the trash, I'm not wasting time with obscure linux tools I'm not familiar with just to potentially save some worthless e-waste that's not even a museum piece. I know there's some tinkerers out there who can get to run youtube on a Pentium 3 for shits and giggles, but that's where I'd keep it, at tinkering/entertainment, since I'm not a masochist to actually recommend people daily drive such a thing or do that myself, just to prove a point against obsolescence. For example I tried to donate and find a new home online for my old Core2Quad PC from 2007 with 6GB of ram and 1TB mechanical HDD, and nobody would take it off my hands saying it's far too outdated to be usable today despite that not being true with some lightweight Linux on it, but people aren't looking to run and learn some new unfamiliar OS, they want Windows and Chrome and all that shit they're familiar with and would rather spend money to get something they see as usable instead of taking for free something they see as unusable. So I threw it in the trash.
      - anthk 2y ago
        Ahem. Back in the day we were used to use a lot of niche software for legacy machines, and we succeeded. Not even being bachelor graded engineers or trade/vocational sysadmins. We seeked alternative browsers and today people even gets around paywalls with ease. Non geek/nerd people, I mean. Then, using an external player for Youtube isn't rocket science. Several people do that with Newpipe for instance. On Chromium/FFox, yes, it can be done, 1GB it's the lower limit if you set up ZRAM and add some flags to the desktop shortcut. OFC, Ublock Origin it's a must. UBo, LXDE and Ungoogled Chromium with some custom flags (I can set an /etc/profile.d/chromium.sh guide with ease for any user) can make a Core Duo or Celeron notebook usable with just 2GB of RAM as today that machine can be handled as the new 'low end', kinda like a Pentium IV with SSE2 in 2008-2010. 1GB of ZRAM would be usable enough with ZRAM and just keeping two or three tabs open, something not unusual for the typical user. Even for a researcher. Also, both Chromium and Firefox have automatic tab suspending options, so in the end the CPU usage can be much lower and the RAM one would just be paged (and most JS bytecode or JIT will be GC'ed in the spot for sure, as there's no point on keeping objects for suspended tabs).
        Rinzler89 2y ago
        >Ahem. Back in the day we were used to use a lot of niche software for legacy machines, and we succeeded. Who's this "WE"? Not me I think. And "back in the day" computers were very expensive warranting the time investment into keeping them going, while now they're disposable commodities. Is it worth it to most (western) people who's labor costs are around 20$-80$/hour to spend hours/days figuring out Linux and several quirky tools and hacks that even tech workers never heard of, just to get a PC working that people wouldn't even take for free? Answer this. Why not spend all that time in more meaningful endeavors instead of keeping alive a piece of junk. It's cool if that's your hobby, but for most people it isn't.
        anthk 2y ago
        >Not me Everyone did; any experienced user had to seek lighter alternatives at some point. >Why not spend Tell that to a musician I know which uses a netbook and it can use Mastodon thru https://brutaldon.org https://brutaldon.org under his old laptop he uses for music production, where audio software works but modern JS crawls it's machine lot.
anthk 2y ago
2003 and beyond , kernel 2.4/2.6 depending on the distro.
- Rinzler89 2y ago
  Yeah, things have changed since then. Good luck running modern Linx distros on anything less than 2GB of ram.
  - anthk 2y ago
    I am typing this from Dillo with a GB sized netbook; but with ZRAM I can spawn Luakit without too much trouble. CWM and GNUinos makes it possible.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - Rinzler89 2y ago
      Chapeau to you, but HN isn't a demanding website by modern standards though. I think a Nokia phone from 2003 can open it. People today expect to use every modern website be it Youtube or the shitty ones like Reddit without hickups, listen to Spotify, etc. Typing HTML comments from a 20 year old terminal-like device is a nice flex today, but not a useable daily driver for most real world users.
      - anthk 2y ago
        Lxde and lxdm run fine in a netbook. You have both graphical tools for Youtube and for Reddit https://old.reddit.com https://old.reddit.com will run perfectly fine once you set an adblocker.

In what year? Which Linux kernel version? I also ran Windows with 16Mb of RAM.

unleaded 2y ago

window maker will happily run on debian 12 with 256MB of RAM!

Rinzler89 2y ago
And do what with it? Type novels in vim? The moment you open Firefox empty tab, let alone Reddit/Youtube, everything goes to swap.
- shaky-carrousel 2y ago
  I used to have a specialized YouTube graphical client at that time. You don't need to load the bloated YouTube website to watch YouTube videos. Probably same applies to Reddit.
  - Rinzler89 2y ago
    Sure, but the average user won't put up with all this: seek lightweight alternative to Windows/Mac/Ubuntu, then seek lightweight alternative to Gnome/KDE, then seek lightweight alternative to Chrome/FF, then seek lightweight alternative clients to youtube and reddit, just so they can watch youtube and browse reddit. People are busy with work, life, etc, and life is too short, and sometimes going the quick and convenient way of having a system that can run Chrome/FF and Youtube/reddit out of the box, saves you time that you can spend with your loved ones or doing hobbies you like outdoors, instead spending hours/days faffing around learning and fiddling with niche obscure SW, just to feel triumphant that you found workarounds to running modern bloated SW on ancient obsolete HW people throw in the trash. Not promoting wastefulness here, but sometimes there are points of diminishing returns, even for techies on a budget. I just try to see if LinuxLite or Lubuntu can save the system. If it's too slow even for those then it goes in the trash, I'm not wasting time with obscure linux tools I'm not familiar with just to potentially save some worthless e-waste that's not even a museum piece. I know there's some tinkerers out there who can get to run youtube on a Pentium 3 for shits and giggles, but that's where I'd keep it, at tinkering/entertainment, since I'm not a masochist to actually recommend people daily drive such a thing or do that myself, just to prove a point against obsolescence. For example I tried to donate and find a new home online for my old Core2Quad PC from 2007 with 6GB of ram and 1TB mechanical HDD, and nobody would take it off my hands saying it's far too outdated to be usable today despite that not being true with some lightweight Linux on it, but people aren't looking to run and learn some new unfamiliar OS, they want Windows and Chrome and all that shit they're familiar with and would rather spend money to get something they see as usable instead of taking for free something they see as unusable. So I threw it in the trash.
    - anthk 2y ago
      Ahem. Back in the day we were used to use a lot of niche software for legacy machines, and we succeeded. Not even being bachelor graded engineers or trade/vocational sysadmins. We seeked alternative browsers and today people even gets around paywalls with ease. Non geek/nerd people, I mean. Then, using an external player for Youtube isn't rocket science. Several people do that with Newpipe for instance. On Chromium/FFox, yes, it can be done, 1GB it's the lower limit if you set up ZRAM and add some flags to the desktop shortcut. OFC, Ublock Origin it's a must. UBo, LXDE and Ungoogled Chromium with some custom flags (I can set an /etc/profile.d/chromium.sh guide with ease for any user) can make a Core Duo or Celeron notebook usable with just 2GB of RAM as today that machine can be handled as the new 'low end', kinda like a Pentium IV with SSE2 in 2008-2010. 1GB of ZRAM would be usable enough with ZRAM and just keeping two or three tabs open, something not unusual for the typical user. Even for a researcher. Also, both Chromium and Firefox have automatic tab suspending options, so in the end the CPU usage can be much lower and the RAM one would just be paged (and most JS bytecode or JIT will be GC'ed in the spot for sure, as there's no point on keeping objects for suspended tabs).
      - Rinzler89 2y ago
        >Ahem. Back in the day we were used to use a lot of niche software for legacy machines, and we succeeded. Who's this "WE"? Not me I think. And "back in the day" computers were very expensive warranting the time investment into keeping them going, while now they're disposable commodities. Is it worth it to most (western) people who's labor costs are around 20$-80$/hour to spend hours/days figuring out Linux and several quirky tools and hacks that even tech workers never heard of, just to get a PC working that people wouldn't even take for free? Answer this. Why not spend all that time in more meaningful endeavors instead of keeping alive a piece of junk. It's cool if that's your hobby, but for most people it isn't.
        anthk 2y ago
        >Not me Everyone did; any experienced user had to seek lighter alternatives at some point. >Why not spend Tell that to a musician I know which uses a netbook and it can use Mastodon thru https://brutaldon.org https://brutaldon.org under his old laptop he uses for music production, where audio software works but modern JS crawls it's machine lot.

anthk 2y ago

2003 and beyond , kernel 2.4/2.6 depending on the distro.

Rinzler89 2y ago
Yeah, things have changed since then. Good luck running modern Linx distros on anything less than 2GB of ram.
- anthk 2y ago
  I am typing this from Dillo with a GB sized netbook; but with ZRAM I can spawn Luakit without too much trouble. CWM and GNUinos makes it possible.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - Rinzler89 2y ago
    Chapeau to you, but HN isn't a demanding website by modern standards though. I think a Nokia phone from 2003 can open it. People today expect to use every modern website be it Youtube or the shitty ones like Reddit without hickups, listen to Spotify, etc. Typing HTML comments from a 20 year old terminal-like device is a nice flex today, but not a useable daily driver for most real world users.
    - anthk 2y ago
      Lxde and lxdm run fine in a netbook. You have both graphical tools for Youtube and for Reddit https://old.reddit.com https://old.reddit.com will run perfectly fine once you set an adblocker.