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Silly question
Silly question
Posted Feb 24, 2006 23:48 UTC (Fri) by foo-bar (guest, #22971)Parent article: Linux distros for older hardware (Linux.com)
But isn't it easier to buy a nice, fast and quite PC than to maintain all this ancient iron ??
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Silly question
Posted Feb 24, 2006 23:58 UTC (Fri) by abovett (subscriber, #13139) [Link]
If you can afford and justify it, then yes, definitely - but not everyone can. Even todays relatively cheap PCs are still too expensive for some people, especially if you need several (e.g. a network for a non-profit group or charity). I'm still managing PCs of this vintage that are in regular use.
Andy B
Silly question
Posted Feb 25, 2006 0:01 UTC (Sat) by dlang (subscriber, #313) [Link]
if you are only needing one machine it very well may be, but if you are trying to support many machines (think non-profit orginization) the cost of buying all the new machines needed can be very high (plus, the non-profit has much better things to do with the money)
in addition, even if a new machine can paper over the problem, that's still resources that aren't available for other things. I for one useually have several things going on in the background and it would be nice to speed them up by having things like browsers eat fewer resources.
Silly question
Posted Feb 25, 2006 1:32 UTC (Sat) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
For replacing aging windows 2000 or 98 installs I've found that IceWM works out nicely. It provides a nice familar interface for non-technical users, you can stick little icons on the taskbar for needed applications using the icepref configuration program.
XFE is a close clone to the Microsoft Explorer thing.. it's based off of the X Wincommander, which seems dead now.
The only very confusing thing is probably the virtual desktops. It'll make windows 'disapear', so that will take some getting used to or have that disabled or whatnot.
Silly question
Posted Feb 25, 2006 9:30 UTC (Sat) by danieldk (subscriber, #27876) [Link]
fvwm95 comes even closer :), and is extremely light. I used a P100 with 64MB RAM and fvwm95 on Slack as an extra X terminal for a while. Worked very well!
Silly question
Posted Feb 25, 2006 3:34 UTC (Sat) by Ross (subscriber, #4065) [Link]
Sadly, this isn't always something in your control. For example I use an old Ultra 10 at work. It's old and slow, but it's the only dedicated Linux desktop I have (primary desktops have to run Windows far various annoying reasons). I can't justify a purchase of another system just so I can have Linux running full-time. Thankfully I can dual boot, use cygwin, and use virtual systems on my Windows system -- but it's just not the same.
And yes, I've noticed that Netscape 4.x is many times faster than the newer browsers -- and only slightly more crash-prone. But I try not to use it for any external sites because it is a huge security problem.
I also noticed that the Adaptech SCSI driver only works for a few hundred MB of data before crashing 2.4 UltraSPARC kernels. :)
Silly question
Posted Feb 25, 2006 14:10 UTC (Sat) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link]
But isn't it easier to buy a nice, fast and quite PC than to maintain all this ancient iron ??At work I refurbished an old HP workstation (PA-RISC inside @ 200 MHz) and loaded Debian sarge to use it as a server. Yes, it may be old and slow, but the hardware is still up and running after 10 years -- it is now a rock solid cvs and web server with uptimes in excess of 300 days, and with a high geek factor.
Another possibility is to take that old PC and use it as a router, firewall or any other secondary role -- with a couple of network adapters and a switch, you may build a router far more robust than any commercial offerings, more configurable, and far cheaper. Even if you buy the shiny new system, don't discard the old one too fast.
Silly question
Posted Feb 26, 2006 1:43 UTC (Sun) by clump (subscriber, #27801) [Link]
man_ls, it looks like you and I are part of the "Linux on everything" crowd. And that suits me just fine. I had to deal with HP hardware some years back. I knew Debian offered a port and would have loved to run Linux as opposed to HPUX. HPUX, though friendly, isn't my cup of tea.
Silly question
Posted Feb 26, 2006 10:56 UTC (Sun) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link]
To be honest, about two years ago I was looking for a web server, and the only machine available at the time was the 1997 vintage HP Visualize B180L workstation. Debian sarge (testing at the time) had a port for PA-RISC and was very well suited to the machine; I even loaded KDE 3.2 at some point and it ran fine on its 180 MHz processor, though later I removed it since I would be controlling the server using SSH.I also tried this 1996 IBM RS/6000 43p-140 we had lying around; its interior was eerily similar to my old PowerMac 7500, no doubt because of their common PReP heritage. Sadly the hardware was much worse condition than the HP's (it made strange noises), and its firmware was horrible too. After booting several times from serial console or diskette I was fed up. In contrast, with the HP you just load the CD-ROM, started and installed, much like you do today.
To be even more honest, the geek factor of all this hardware was very high: rescuing these machines from the dump was a big satisfaction. Then I rescued an old PII @ 400 MHz to use as a custom made firewall/router using two network adapters and an old hub; and finally a retiring PIII @ 800 MHz to use as a Java workstation/server. All of them with Debian, of course; all headless except for this last one which had icewm. We then had the core of a corporate network at a total cost of 0 €; uptime in excess of 300 days, zero intrussions, and it has been running smoothly since I left a year ago, with minimal maintenance by a colleague. Linux on everything, yeah. How can we not love GNU/Linux?
Silly question
Posted Feb 26, 2006 20:18 UTC (Sun) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link]
For routers one can buy things like an ASUS wL500G Deluxe and throw the OpenWRT distribution at it.5 switched network ports, WLAN, a 200MHz processor, 32MB RAM and two USB2 ports for external storage, an ISDN adapter for VoIP and so on...
And all that for 90 Euro and maybe 5 Watts of electical power and of course no noise whatsoever. The power savings alone should account for the little investment over an old PC in a year or so.
Silly question
Posted Feb 25, 2006 14:40 UTC (Sat) by Azraell (guest, #36118) [Link]
But isn't it easier to buy a nice, fast and quiet PC than to maintain all this ancient iron ??
I think there are FAR more important matters than "easyness" :
1- Money
2- World Preservation(If you can save an "ancient iron" it's one less "ancient iron" NOT-decomposing on some "developing" country
3- Geekness factor( I think this one should be on the 1st position... :-)
And answering your question:
"nice": I don't know what do you mean by nice...
"fast": The processor clock is way overrated; the amount of RAM is much more important, even using an old Pentium 200.
"quiet": Any old PC is quieter than a new one, they have plain normal coolers/fans not these little plane turbines of nowadays.
Silly question
Posted Feb 25, 2006 16:12 UTC (Sat) by chel (guest, #11544) [Link]
Just a few comments.
Money: I do have a number of old Mutia's. One I used as a server for backups. I replaced it with a Linksys NSLU2 costing about E 75,=. The Linksys only consumes a few Watt, most of it is in the display (4 Leds) I think.
World Preservation: Well I think those 14 year old 64 bit Alpha's should be preserved. For the time being I preserve my 5 Multia's without power switched on ...
Quiet: ... that is much quieter.
Geekness factor: Both the Linksys and the Multia do fine.
Silly question
Posted Feb 26, 2006 1:39 UTC (Sun) by wildpossum (guest, #17744) [Link]
Sometimes it's actually not easier.
My friend has an older laptop with a broken HD. He could buy a 3.5" HD or get a new laptop. Instead at my suggestion, he booted Puppy Linux on it and his daughter saves work to a flash drive. This works very well, the machine's batteries are dead anyway and it has to run off a power point so it's only used as a machine to edit the occasional file, export as RTF and continue on a Windows machine in school.
That was so easy to do that he's forgotten about his plan to get a new HD. So that's money saved which he can use elsewhere, hopefully to benefit his daughter. And old equipment delayed from going to the landfill, and an new laptop which doesn't have to be manufactured.