{"id":1511,"date":"2018-05-16T17:22:25","date_gmt":"2018-05-16T22:22:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alandmoore.com\/blog\/?p=1511"},"modified":"2018-05-16T11:24:38","modified_gmt":"2018-05-16T16:24:38","slug":"random-thoughts-about-linux-on-old-computers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alandmoore.com\/blog\/2018\/05\/16\/random-thoughts-about-linux-on-old-computers\/","title":{"rendered":"Random thoughts about “Linux on old computers”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many years ago I wrote a series on “reviving your old PC with Linux<\/a>“, a topic which still remains in active discussion all around the Linuxy corners of the Interwebs.\u00a0 Most of what I wrote still applies, so long as you shift things forward seven years into the future.\u00a0 But as someone who continues to engage in the hobby (and discussion of the hobby) of foisting free operating systems on whatever decaying PC hulks float my way,\u00a0 I thought I’d write up random thoughts about the subject in response to things people say or the changes in computing.\u00a0 A bit of a rant, a bit of state-of-the-union, and a little thinking out-loud on the topic of old hardware running old faithful.<\/p>\n

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Is your computer too old?<\/h2>\n

This, of course, is a factor of what you plan to do with the computer and how patient you are to wait for software to load or finish processing.\u00a0 For me, for desktop use in 2018, the cutoff age is around 13 years.\u00a0 When Windows Vista came out in 2006, it’s comparatively massive resource requirements pushed computing hardware forward from single-core processors and 512 Megabytes of RAM to dual-core systems with 2 GB.\u00a0 The latter machines, properly configured, remain tolerably usable for a variety of tasks.<\/p>\n

Linux will run on older machines — much<\/em> older machines — but the utility of such hardware declines precipitously.\u00a0 Apart from being hot, noisy, and subject to capacitor failure, such computers will barely run modern X11, much less a desktop environment or applications.\u00a0 I suppose if you’re in dire straits, need a PC, and don’t mind using weird, ugly, feature-poor software, (or just doing everything in Emacs) you could employ an XP rustbucket like this.<\/p>\n

Of course, most people just want to run one particular type of program, and that’s where the next issue starts.<\/p>\n

The browser conundrum<\/h2>\n

“Web browsing” used be considered a lightweight activity.\u00a0 There was a time when it was.\u00a0 Seven years ago, you could load up some cut-down browser like Dillo or Netsurf and enjoy a slightly ugly-yet-still-functional world wide web.\u00a0 (Lack of Flash support might have been a problem for video or gaming sites, but mostly it was a blessing to be immune to animated ads.)<\/p>\n

Not anymore.\u00a0\u00a0 Modern web pages have become nearly useless if you can’t download and execute multiple megabytes of JavaScript in a browser that supports all the latest web APIs.\u00a0 Even sites like blogs or news networks, where you mostly go to read text, might fail to load at all without complete JS support.\u00a0 Blame developers, blame stakeholders, blame users, blame it on the rain; it comes to the same thing: web browsing has become as fussy and demanding as a hungry toddler.<\/p>\n

The result is three strata of browsers:<\/p>\n