Comments on: Old hardware a handicap? Au contraire!

By: The worst best torrent client list « Motho ke motho ka botho

The worst best torrent client list « Motho ke motho ka botho — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 01:22:37 +0000

[...] had another one of those proverbial coffee-spitting moments this morning when I got a link to PC Magazine’s list of the best torrent clients for [...]

By: Twenty-ten: The picks of the litter « Motho ke motho ka botho

Twenty-ten: The picks of the litter « Motho ke motho ka botho — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 23:40:15 +0000

[...] mentioned the other day that I learned more about Linux from a 450Mhz K6-2 running Crux than I ever did with any more powerful machine. That’s very [...]

By: notzed

notzed — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 21:32:10 +0000

Well they have a point – have you tried any ‘modern’ distributions? You can barely even install them with 256mb of memory, let alone bring up the default login manager. Although using xdm and a plain window manager they are fine. I did years of C development on a 128mb machine.

But at least on this machine, 512mb is ok with a relatively modern system – it makes a huge difference. This is the only machine i still have with ubuntu on it, but i wont be upgrading it any time soon. It took a bit of tweaking to get rid of all the heavy junk you don’t need and i don’t really feel like going through all that again just to run a web browser.

By: Links 27/10/2010: Red Hat CEO on Growth, Fedora 14 Preview | Techrights

Links 27/10/2010: Red Hat CEO on Growth, Fedora 14 Preview | Techrights — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 14:41:34 +0000

[...] Old hardware a handicap? Au contraire! Whoa, waitaminute. A 1.7Ghz machine with a healthy 256Mb will be a handicap to learning Linux? A handicap? Even when armed with lightweight applications? [...]

By: More reasons to learn from old computers « Motho ke motho ka botho

More reasons to learn from old computers « Motho ke motho ka botho — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 23:02:51 +0000

[...] still a bit wired over the post from a day or two ago, insisting that a 1.7Ghz machine with a healthy amount of RAM and a decent-sized hard drive would [...]

By: WDS

WDS — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 15:33:05 +0000

I also like to see what an old machine can do. Right now i am using a Pentium II with a Pentium III 600 mhz CPU and 256 MB of ram running PCLINUXOS LXDE. The only thing that slows it down is when the package manager is opened and used and if something is wrong you find out quickly. I have a computer i got for free with an AMD Thunderbird 1.4 ghz with 512 mb of ram running XP. It is now my eBay/website work station. Since we are a disposable impatient society a lot of still usable hardware gets trashed. The person that wrote the article must buy a new computer every year.

By: lefty.crupps

lefty.crupps — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 12:36:31 +0000

For whatever reason, I am a big fan of ‘underpowered’ hardware and seeing what I can do with it (partly because its often considered ‘underpowered’ and I get it for free!). It’s much more interesting to stree an old machine than seeing what I can do with a quad-core machine (which is pretty much anything). Occasionally I’ll pull out some older P2 laptop and boot a new LiveCD to see how it performs, perhaps installing it, seeing what CLI and GUI apps I can run.

Running my OS as CLI (with [ctrl][alt]f1] for example) and turning off some services also allows me to work on my EeePC laptop for longer periods of time (while in the car for example), so knowing the command line can be very useful there as well.

By: Theo

Theo — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 22:16:50 +0000

Not all Ubuntu users are people with shiny desktops. With the machine I am working with at this moment, it was a reasonable option. Even Puppy was too slow (PII 233, 150mb).
If an Athlon 1.7 with 256 mb is underpowered, this must be a miracle

http://www.imagebam.com/image/c507b2103813264

By: Michael

Michael — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 21:40:17 +0000

It’s all perspective. I somehow get day-to-day task done on my 900Mhz eee pc with 512MB RAM and 4GB SSD This site always seems to show how to improvise with fewer resources.

By: Philologus

Philologus — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 20:38:34 +0000

i quit using plain ubuntu on my dual-core toshiba with 2gb ram and switched to a base install debian with e17. I like the fact that i can dedicate most of my memory and cpu cycles to doing work and not just running the gui.

life is now good. It’s the only window manager i know that’ll crash and restart without touching your open apps! And yes, i cycled through Kde,Xfce,Lxde to mention a few. my soul has found rest at last.