22 May
2024
22 May
'24
12:20 a.m.
On 5/21/24 6:56 PM, deloptes via tde-devels wrote:
Yes, slow compared to modern computers, including 10/100 Mbps NICs (my
486 has a 10 Mbps NIC!). But I have been using computers for more than
40 years and at one time these systems were state of the art. The 486
saw extensive action in the 1990s as my main work horse making a living
as a tech writer.
Desktop environments are a tad slow, which is why I try to compile TDE
for these older systems. Running KDE or GNOME is impossible. Many
functions from the console are acceptably responsive -- not fast but
acceptable. I don't run these systems 24/7 or even daily. Often they sit
for a few weeks until I get the urge to tinker with something specific.
Important though is I like tinkering with them much like people tinker
with old cars. There is a strong nostalgic effect playing with them. I
wish I still had my C-64 and Amiga 1000 and 3000.
Another benefit of tinkering is I receive feedback with my daily "admin"
efforts because the systems are slower. I might tweak a system wide
shell script only to find the slower system does not respond like the
other systems.
I run older Slackware releases on the older hardware. This helps me tune
my "admin" skills in that a lot tends to change from one release to the
next -- in any distro. Every time there is a new release I always find
some of my shell scripts failing on previous releases or the new
release. That helps me keep learning.
At one time I worked as a Linux admin and I always have been the
computer go-to person in the office. Being retired I like being able to
play admin at home without some numb nut supervisor or owner looking
over my shoulder.
The tinkering helps me keep my mind ticking. I don't want to start
drooling in my arm chair. I can't stop aging, none of us can, but I can
impede the effects by keeping my mind and body active.
we are 3 of us in the household and we use
2800kWh/year which give 233/month
(and cooking is electric :) ) or 319W/h. All the PCs use about 150W/h. I
think it is fair, given that I work now from home most of the time.
Sounds as though we both focus on energy conservation. :) Last summer I
replaced most light bulbs in the house with equivalent LEDs. I ran a
rough estimate on the return with the electric bill and decided I would
break even in less than two years not using incandescent bulbs.
I replaced HDs in some computers with SSDs as well as updating some
monitors to further reduce energy usage.
The real
benefit is because I want to. Tinkering with older computers
brings me pleasure. Like keeping KDE3 on life support?
Of course you have the right to do it and it is respected. My question was
why would you try building on that old hardware not why you would use TDE
on the old hardware. I find it boring ... it is like slooooow
mooootiooon :) It is just unnecessary power consumption. Same with
old card, but they at
least cost something (asset).
Unnecessary to whom? One person's garbage is another person's treasure
and all that. I also have vintage virtual machines. They get used more
often than the vintage hardware, but nothing simulates real hardware
like real hardware.
On the PC I use as server I put SSDs few years ago and
moved the TDE repo
there. With addition of ninja (thanks Slavek) it now builds whole TDE in
couple of hours. I build few times in qemu for armel/armhf and arm64 ... it
took almost 2 days.
Well, a day or two ago I mentioned the wiki listing build times. I wrote
that section long ago after I had just purchased my first dual core.
Build times today make those old wiki times look strange.