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Could the greatest desktop environment be a free one?

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Lead Head:
I think one thing is the ever changing definition of an old low-end computer. 4-5 years ago, something low end and old would be a 1GHz P3 - 1.8GHz P4, or an old AMD Athlon. Now an old low end computer is a 2.0GHz+ Athlon 64 system with 512MB + of ram. You see those older Athlon 64 systems selling for less then $100 all the time.

Aloone_Jonez:

--- Quote from: Lead Head on  9 March 2010, 01:15 ---Now an old low end computer is a 2.0GHz+ Athlon 64 system with 512MB + of ram. You see those older Athlon 64 systems selling for less then $100 all the time.
--- End quote ---
Which is great.

Goodness knows why so many people buy new computers, just for browsing the Internet, word processing and watching a few DVDs on when they could get and old PC that will do all of that for a fraction of the cost. I suppose they succumb to the marketing hype from Ballmer and co.

The the main problem with modern bloated software is the RAM, but most motherboards from a that era can take up to 4GB RAM which will make them reasonably future proof and as RAM upgrades get cheaper, it becomes more worth while. It's probably still a good idea to replace the hard drive, as it's a common thing to fail and you'll notice a performance boost going from a POS IDE 5800RPM drive to a 7200RPM drive.

piratePenguin:

--- Quote from: Lead Head on  9 March 2010, 01:15 ---I think one thing is the ever changing definition of an old low-end computer. 4-5 years ago, something low end and old would be a 1GHz P3 - 1.8GHz P4, or an old AMD Athlon. Now an old low end computer is a 2.0GHz+ Athlon 64 system with 512MB + of ram. You see those older Athlon 64 systems selling for less then $100 all the time.

--- End quote ---
I'd say the ever-changing definition of a low-end computer is towards computers with 'slow', but efficient cpus (Atom 1.6Ghz on eee pcs) and a gig or more of ram?

And I guess it's not incidental that this coincides with software using more ram for cache and generally using more memory nowadays, my guess is this is by far the best way for a computer to deliver a better experience?

Until about 12 months ago I was using an athlon xp 2600+ with 300ish mb of ram, I did NOT have a problem with running gnome, firefox and anything I wanted. Then again, I didn't keep the process manager open to add up the numbers either, and to make sure my ram wouldn't get (gasp) full. There's a memory manager in Linux, and it works like a charm. I've tried it.

piratePenguin:
I actually think this is a pretty cool idea: run moblin or android on your old computers :D
There may actually be incompatibilities with old hardware however, I don't know. I must try moblin on this netbook sometime, it looks fucking sexy.

Calum:
hi worker and PP, sorry i forgot to mention, i'm pretty sure i have put in 768MB of RAM in total to the PC (should have mentioned that) but can't check right now as i'm not at home.

I agree with what you both say, but my main gripe is the non-scalability (in terms of required spec) of virtually all modern linux systems. It used to be that you got a super fast linux system with all the whistles and bells if you ran it on a modern machine, but you really could run it on anything all the way back to a 386, with varying degrees of success depending on RAM, CPU and HDD speed and all the usuals. Nowadays, you're screwed with most linux systems if you haven't got the latest kit, plus hardware incompatibilities seem to crop up (for me anyway) more than in the past, are they just not fixing them, thinking people should just upgrade their hardware? This is the microsoft model. Disappointing if so.

So, now users of linux OSs are in the forced hardware upgrade cycle too, and stupidly, linux vendors don't even get a kickback from this, it's just a product of their laziness. At leas MS always had a monetary incentive to force hardware upgrades. :-(

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