Using A Very Old Machine
tsk.bearblog.dev
tsk.bearblog.dev
CD drive, yup all of my computers have them.
i-series Intel chip, nope, none of my boxes have them. I am still on Core-duo/quad technology.
I don't really consider my computer _very_ old, and it runs all of my stuff. Granted, I am a sysadmin and do not do a lot of GIMP/ffmpeg... I am in the "cobbler has no shoes" camp, and not really by choice, but to say an i3 is really old or that you use a "very old" machine seems a bit of a stretch. It was not too long ago those came out.
As of a few months ago I've finally switched to a main computer that isn't a Core2 Duo or a PowerPC G4, both of which have been (and still are) mainstays of my personal computing journey for about a decade (once I finally left behind Pentium 4s). Heck, it was only a few years ago I was doing Dual Core Pentium to Core2 Quad CPU upgrades on our production fleet at work. Does time really move that fast?
I've casually tried out probably all the popular performance-oriented Linux distros. Some of them aren't really what they claim to be (Zorin OS Lite, for instance), while some perform fairly well (Debian + LXQT). Windows is surprisingly good in the GUI performance department, too! But all is well only until you open a browser or start updating the system. Then it doesn't matter which OS you are running since it won't really be 'running' anymore. One core simply isn't enough for the modern systems to run well, apparently.
Kinda makes me sad that I have to fiddle with the distros and be looking for alternatives for essential software like web-browser as I recall Windows XP running simply great on the thing. I'd really like to know what that is we get these days on the modern systems that hogs the CPU like it does.
PS: for those in the same boat, Midori [0] performs considerably better than mainstream browsers while having fairly tidy looks and a few useful features like an ad blocking mechanism and ability to disable scripts and images.
Pre-emptive multitasking should allow your system to run multiple programs just fine, provided you've got a sufficiently fast core in the first place.
My Sony Vaio Z790 from 2009 with Intel Core Duo P9700 runs just fine (though that has an SSD as well): it's dual core score is identical to it's single core score on cpubenchmark.net at around ~1100, while the fastest Atom never reached more than 1000 single-core score until Q2 2021 (with x6211E), and there are still only 5 of Atom CPUs that beat that, and another 4 topping 800 ever. So your netbook likely has a super slow single core with low cache too.
At the time of the netbook craze, I've invested in one of the fancy metal HP "business" netbooks on the expensive side (~$500): lovely 10-11" machine, but slow as hell. I quickly sold it away after basically not using it at all.
Edit: I just looked it up, and it was HP Mini 2140 with a feisty N270 Atom CPU scoring an entirety of ~170 on cpubenchmark in both single- and multi-core benchmarks.
My home server/NAS is a refurb Dell.
Now freelancing so my current laptop is my daughters old Thinkpad E-450 (also bought as a refurb) - one CTRL keytop is missing and it has a corner crack , just added more memory and a SSD.
Got a Xeon E3-1220 board and CPU for free as backup just in case the i7 dies.
He also reacquired my first computer, which was an obscure 8080A machine ("Interact") with a tape drive.
I fondly think of those two machines which achieved far more than they had any right to. And honestly I sometimes think if the internet and some other bits of software weren't such a mess they'd probably still be fine for most day-to-day things.
Understandable if you're a gamer, working in VR or heavy graphics, perhaps something with a decent GPU and a not-too-old CPU will be helpful.
Most of my work is web dev, plenty of webpack, browser tabs, PHPStorm & IDEA Ultimate doing their thing on a T-class 4th generation Intel CPU. It could be faster, sure, but I'm more often waiting for my brain than the machine. SSD & plenty of RAM helps a ton more than a fast CPU for this use case.
I do find it useful to dogfood on older devices: if what I'm working on is slow for me, it may well be slow for a reasonable proportion of its users, too.
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Dell-Precision-M4400-No...
I repasted, repadded, and thoroughly cleaned mine a couple of months ago. I did that because the cpu got pretty hot, even with low load. After the cleaning cpu temperature was about 10 degress lower. And it's not hard to do, because these machines are easy to take apart. I also replaced the battery recently (now 3rth one I think). And I should actually replace the CMOS battery, because it's completely dead. It's really nice laptop, the only drawback is the weight.
I really like the Dell Precisions and I think the more recent ones are also well-built. They are professional laptops and not cheap, but worth it in my opinion.
Where old systems fail often aren't directly tied to raw power. Better trackpads. Battery usage (both due to old batteries and better power management). The ability to drive modern displays so that your Times New Roman has smoother outlines.
Laptop screens, on average (high-end older systems might have better ones than "prosumer" ones from the 2020s).
I buy my computers basically maxed out, and use them literally forever.
Could not afford a new Mac so I switched back to Windows.
The only re-purposing I could do with my otherwise perfect phone was to consign it to the great pile of old phones I have after the app stopped working to unlock my car.
Wait... what? You had to use an app to unlock your car!?
What manufacturer was this? Did it come that way from the factory?
A dual socket 2687W system (16C/32T, 3.1GHz base, 3.8GHz turbo, octa channel DDR3) can still keep up with a Ryzen 5600X for suitable workloads. And fits into 1U.
Much harder to emulate with a cluster of 486 or C64 (and then 2x2687 total power draw of >500W under full load would seem like a rounding error).
My wife has said several times that I should replace it but I can't justify getting rid of a dependable machine.
I used a 2003 (or so) desktop computer as my only personal one until 2014, and I'm not really one to upgrade often or for no reason, but it has started becoming seriously limiting by then. That was partially because of the growing performance demands of the web and, in particular, because (proprietary) software started requiring features that the CPU simply didn't have. It was probably one of the last AMD CPUs without SSE2 support, though, and that was the first hard limit I ran into. Nowadays 32-bitness alone would probably limit even general desktop software you can run.
I have a hard time imagining what it would have been like to use a similar machine all the way until recent years.
It could definitely be faster, but it’s fast enough for almost everything. Rust builds are on the slow side, and this is what I do most on this machine… but to be honest, I just ran some comparisons against the 2019 machine I have at work and they don’t /feel/ that different. I don’t see a great reason to spend several $k on a maxed out machine from 2022 and replace it…
And I kinda like the feeling of holding onto this “old” cool machine.
Of course, when I first saw that, I thought it was a Commodore that I’d never heard of before.
my current daily driver is a i3-370M which is pretty close in performance (although i have a radeon hd 5470 so atleast i can play modded terraria with semi stutters) The 3GB of ram is quite limiting but zram at least lets me use it fully without unbearable lag (it's quite fun when the computer is working full tilt; 100% cpu, technically more than available ram being used (i saw like 6-7G used with imagemagick) and my music playing in the background occasionally stuttering :P)
I just upgraded from my trusty 2011-built i5-2500K, not for any performance reason, but because the motherboard was getting flaky with random poweroff events and difficulty powering on again. My new i5-12400F doesn't really feel much faster. (I'd upgraded the old system along the way with better GPU and SSD)
My daily driver home machine is an i5-760 (Released in 2010!) with a GTX 1060, and it works GREAT. I play lots of RTS-like games in 4K via Steam (Stellaris, Civ, Timberborn, Factorio, Valheim, etc) and there's absolutely no problem whatsoever. The "pcmasterrace" mentality that makes you think nothing works without the latest & greatest CPUs & Graphics is just blatantly false.
I've always run Ubuntu on it as my daily driver, and I think that's part of my success. Windows machines of this age are seem to be more susceptible to long-term performance degradation.
As a comparison, I routinely use it side-by-side with much more recent machines (Intel 10th gens) provided by my workplace, and all the machines feel nearly identical in speed and performance to my 12-year old beater.
My only regret/hope is that my ancient motherboard doesn't seem to support more than 8G RAM, which is a bit annoying given how cheap memory is at this point.
I think linux is an important part of using old machines. I use a 2014 11" Macbook Air, (not too old, but quite a weak processor for 2014), and macOS and Windows run like treacle. Stock Ubuntu with Gnome is snappy though, I don't even need one of the lightweight variants.
Anyway, I find this as a good practice. First, to continue using perfectly working machines, and second, to develop in machines that aren't that powerful to be more conscious about resources used by the software you make.
That's why you'll see me commenting here that linked websites are bloat and take 10 seconds to load (: (OP'd website and HN are great though)
I'm curious, how quickly does our product load for you? [1]
The SSR version should be much faster [2].
[1] https://fastcomments.com/demo
[2] https://fastcomments.com/ssr/comments?tenantId=nYrnfYEv&urlI...
I inputted this-is-an-example-email@example as the E-Mail address, and as the response to the form submission, received a plain JSON document, which may not be desired. http://1507103400/dir/fastcomments.txt <= request example
But regarding performance I'd say it's perfectly usable. `neofetch --stdout` output of the machine on which I tested is also in the linked file. I used the palemoon browser.
I didn't test out Links browser, there's a chance it might work.
We execute the frontend code server side and there are some edge cases here and there :)
I use Badwolf as the primary browser, which comes with built in toggles for disabling images and JS loading, and that makes web browsing tolerable most of the time. I've even managed to stream from it to Twitch using ffmpeg without much of a problem!
Gentoo packages the links web browser, which is very minimal (own rendering system) and not useful for modern browsing, but useful for reading articles (also HN works).
There used to be a package repository for Debian for ungoogled-chromium, but that recently stopped being updated, so I uninstalled it. I never managed to build it on Gentoo, it took multiple days and I never had the patience.
Badwolf looks interesting but unfortunately doesn't have any ad-blocking programs.
BTW, it SHOULD be considered old. Maybe not retro level. But old. The author means old as a functional computer which can be used in day to day work or even professional.
When looking at older Dell og Lenovo laptops, the thing that keeps me from buying is the screen. I suppose I could just use it with an external monitor.
I could replace the screen, but if it's a structural fault, that just puts me out €100 without anything to show for it. Also, it's got another problem where the sound breaks whenever I (un)dock the laptop.
I've reinstalled Windows and all the drivers, but that's solved neither problem. Perhaps it's time to move on. Can anyone else relate to this weird sense of defeat?
[1] https://www.notebookcheck.net/Why-Pulse-Width-Modulation-PWM...
Upgraded storage as my original m2 ssd wore out.
My daily driver is only one generation newer.