StephanG
April 1st, 2011, 05:55 PM
I've been thinking about this for a while:
As computers are becoming faster and faster, are the oldest computers that are still operational are also slowly becoming faster. I mean, a PC can only run for a limited period of time before something breaks that can't be replaced anymore.
One of Linux's many advantages, is that can still run well on reasonably old hardware, with many distro's designed for that specific purpose. But where do we draw the line?
My father said that his first computer didn't have a hard drive at all. And then later he got one with a grand AWESOME 20MB!!! Now obviously, if we want Linux to run on computers that old, we start hurting our own community, because the kernel needs to be kept incredibly small, support for USB, CDROM, etc. is a waste of space in a PC that predates such devices by eons.
Even the lighweight desktops like XFCE, LXDE, etc. will quickly become irrelevant if they sacrifice features that users want, just so that it can run on hardware that doesn't exist anymore.
So, my question is a bit philosophical: How do we, as a community decide what is too old?
I'm interested to hear what you think.
As computers are becoming faster and faster, are the oldest computers that are still operational are also slowly becoming faster. I mean, a PC can only run for a limited period of time before something breaks that can't be replaced anymore.
One of Linux's many advantages, is that can still run well on reasonably old hardware, with many distro's designed for that specific purpose. But where do we draw the line?
My father said that his first computer didn't have a hard drive at all. And then later he got one with a grand AWESOME 20MB!!! Now obviously, if we want Linux to run on computers that old, we start hurting our own community, because the kernel needs to be kept incredibly small, support for USB, CDROM, etc. is a waste of space in a PC that predates such devices by eons.
Even the lighweight desktops like XFCE, LXDE, etc. will quickly become irrelevant if they sacrifice features that users want, just so that it can run on hardware that doesn't exist anymore.
So, my question is a bit philosophical: How do we, as a community decide what is too old?
I'm interested to hear what you think.