darry wrote on 2025-05-13, 01:22:

The point I was trying to make is that, while using Linux can keep old hardware usable and useful, there comes a point where eve […]
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The point I was trying to make is that, while using Linux can keep old hardware usable and useful, there comes a point where even pedestrian consumer appliance type hardware like a somewhat dated Chromebox can

- be faster
- run cooler
- be cheaper to operate

than very old high end desktop hardware, depending in the actual use case.

I think the future of linux, and OSes for 'desktop' generally is 64bit PCs and various SBC or similar low powered devices with an increasing trend towards everything being "cloud" and "AI" with the devices being always online, being basically high spec input/output devices. That's a guesstimate - difficult to strongly predict anything.

https://www.techradar.com/pro/pc-sales-are-ri … leading-the-way

PC sales were up again recently.... You can find market analysts that consider the volumes to stay up long term too, whether that means Linux can keep up and whether the concept of having a PC offline most of the time (like we did back in the day) will seem strange i dont know

Just noticed this video on YT:
Linux Kernel Rapidly Removing Hardware Support Because of AI / LLM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vDSSxaQ7ZU

This resonates with me, the idea that Linux would save old and obscure hardware was what I respected most about Linux.

That guy is basically mentioning certaing things that I mentioned earlier.

32bit still has many uses however doesn't have the interest it once had and isn't being manufactured much any more.
The only 32bit CPU’s I’ve seen for many many years are only for specific applications outside personal computing.
Perhaps it people need or want a 32bit kernel start your own community Linux Distro to keep a kernel fork for it.
I'm waiting for 128bit CPU’s tbh.

Yeah, been watching and tracking all the shenanigans going on with the kernel of late and removal of legacy drivers that have been STABLE for years is a bit worrying.

Removal because AI likes to poke at things it shouldn't and is fascinated by the older driver code.

Might be time to start making archives of the older distros that have full legacy hardware support.

Trashbytes wrote on Today, 08:10:

Yeah, been watching and tracking all the shenanigans going on with the kernel of late and removal of legacy drivers that have been STABLE for years is a bit worrying.

Removal because AI likes to poke at things it shouldn't and is fascinated by the older driver code.

Might be time to start making archives of the older distros that have full legacy hardware support.

Older linux kernels and distros are always preserved and it's not like you are actually benefiting from anything in a modern kernel when using an i486 so I really fail to understand what the big issue is. I never understood the big hardon linux nerds got from installing Arch on a 486. Like, good fucking job, what are you going to do with it, watch Youtube? Just install a decent contemporary kernel and enjoy.

Jo22 wrote on Today, 05:48:

Just noticed this video on YT: Linux Kernel Rapidly Removing Hardware Support Because of AI / LLM https://www.youtube.com/watch? […]
Show full quote

Just noticed this video on YT:
Linux Kernel Rapidly Removing Hardware Support Because of AI / LLM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vDSSxaQ7ZU

This resonates with me, the idea that Linux would save old and obscure hardware was what I respected most about Linux.

That guy is basically mentioning certaing things that I mentioned earlier.

Thankfully, there is always NetBSD, which has portability across the widest and most obscure platforms as its main goal.

And to be fair, there are some older platforms and machines out there that may have been technically supported by the Linux kernel, but were dropped in most (if not all) common distros years ago. I think this is particularly the case for big-endian architectures such as SPARC and PowerPC.

For instance, there is a Sun Blade 150 workstation at my Dad's house that I've been wanting to dust off, upgrade as much as possible and breathe some new life into. I have already decided to go with NetBSD for that machine, since I want to try installing more modern hardware in its PCI slots, and only NetBSD has strict cross-platform portability (also in its hardware abstraction layer and in all of its drivers) in its design. I already assumine that I'd be running in to way too many issues getting Linux, Solaris or Illumos to work on it.

Although I might try various operating systems and distros for comparison, once I at least have it working with NetBSD.

Jo22 wrote on Today, 05:48:

This resonates with me, the idea that Linux would save old and obscure hardware was what I respected most about Linux.

Last time I checked, modern Linux was useless for GPU acceleration on hardware below OpenGL 2.0. So not really.