And that are the GNU/Linux users.
It puts you in the driverâs seat and the rest is on you⊠(OK, not that simple, but you know what I try to sayâŠ)
Iâd like to quote a hero of the nerd world:
Last week i bought a chain saw with a twisted handle. Perhaps i wasnât careful, but by accident it chopped one of my arm off, then i thought to myself âgosh, this is POWERFUL!â. This seems to be the fashionable mode of thinking among the unixers or unixer-to-be, who would equate power and flexibility with rawness and complexity; disciplined by repeated accidents. Such a tool would first chop off the userâs brain, molding a mass of brainless imbeciles and microcephalic charlatans the likes of Larry Wall and Linus Torvald jolly asses.
âXah Lee
Linux is powerful, but it also means you have to do a lot of dirty work yourself, when usually the operating system should take care of it, entirely.
Imagine a CEO has the power to lead their company, but they also have to clean the floors at 6pm after CEO work. This impacts the CEO power, ironically.
I see no need for W11 on my machine for the near future!!!
I noticed that as well.
What I fear is this âRight to Repairâ thing.
If I buy something I wonât be able to repair it, legally.
I foresee everything going to subscriptions/renting. Itâs already at the âAnnual Obsoleteâ stage for almost ANYTHING.
No, I donât care about the warranty. Thatâs just a marketing device.
Itâs getting increasingly difficult to install OSâs/apps without signing up for more useless crap just so they can get more personal data to sell to other companies.
Iâve created more than one juck email address.
I wonder if the existing Windows user will like the MacOS interface. Anyway, you can get similar interface with this:
Agreed.
I help in a community-driven approach called âRepair CafĂ©â, where volontairs try to repair any thing that the âcustomersâ may bring along (e.g. Notebooks, coffee grinders, clocks, clothing, microwaves, âŠ).
This is pretty popular and we get usually more customers than we can handle on our repair dayâŠ
So, there is definetly a âmarketâ for that.
In the EU there is a little (but right) sign, to get back to old times, where it was normal to repair things and not throw them away and buy a new one⊠Here to read (german)
Watched a fascinating documentary a few years ago, that was loosely based around an actual âENGINEERâ (i.e. a geek) who reverse engineered the EPROM in a HP printer that would stop printing after X thousand pages - and HP tried to sue him or threaten him with a cease and desist order⊠I think the guy won in the endâŠ
And they went a bit into how marketing types in the 30âs/40âs/50âs etc, ended up in âengineerâ roles in manufacturing and introducing planned obsolescence - and then they compared this by going to the former GDR (East Germany) and there were people there with TWELVE YEAR old working light bulbs and still working 25 year old refridgerators that had NEVER needed fixing or broken down!
Capitalists would now tell you, that apparently it must be bad to make such good devices, because people will âstop buying thingsâ when they are too good and donât break for many yearsâŠ
They just release the system requirements today:
Windows 11 system requirements
64-bit processor
4GB of RAM
64GB drive
1Ghz clock speed
UEFI, Secure Boot capable
TPM 2.0
A display larger than 9-inches with HD Resolution (1366x768)
DirectX 12 compatible graphics / WDDM 2.x
Internet connection for Windows 11 Home
Is it just me?
To me these requirements are extremely generous. 4GB of RAM? Seriously? I canât imagine running Windows 10 (again) on my Thinkpad Twist with 4GB of RAM and an i5 processor from 2014, because itâs extremely laggy. Not to mention Windows 11.
That said, even cheap laptops for 200-300 bucks already have 8GB or at least 6GB RAM, if you are unlucky or you are trading off the RAM for something else in that particular laptop.
If the above requirements are true and not just show, then they are a great improvement. Especially the CPU and RAM part is extremely generous and old computer friendly.
I know, I am going to hit walls here in this forum, as I usually do with great pleasure, when I say the following, but:
Nobody cares about 32-bit support.
Wait, wait, before anyone wants to bludgeon me, let me tell you my short but I think convincing explanation.
Example from my personal life: I have two more than 11 year old laptops and one 7 year old laptop. All of them are 64-bit. No, they werenât too expensive and modern when they were bought. This means, already more than 11 years ago, it was pretty normal to have a 64-bit device. So, if you are still running a 32-bit device today, it most likely is more than 15 years old.
No matter how much one hates Microsoft â you canât expect a company to make technological progress and get better every single year and at the same time demand that 15 year old dumpster laptops still run this advanced technology. Itâs a paradoxon and you have to decide, what is more important to you â what has a bigger priority in your life. If you by any means want to run your old dumpster with a CPU and RAM in it, then please, get some ToriOS or something like that, but donât complain about a brand new OS not being capable of handle such an OS.
Sure, one could also argue about SBCs or other popular 32-bit based devices, but even then the same arguments are simply not applicable. First of all, using an ARM processor, means you need something like Windows IoT, anyway. So, Windows 10/11 is out of the question, anyway. And even then, modern Raspberry Pis actually already have 64-bit processors. The same goes for modern Raspberry Pi alternatives.
Additionally, I want to point out the simple fact, in case anyone missed it, that if the RAM you require for a minimum setup is already 4GB, then you are going to need to run a 64-bit OS anyway, else your device wouldnât be able to suffice the minimal requirements, anyway, as you canât go beyond ~3GB RAM with 32-bit processors.
Conclusion:
If you want to run your 8 or at max 10 year old device, I can still understand it, to a certain degree. However, if you want to run your 15 year old dumpster with a CPU and RAM in it, then donât expect modern OSes to just be okay with that. If you want to run that dumpster, you are on your own, and there is nothing wrong with that.
4GB RAM is minimum.
Quote from the article on OMG Ubuntu:
UEFI support is more of an argument, because, despite itâs old age, itâs pretty ânewâ in the world of normal consumer computing. One of my 11 year old laptops does not support UEFI, for example.
On the other hand, this is one of the extremely few âgoodâ Apple-like moves. I hate Apple and nearly everything they do is shit, but there are things that they did right, in the past. For example, pushing the better technology, by disabling the use of its worse counterparts.
UEFI is superior in soooo many ways, people donât even understand how much better UEFI is. Sure, some Linux users know about the partition limits, that are virtually infinite in UEFI, whereas MBR makes your life tough. However, that is by far not everything UEFI has to offer. You can literally program your own GUI app, that purely runs in the UEFI environment. This is absolutely fantastic.
Additionally, it may very well be and I think it is extremely likely, that supporting certain technological benefits was only possible when using UEFI, so they needed to drop MBR, because it simply could not offer the features they needed for the new stuff.
Before I go on and on about UEFI â UEFI is so amazing â I want to finalise my points:
All this anti-Microsoft agitation is, as usual, way overblown.
First of all, do you need to use the newest OS, right now? How many people still use Windows 7 (no updates) or Windows 8, still today?
So, just because Windows 11 comes out, you donât need to use it instantly. And it obviously wonât install onto your Windows 10 machine, if it doesnât fulfill the requirements.
Therefore, all this fuzz is overblown and people should calm down.
By the time Windows 11 will be popular, every cheap & used laptop will have more than the minimum requirements for Windows 11. Especially the UEFI thing, for example. I imagine, we could see Windows 11 become mainstream in 5 years. So, from that assumption â also assuming OMG! Ubuntu did not overblow the year count â those laptops that are 5 years old now, will be 10 years old in the future, when Windows 11 will gain enough momentum. Following that, you will need a new laptop anyway, as you likely wouldnât want to use your 10 year old device for serious business, anyway.
Not really.
Even for an everyday-use Linux installation would not recommend below this (except UEFI/TPM which I donât really care at the moment).
However, I suspect those requirements are the bare minimum just to start Windows, but if one wants to use it as well, not just boot it up, will need more decent hardware.
Remember this classic?
Thatâs going to be valid all the time
On the other hand, time to time itâs good to get some new hardware. What I like especially that newer stuff draw less power. The last 2 years my kids (they are 3) spent in online schools. The first year they used Core2 (Q9400, E8400, E8500) machines with quite old LCD monitors. The monitors needed 30 to 55W, the machines used 70 to 120W, and it was sometimes painfully slow, and because they were constantly much loaded (CPU near 100%) they drew the high power constantly.
In more steps I could buy second hand a set of motherboards with i3 8100, 8GB RAM, and when sold the old monitors, got newer pieces, Fujitsu B22 T7.
Now the machines take 22 to 70W depending on load, but when idling (most of the time) that value settles neer the lowest end 22W. The monitor takes below 11W (brightnes somewhat above minimum, but thatâs more than enough in the room).
So we got some new hardware, and freed up noticeable power, 3 (old) computers needed approx. 400W to run, now the 3 (not new, but much more recent) computers need a bit more than 120W to run.
My smallest son required Windows too, because of some games. Interesting observation is, that when Debian is idling, the computer uses ~22W, when Windows 10 is idling, it takes ~25W.
During the last year approx. 1/3 of the price of the new(er) HW returned in using less power.
So yes, sometimes itâs time to get new(er) hardware, it may be worth.
Hopefully the online school is over, and never will get back, but the computers stay, just less utilized.
But when they are switched on, run much smoother and more comfortable, than their old counterparts.
Ummm - PAE (processor address extension)? Even Pi4 supports an ARM implementation of PAE (hence why my Pi4 running 32 bit armhf raspbian, can see and address 8 GB of RAM)⊠i.e. allowing 32 bit Operating System to address >4GB of RAM⊠Windows never managed to catch on to this⊠but - nearly all the main distro releases for the lasts ~10 years, have defaulted their 32 bit releases to a PAE kernel - which - yeah - can be problem - e.g. sometimes for shits n giggles, I boot up my ThinkPad T42 (these were CLASSY bulletproof machines back in the day) with Fedora 14 or something on it - it wonât even boot up because T42 cannot do PAE kernel (even though the max RAM I ever ran in one of these was 1.5 GB) but - the kernel is trying to force PAE⊠I seem to remember 32 bit Debian was the easiest to install on older hardware that didnât support PAEâŠ
What a strange beast PAE really was when you think about it - something introduced that Microsoft Windows (32 bit) couldnât (or didnât) take advantage of⊠I seem to remember some kludgy hack on Windows Server where you could make SQL server use more RAM maybe - i.e. doing some PAE type thing?.. Anyway - I say strange because PAE was really only used in Linux i686 (Iâm pretty sure PAE is one of the things that separates 32 bit platforms from i386).
But overall - I agree with you @Akito - and Iâm not even arguing with youâŠ
Hey all you 32 bit shit! Just go away and die quietly in that dark corner, weâre fed up of youâŠ
Hey âi386â! The 1980âs call they want their kludgy tech back!
Yes, so the operating system may address more RAM, than usual with a 32-bit system. However, the Raspberry Pi 4 hardware is very much 64-bit and pretty modern overall, too. As far as I know, it doesnât work, when the CPU is simply not 64-bit capable.
Agree on that, however UEFI is a thing that improves a lot, even when the user might not even notice.
I strongly suspect this and I absolutely expect that.
Indeed. Additionally, it sometimes may be the case that getting newer hardware, that has the same specs on the paper, still may perform better because of seemingly minor details, that improve the hardware, even though it seems to have the same specs as the older counterpart.
This is one of the main arguments for buying new hardware. All the people not buying new hardware forever talk about money, everything is so expensive, bla bla. But if they actually put more effort in thinking, and thought one or two steps further, they would immediately see, that buying new hardware can absolutely be cheaper, because older hardware just claims so much more power and power gets more expensive every year.
Especially, where I live, modern hardware with cheap(er) power draw are very viable and make a lot of sense, because our power prices are extremely high here. For example, itâs easily 10x or 20x what the average American pays for his power bill.
So, from my perspective, I rarely understand people using too old hardware.
Sure, I understand using 4 year old hardware.
I also understand that someone perhaps rarely uses their computer, so they donât need newer hardware.
But if people are starting to seriously struggle with their old hardware, just because itâs too old, and want to get that machine running by hook or by crook, then I simply cannot understand that.
I want to tell those people:
Seriously, stop wasting your time on your old dumpster with a CPU and RAM in it and just buy new hardware. You can buy a used but pretty new laptop for about 200 to 300 bucks. Or if you are really short on money, you can even build your own 150 bucks PC that is just as good as a 300 bucks laptop.
And then there are some of us old tragic fanboys of things like Sparc architecture and other RISC platformsâŠ
Iâve got a bunch of âoldâ sparc systems lying around⊠the main one I only ever turn on is a Sunblade 2500 desktop tower system (Iâve got two - the other is ostensibly for parts) running Solaris 10 - itâs got 2 x 300 GB SCSI drives, dual uSparc (4v? 4u?) processors and 16 GB of ECC RAM⊠yeah - itâs a dinosaur⊠Canât run Solaris 11⊠Iâve also got a Sun Ultra 5 (500 Mhz Sparc) beige desktop on my desk, but havenât turned it on since I last ran OpenBSD on it (3+ years ago)⊠I kinda gave up on the sunblade 2500 when I wasted like 36 hours in total trying to get PovRAY 3.x raytracer to compile on it⊠the only solaris sparc binaries I could find for PovRAY were for Solaris 8 - and I doubt theyâd work even in a Solaris 8 âzoneâ (Sun / Oracle âcontainersâ - i.e. docker from before there was ever âdockerâ) - and ALL the doco for compiling PovRAY on UNIX assumed âLinuxâ⊠Anyway - also got a Sun IPX and 2 x Sparcstation 5s, and a Sun Ultra 1⊠cool shit in itâs dayâŠ
Iâve also got an ancient MCA bus (an early proprietary rival for PCI and EISA - my god EISA was a true piece of crap!) IBM RS/6000 with a 66 Mhz PowerPC â601â CPU (and I also have an ancient Apple PowerMac with a 601 PowerPC CPU - I ran MkLinux on it for a bit) - these things could run either AIX or Windows NT 3.x for PowerPC - I finally found a release of AIX 4.x I could run on it - but ran out of steam⊠probably wonât ever get around to firing it upâŠ
And Iâve got two Silicon Graphics Indys - 64 bit RISC CPU from the 1990âs running 64 bit IRIX UNIXâŠ
Trouble with all these ancient RISC âworkstationsâ is they all run really annoying loud (and power hungry) SCSI hard drivesâŠ
I follow a bunch of vintage computer groups on facebook - but - itâs nearly all 8 bit stuff for the likes of Commodore and Sinclair, BASIC interpreters and CPM - ho hum⊠Iâm only interested in stuff that ran UNIX and mostly RISC 32 bit (or 64 bit)âŠ
Iâd also love a Digital Alpha system to add to my collection⊠worked on a few of them over the years, in the late 1990âs you had three choices of O/S, Digital UNIX (AKA Tru64), OpenVMS and / or Windows NT 3.x or 4.x (Microsoft did release betas of Windows NT 5 [AKA Windows 2000] for Alpha - but on the release of Win2000 it was 32 bit i386 only)âŠ