enviroment How GNU/Linux is actually saving the environment as opposed to Windows or MacOS

[Ryuujin255]

Felt like sharing this video(not mine!) on the topic of tech and green activism as whole.
I feel like this is very important discussion among us enthusiasts and others who have desktop or even laptop for that matter.
Precisely when it comes to reducing the e-waste and repurposing old desktops or old laptops.

Very curious to know your opinions on this, because I personally think we should this kind of discussions on things like this that have massive amounts of impact on things we care about.

P.S. I do also hope if Linus picks up on this and makes a discussion video about this topic.

[da na]

If the penguins melted the icebergs that wouldn't work out so great for them would it? 

But you've got a point - I refurbish and sell the PCs my school throws out (usually core 2 Duo, 4gb of ram) - I put a 240gb SSD and cheap discrete GPU in them and give them Ubuntu 20.04 or Debian. They're still perfectly usable. 

[Helpful Tech Witch]

THis is already a known thing, usually, linux will run faster on an older machine

I have a repourposed chromebook running linux, which runs fine enough, thoug it does have trackpad issues (works running brunch, but not crouton in brunch) in linux.

But it can do minecraft fine if I use a external mouse or controler

[8tg]

This was more of a thing like 5-10 years ago. Modern Linux doesn’t run on anything anymore. Current mainstream distros will want the same hardware windows 10 can reasonably run on.

Its not like when Ubuntu 12.04 was around and it would run on literally anything newer than a Pentium MMX.

Try running MX Linux on a core2duo laptop, or on basically anything with a mechanical hard drive. You can always run “light” distributions but you’re losing lots of features which weren’t a compromise with prior, mainstream distributions of Linux for old hardware.

 

I don’t agree with this in the slightest, it’s an out of date concept that you can make old hardware last longer by installing Linux. You can do the same thing by installing the version of windows it was meant for, there shouldn’t be a late c2d machine in existence running anything newer than windows 7. Running a light distro is a compromise, and running an older Linux distro is about the same as just running older windows anyway. If you want your old hardware to last you won’t drag it out that much longer with a modern Linux distribution without some severe compromises in capability.

[akio123008]

I'm all for running Linux on old machines to repurpose them. (say as a NAS for instance)

 

But here's a thing; even though I don't replace my computer often (maybe every 5-6 years or so?) I never reach the point where a machine is so old it can't run Windows properly.

 

Like for a computer not to be able to handle windows running, it has to be one very old machine, (Windows 10 runs just fine on even my Celeron laptop with 4 gigs of ram) and by that time I'd have long replaced it anyway.

 

A computer that can't run W10 we're talking a 10+ year old PC. I'm sorry but you can't blaim people for not running 12 year old computers as their daily driver.

Edit: even a 12yo desktop will probably run W10 without a problem.

 

 

 

 

[YoungBlade]

I was all with him until he said "GNU slash Linux" but now I think he's off his rocker... /s

 

Yes, Linux is excellent for keeping old hardware in service. I kid you not, I've got a laptop I bought in January 2009 - Pentium Dual-Core T3200 2GHz, 3GB DDR2 RAM - and while it couldn't run Windows to save its life, it can easily run Ubuntu Linux. All I had to do was disable desktop animations and it ran just fine. I was using it up until early this year as my primary laptop. That's 12 years of service, all thanks to Linux.

 

Why did I stop? Because of the Internet. Modern websites are so bloated and bogged down with useless script nonsense that the processor couldn't handle them. Checking notifications for Facebook or Reddit was impossible. Video playback was hard, too. Even 720p YouTube was a struggle.

 

But if I only needed to do local work, or visit lightweight sites, I could still be using it just fine. Instead, I'm running Linux on a laptop with an i5 3320M.

[YoungBlade]

3 minutes ago, 8tg said:

This was more of a thing like 5-10 years ago. Modern Linux doesn’t run on anything anymore. Current mainstream distros will want the same hardware windows 10 can reasonably run on.

Its not like when Ubuntu 12.04 was around and it would run on literally anything newer than a Pentium MMX.

Try running MX Linux on a core2duo laptop, or on basically anything with a mechanical hard drive. You can always run “light” distributions but you’re losing lots of features which weren’t a compromise with prior, mainstream distributions of Linux for old hardware.

 

I don’t agree with this in the slightest, it’s an out of date concept that you can make old hardware last longer by installing Linux. You can do the same thing by installing the version of windows it was meant for, there shouldn’t be a late c2d machine in existence running anything newer than windows 7. Running a light distro is a compromise, and running an older Linux distro is about the same as just running older windows anyway. If you want your old hardware to last you won’t drag it out that much longer with a modern Linux distribution without some severe compromises in capability.

I ran Ubuntu 20.04 on a laptop with a Pentium Dual-Core T3200 2GHz with 3GB of RAM. All I had to do was disable desktop animations. That's it - literally just one setting and that modern OS ran just fine.

 

What are you doing with your Linux distro that requires more than a Core 2 Duo for the desktop itself to run?

[piemadd]

5 minutes ago, 8tg said:

This was more of a thing like 5-10 years ago. Modern Linux doesn’t run on anything anymore. Current mainstream distros will want the same hardware windows 10 can reasonably run on.

lolwut. last time i checked windows couldn't run on 200MB of ram

[Master Disaster]

10 minutes ago, 8tg said:

This was more of a thing like 5-10 years ago. Modern Linux doesn’t run on anything anymore. Current mainstream distros will want the same hardware windows 10 can reasonably run on.

Its not like when Ubuntu 12.04 was around and it would run on literally anything newer than a Pentium MMX.

Try running MX Linux on a core2duo laptop, or on basically anything with a mechanical hard drive. You can always run “light” distributions but you’re losing lots of features which weren’t a compromise with prior, mainstream distributions of Linux for old hardware.

 

I don’t agree with this in the slightest, it’s an out of date concept that you can make old hardware last longer by installing Linux. You can do the same thing by installing the version of windows it was meant for, there shouldn’t be a late c2d machine in existence running anything newer than windows 7. Running a light distro is a compromise, and running an older Linux distro is about the same as just running older windows anyway. If you want your old hardware to last you won’t drag it out that much longer with a modern Linux distribution without some severe compromises in capability.

You never heard of Cinnamon or LXDE? Heck even XFCE can be made lightweight.

[Master Disaster]

4 minutes ago, pierom_qwerty said:

lolwut. last time i checked windows couldn't run on 200MB of ram

TBF neither can KDE or Gnome.

[LloydLynx]

A computer is as fast as the software it runs. I'm running a C2D T7200 right now in my main personal laptop. Debian with MATE runs so nicely on it. The only issue is mainstream websites weighing down the CPU, but VLC at least solves the issue of HD playback on Youtube. And light weight distros are not a compromise to experienced Linux users, they just don't have all the training-wheel features that Windows users expect.

[piemadd]

1 minute ago, Master Disaster said:

TBF neither can KDE or Gnome.

Thats a good point, tho with a gig or two they can.

One thing is that fluxbox definitely can (a free repl on replit has anywhere between 200 and 500 megs of ram on a shared machine)

[Kilrah]

9 minutes ago, pierom_qwerty said:

lolwut. last time i checked windows couldn't run on 200MB of ram

Neither will a modern linux distro that has everything you'd expect in this day and age.

And a browser with a few windows and tabs takes just the same on either, and it's what's the main issue today - resource requirements of the stuff you want to use, not the OS.

 

 

[piemadd]

2 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

Neither will a modern linux distro that has everything you'd expect in this day and age.

And a browser with a few windows and tabs takes just the same on either, and it's what's the main issue today - resource requirements of the stuff you want to use, not the OS.

I've gotta agree with that, though it really depends on your use case. If you simply need a machine for some simple web browsing, 500MB or a gig might work fine, but power user stuff will require, well, more power.

Moreover, I've installed linux on the laptop I carry around, and it does still stand the lower bloat and higher power efficiency, as I went from 3ish hours to 6-7ish hours of battery life out of a charge. Also the stability of softwares such as blender improved somehow, no idea if that is related though.

[YoungBlade]

Just now, pierom_qwerty said:

I've gotta agree with that, though it really depends on your use case. If you simply need a machine for some simple web browsing, 500MB or a gig might work fine, but power user stuff will require, well, more power.

Moreover, I've installed linux on the laptop I carry around, and it does still stand the lower bloat and higher power efficiency, as I went from 3ish hours to 6-7ish hours of battery life out of a charge. Also the stability of softwares such as blender improved somehow, no idea if that is related though.

A modern browser visiting any modern website is going to chew through 500MB in no time. Even 1GB probably isn't enough for web browsing these days. The most lightweight distros still use about 150MB just to get you to a window manager, let alone a desktop environment, and whatever browser you pick + YouTube is going to suck through the remaining 850MB like a kid with an Icee. And the result will be the PC equivalent of brain freeze - swap usage.

[Kilrah]

3 minutes ago, pierom_qwerty said:

If you simply need a machine for some simple web browsing, 500MB or a gig might work fine

A browser with a single page will easily take 500MB on its own, so 1GB is the strictly bare minimum.

And then RAM is only a part of the problem, pages are CPU-heavy now so enjoy long loading time and slow operation, and on a machine with that little RAM expect no hardware/GPU acceleration for any of the modern stuff so forget videos, animations etc. 

Nobody only goes on light static HTML sites nowadays anymore...

[YoungBlade]

7 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

A browser with a single page will easily take 500MB on its own, so 1GB is the strictly bare minimum.

And then RAM is only a part of the problem, pages are CPU-heavy now so enjoy long loading time and slow operation, and on a machine with that little RAM expect no hardware/GPU acceleration for any of the modern stuff so forget videos, animations etc. 

Nobody only goes on light static HTML sites nowadays anymore...

I would go on such sites if it was an option. I set my GMail to use the fallback HTML mode. Text heavy sites don't need all the JS BS they use. And it isn't just a problem on older hardware. I constantly have to refresh the page on Reddit because it doesn't load properly. There's no need for that much complexity - it doesn't actually add anything to my experience.

 

Look at Wikipedia: not only is it usable on ancient CPUs, but it runs like a total dream on modern hardware. Every page loads absolutely instantaneously. It's glorious!

[8tg]

34 minutes ago, pierom_qwerty said:

lolwut. last time i checked windows couldn't run on 200MB of ram

Neither can Ubuntu 20.04

100% swap file all the time 

[piemadd]

4 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

A browser with a single page will easily take 500MB on its own, so 1GB is the strictly bare minimum.

And then RAM is only a part of the problem, pages are CPU-heavy now so enjoy long loading time and slow operation, and on a machine with that little RAM expect no hardware/GPU acceleration for any of the modern stuff so forget videos, animations etc. 

Nobody only goes on light static HTML sites nowadays anymore...

 

7 minutes ago, YoungBlade said:

A modern browser visiting any modern website is going to chew through 500MB in no time. Even 1GB probably isn't enough for web browsing these days. The most lightweight distros still use about 150MB just to get you to a window manager, let alone a desktop environment, and whatever browser you pick + YouTube is going to suck through the remaining 850MB like a kid with an Icee. And the result will be the PC equivalent of brain freeze - swap usage.

 

While it depends on the site and the browser, I do just have to agree with you. 2gigs is probably the minimum you can get away with while browsing BUT I do have to interject.

I work for Replit, its simply an IDE which runs in the browser. One thing we have to focus on is keeping memory usage low (100-150MB) for customers who have very low powered computers and phones, so we know people like this exist.

I did go ahead and boot up a vm running fluxbox (lightweight) and firefox, and then loaded google, youtube and facebook. While the experience was laggy, it still used under 800MB of ram to do so.

[piemadd]

1 minute ago, 8tg said:

Neither can Ubuntu 20.04

100% swap file all the time 

I don't think ubuntu is a good OS to install for many reasons, but if you want something to run on a few hundred megs of ram, you need to do some tinkering. For example, debian while using fluxbox for a DE works fine with a few hundred megs. While the experience is far from great, it is definitely usable.

[YoungBlade]

1 minute ago, pierom_qwerty said:

While it depends on the site and the browser, I do just have to agree with you. 2gigs is probably the minimum you can get away with while browsing BUT I do have to interject.

I work for Replit, its simply an IDE which runs in the browser. One thing we have to focus on is keeping memory usage low (100-150MB) for customers who have very low powered computers and phones, so we know people like this exist.

I did go ahead and boot up a vm running fluxbox (lightweight) and firefox, and then loaded google, youtube and facebook. While the experience was laggy, it still used under 800MB of ram to do so.

Thank you for working to design software that can run on lower-powered hardware. Not only are you benefiting your customers, but you are democratizing computing by lowering the barrier-to-entry and thus making the world a more fair place for everyone.

[piemadd]

2 minutes ago, YoungBlade said:

Thank you for working to design software that can run on lower-powered hardware. Not only are you benefiting your customers, but you are democratizing computing by lowering the barrier-to-entry and thus making the world a more fair place for everyone.

Yeah, we have a large market in places where the resources available are low. Got this image sent to us a few weeks ago:

 

[MultiGamerClub]

Linux was cool to learn about and try on old laptops, but knowing the features ive grown to like on windows where the old laptops support it.. Good luck tho.

[da na]

42 minutes ago, Vinnie II said:

Problem I often see is that modern distro's lack support for old graphics solutions, whether that's a GeForce 580, or Radeon HD2600 to name a few random models.

 

Opensourced nvidia didn't seem to work as nice in the few times I tried it, and the nVidia binary blob stopped supporting old cards. Not sure if running old drivers is wise if the box is connected to the internet, and some (new) distro releases refuse to work with them.

 

Old distro versions with old hardware and no internet is fine, but I don't know many that would run something like that.

One word:

ATI.

Buy a FirePro. Cheap and have good ‘Nux support.

[Roswell]

This video is super illogical. He says running multiple computers puts a serious strain on the power grid. Back in reality, your refrigerator, heat/AC, water heater, lighting and everything else in your house consumes 200x more energy.

 

He also insinuates that keeping old hardware in use is good for the environment. While sometimes true, it’s not always the case. Running an old C2D at full tilt trying to render a modern webpage or YouTube video is going to consume 5x the power that a modern machine would require. Eventually using that ancient hardware will eclipse the carbon footprint of a new machine.