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ZDNet reports that from supercomputers to stock markets to smartphones, Linux dominates most computing markets, but Linus Torvalds still wants Linux to rule on one place it doesn't: The desktop. "The challenge on the desktop is not a kernel problem. It's a whole infrastructure problem. I think we'll get there one day," said Torvalds at the LinuxCon Convention in Chicago. "Year of the Linux desktop?" asked Kroah-Hartman. "I'm not going there," replied Torvalds with a smile.
Torvalds also discussed the issue of kernel code bloat as Linux is now being run in small-form-factor embedded devices. "We've been bloating the kernel over the last 20 years, but hardware has grown faster," Torvalds said. Torvalds wants to push the envelope for the embedded market despite some challenges. He noted that some of the small-form-factor device vendors have their own operating system technologies in place already, and those vendors don't always make hardware readily available to Linux kernel developers.
The issue of Linux code maintainers was another hot-button topic addressed by Torvalds, who noted that some Linux kernel code has only a single maintainer and that can mean trouble when that maintainer wants to take time off. Torvalds said that a good setup that is now used by the x86 maintainers is to have multiple people maintaining the code. It's an approach that ARM Linux developers have recently embraced, as well. "When I used to do ARM merges, I wanted to shoot myself and take a few ARM developers with me," Torvalds said. "It's now much less painful and ARM developers are picking up the multiple maintainer approach."
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Friday August 22 2014, @12:56PM
I have a rough time trying to put decent software on an old machine. There is a need for a solid desktop that works in minimal environments like embedded or old computers. But I think Linux is still not there.
For old computers, the heavy desktops are out. No Gnome or KDE. No XFCE either, it's lighter but still too heavy. I find LXDE lighter yet, but going with a plain old window manager still beats it. Some of those old computers can't boot from USB or network, or even DVD, has to be CD. (At least they're not floppy only, that's just too old.) I have not been able to run the Lubuntu installer to completion, ever. It crashes every single time. Most times it lasted long enough to get Lubuntu installed, and I can clean up the installation by running from the hard drive. One of the first clean up things I do is go into Preferences -> Customize Look and Feel, and under the widgets tab and change from the Lubuntu-default to anything else to avoid an old bug with the desktop that I think was noted in version 12 and is still not fixed in 14.04
I found Bodhi Linux and its Enlightenment window manager not stable enough and too resource heavy with the fancy animated icons. I tried Crunchbang and LXLE. Their installation media is a few megabytes too large to fit on a CD. Another issue with a lot of these distros is the lag on software versions. They always seem to be 4 to 8 versions behind on Firefox. Lubuntu is better for staying current, but that too has problems. Eventually, with enough updates and use, an Ubuntu installation screws up the user configuration directories (.local, .cache, .config and related directories). I've seen Flash animations play at something like 4x speed because an update broke something in the user configuration. Can be worked around by deleting those directories-- and recreating the user settings that will be lost. But that's one example of many of how the Linux desktop lacks polish. I've taken to putting all my files in a subdirectory, something like /home/user/mine instead of /home/user, to aid in keeping my stuff separate from all the junk that the desktop system generates in /home/user.
At any rate, these days 192M of RAM seems to be the absolute lower limit. Since version 4, Firefox simply will not run at an acceptable level of performance on a system with only 128M of RAM. The Firefox devs started a project to reduce memory usage, and that has helped, but it seems the days of 128M of RAM being enough are forever gone.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by mcgrew on Friday August 22 2014, @02:42PM
I came to moderate but I have to respond. Linux has no trouble whatever on old hardware. I have two towers right now, a Dell and an HP that are so old they'll only take 1 gig of memory each and both of which were originally shipped with XP. One only has 750 megs of memory installed.
Both are running the latest version of kubuntu and doing so flawlessly. Everything just works, and what's more they're faster than my 3 year old Windows 7 laptop that has a processor running 4 times as fast, and has more memory.
You may have trouble getting it to run right on windows 98 or 2000 machines, back when 64 megs was the standard memory size. You are correct that 128 megs of RAM is far too little, but it's been over well over a decade since that's been normal.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 22 2014, @04:08PM
This is usually, but not always true. I have an older laptop with a Pentium 3 mobile CPU whose integrated graphics started breaking with an updated drivers several years back and it it still can't run on anything better that the non-accelerated VESA modes without crashing.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 22 2014, @08:52PM
old hardware[...]originally shipped with XP
Well, that's old-ish.
only has 750 megs of memory installed[...]running the latest version of kubuntu and doing so flawlessly
Some folks would call that system "muscular". 8-)
You may have trouble getting it to run right on windows 98 or 2000 machines
antiX (pronounced "Antiques") has a reputation for running on ancient, anemic machines.
This guy got it running on a machine with 48MB of RAM. [googleusercontent.com]
(orig) [freeforums.org]
As has been said previously in this thread, modern browsers are usually what screw the pooch.
-- gewg_
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Friday August 22 2014, @09:13PM
Linux is decent on old hardware, better than Windows, but hardly trouble free. This is a bit unfair to blame on Linux, but getting Flash to work is hard. I look forward to the day Flash dies in a fire, but until then, it's wanted so people can watch cat videos on Youtube.
Just today, I've been trying to set up a computer made in late 2002. It's a 2GHz Celeron, 32bit, with 768M RAM, and horrid Intel integrated graphics (845G). Been trying Tinycore Linux. Everything works except Flash. (And I count myself lucky at that. A previous time I set up a different computer that had old Intel integrated graphics, it would lock up after 15 minutes or an hour of use, just no telling. In that case, the solution was to use the VESA driver as the Intel driver at that time was known to cause hangs.) Flash ran but the graphics were corrupted, half the size of the window, with green and purple lines. This is a known problem, and the solution was to change XWindows from SNA acceleration to the older UXA. But that caused other problems because none of the supporting parts of UXA were present, so with UXA all I saw was a mouse pointer on a black screen.
Another troublesome old computer was an AMD based one. At least it had nice Radeon graphics. But, AMD was late in getting SSE2 into their chips, and that particular computer was among the last that lacked it. The newest version of Flash available for Linux requires SSE2, and will show a blank black window if the computer doesn't have it. The solution was to downgrade to the last version of Flash that doesn't require SSE2.
Then there was the 350MHz Pentium 2 with the very earliest NVidia graphics card that is still supported by Nouveau, a Riva TNT, code name NV04. It worked at first, but X was sending hundreds of error messages to the system logs every minute. The hard drive was running nonstop, and soon the system was thrashing, and slowed from molasses speed to glacial. (But, it would play video faster than a 1GHz Pentium 3 with Intel integrated graphics.) The maintainers knew immediately what the problem was, they just hadn't bothered to add some necessary software emulation to handle what the NV04 hardware lacks because no one was using NV04 until I came along and spoiled their fun. To their credit, they fixed it and I only had to wait a few weeks.
Ever tried to use an old serial port mouse or trackball in a modern distro? They aren't well supported any more. Even though the pieces may still all be there-- kernel drivers, Xorg drivers-- distros aren't bothering to pack it all up. The last time I tried it, I got nowhere.
That's a sampling of the sort of issues I run into when trying to get a little more life out of old computers.
(Score: 2) by cykros on Sunday August 24 2014, @07:45PM
This is a bit unfair to blame on Linux, but getting Flash to work is hard. I look forward to the day Flash dies in a fire, but until then, it's wanted so people can watch cat videos on Youtube.
Or they could use HTML5 [youtube.com]...
But yes, it is worth noting that while Youtube is no longer (and hasn't been for a few years now) an excuse for "needing" Flash, there are sites out there that still do rely on it. Some news sites, for instance, just don't have html5 support yet (though in many cases switching to an iOS useragent might bring pleasantly surprising results...).
I pity those who are still stuck in this limbo, but also figure it's worth pointing out that you might not be as stuck as you think you are...
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Friday August 22 2014, @07:57PM
If it can't boot off USB then it is reallllly, reeeeaaaallllyyyyyy old in terms of PC hardware. I have Windows 7 Running on a few Dell Dimension P4's. As long as you stuff them with 2+GB of RAM they will run Win 7 Pro and most of the basic office productivity applications without issue. They run Linux like a champ.
If your computer cant boot from USB or has less than 512MB then it sounds like you have a real clunker, perhaps an early P4 or P2/3. I would just throw the damn thing out. For $200 - $300 you can put together a real decent PC using an Intel Celeron, AMD AM1 SoC or even an A8/A10 system. Hell, a Raspberry Pi, Beaglebone or any of those other little ARM boards will do a decent job at giving you a desktop for light tasks.
People are throwing out old P4's and even Core/Core 2 systems which can easily Run most Linux Distros and so-called heavy desktops like KDE. There is simply no reason to keep running old clunkers unless you like wasting money on electric or have a some emotional/nostalgic attachment.
And as for a good distro: Debian is my top pick followed by Arch and then Gentoo or Slackware. Debian will be the easiest to deal with coming from Ubuntu and runs on really old hardware without much issue. I gave up on Ubuntu a long time ago. It was my first favorite Linux distro but once I knew my way around the command line I no longer needed Canonicals clunky hand holding.
I recently built a small home ssh server using a Wyse terminal with a 1GHz VIA CPU, 512MB RAM and an 8GB ATA flash disk I got off eBay (original flash disk was 1GB). Cost less than 75 bucks all together. Hooked a 1TB USB HDD to it and installed Debian to the Flash disk without any issues from a USB thumb drive. Only burns 6 watts at idle and 11 watts under load. I then use it to wake up my desktop using WoL so I can remote into it. The 1TB is great for dumping files to it for backups, sharing or whatever. Only issue is the CPU is pretty slow with rsync, 3-4MBps even when using the blowfish encryption cypher. But CIFS and NFS are pretty damn fast at 20+ MBps from the USB disk. Old hardware can have its place.
(Score: 2) by cykros on Sunday August 24 2014, @07:40PM
The hardware specs you're bringing up are dwarfed even by the Raspberry Pi. That's not just an old computer; it's a historical artifact...one that is far less energy efficient than a $35 replacement.
Not that it's absolute TRASH, persay, but if it's a matter of using is as a production business machine, someone in management needs to get a calendar.