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Post by majpooper on Aug 23, 2021 21:32:52 GMT
Do folks really find 32bit systems useful? Or is it a nostalgia thing like making Moksha "look" (kind of) like Windows 95. No one seriously uses a 32 bit system for their daily driver or to do any productive work . . . . . right?
Just asking for a friend.
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wimc
Moderator 
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Post by wimc on Aug 23, 2021 21:37:33 GMT
Guess main thing would be bringing life back to older machines.
Dedicate older machines for certain tasks.
Better than tossing away or using as door stop.
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Post by Hippytaff on Aug 23, 2021 22:00:05 GMT
I do it for nostalgia (just bought a 32bit netbook for £20 for Bodhi6-legacy), but I also like that people who can only get hold of machines because no one else wants them, so they’re cheap or free, can use an otherwise useless machine, and not only is it useable, it’s surprisingly good. In the past I could only afford really pants laptops, and Bodhi made a useless machine fly. So for me, those are why I feel having a 32 bit Bodhi is important.
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enigma9o7
Crew Member
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Post by enigma9o7 on Aug 23, 2021 23:15:25 GMT
Do folks really find 32bit systems useful? Or is it a nostalgia thing like making Moksha "look" (kind of) like Windows 95. It has nothing to do with looking like windows 95, Bodhi looks exactly the same on 32-bit as it does on 64. If you want to make Bodhi look like windows 95 it wouldn't matter what architecture you were using, it would be a matter of making a custom moksha theme, which would work on legacy or standard. If you want nostalgia, I saw a version of KDE desktop version 1 or 2 iirc built for modern distro and looks a heck of a lot like old windows style to me.... to be clear, bodhi for 32-bit is the same bodhi for 64-bit. Its not old version of bodhi. Its modern OS that runs on old hardware. No nostalgia, in fact the opposite.
As to my use case, I got my 32-bit machine, a 2.66GHz Pentium 4, when I started a job in 2006. Several years later they gave me a new computer and I was told I could dispose of the old one (sans hard drive) however I wanted, so I took it home and stuck it in the closet. It sat there ~5 years until I had kids that were toddlers and I dug it out, figured I'd at least be able to use it as a nes/snes emulator & media player.
Finding an OS for that old machine is what got me started running linux/bodhi in the first place, which has since spread to my 64-bit machines too. I find it quite useful, not only nes/snes/psx/gensis/gba emulation and kodi, but also native linux games, web browsing, youtube, etc. Now my daughters are 7 and still they're their daily drivers... the other uses an athlon 64 (first 64-bit cpu) from around the same time. I even bought each of them a $20 128GB SSD to make them fast. Pretty sure they can do anything my modern computer can, other than stuff that requires fancy 3D graphics (some recent games).
One random reason I'm happy for a bodhi legacy is a newer version of supertux in repos; we already beat all the levels in the old bionic 0.5 version, there's lotsa more in the 0.61/0.62 focal/bullseye versions  |
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Post by ylee on Aug 24, 2021 0:08:26 GMT
Do folks really find 32bit systems useful? Or is it a nostalgia thing like making Moksha "look" (kind of) like Windows 95. No one seriously uses a 32 bit system for their daily driver or to do any productive work . . . . . right?
Just asking for a friend.
An Educational Distro, Escuelas Linux, based on Bodhi is used in many third world countries and the majority of the computers it ends up being installed on is 32-bit. Support for this Distro is the MAIN reason I plan on continuing support for 32 bit for as long as Debian supports it. |
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sparkill
Member
bolivia
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Post by sparkill on Aug 24, 2021 0:35:38 GMT
any productive work . . . . . right? There are still banks that use Windows XP 32 bits. it's safe .. idk. Reuse machines for rendering farms. finish planned obsolescence 2000-2010
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Post by majpooper on Aug 24, 2021 14:08:17 GMT
Do folks really find 32bit systems useful? Or is it a nostalgia thing like making Moksha "look" (kind of) like Windows 95. No one seriously uses a 32 bit system for their daily driver or to do any productive work . . . . . right?
Just asking for a friend.
An Educational Distro, Escuelas Linux, based on Bodhi is used in many third world countries and the majority of the computers it ends up being installed on is 32-bit. Support for this Distro is the MAIN reason I plan on continuing support for 32 bit for as long as Debian supports it. This I definitely support as a good cause - whatever happened to the $100 linux netbooks for the third world. That was a big ~12 years ago about the time I was retiring from the military - were they 32bit?
And my "look like windows 95" was meant as an analogy not literally - poorly executed obviously.
All in all very interesting - I would never have imagined that a 32bit system could adequately support the resource demands required of the applications we use today.
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Post by oblio on Aug 24, 2021 14:33:30 GMT
An Educational Distro, Escuelas Linux, based on Bodhi is used in many third world countries and the majority of the computers it ends up being installed on is 32-bit. Support for this Distro is the MAIN reason I plan on continuing support for 32 bit for as long as Debian supports it. That's a pretty big reason!
Escuelas is doing a cool thing IMHO and Astroboy is a great person. I remember him being around a lot back on the old forum.
My 32 bit system so my kids can have a system to themselves...and break/fix/play/learn Linux. Old laptop hanging around otherwise useless. I also enjoy seeing if I can make the old baby boot in these "modern times". |
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enigma9o7
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Post by enigma9o7 on Aug 24, 2021 15:19:51 GMT
All in all very interesting - I would never have imagined that a 32bit system could adequately support the resource demands required of the applications we use today.
The only linux apps I've found that don't support 32-bit are discord and current versions of google chrome.
Even Microsoft still supports 32-bit Windows 10, but just like linux, there's probably a few apps that are only offered in 64-bit versions. Windows 11 will be Microsoft's first OS not to support 32-bit systems at all.
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Post by ylee on Aug 24, 2021 15:19:52 GMT
... This I definitely support as a good cause - whatever happened to the $100 linux netbooks for the third world. That was a big ~12 years ago about the time I was retiring from the military - were they 32bit?
... All in all very interesting - I would never have imagined that a 32bit system could adequately support the resource demands required of the applications we use today.
Yes, the OLPC netbooks were 32 bit and running Fedora with the SugarLabs Sugar user interface. A friend of mine supported the project (largish donation) plus bought one of the machines. I got to play around with it some but overall was not that impressed, it was not even close to my Acer Netbook. Of course, back in the day the Acer Netbook cost much more. On the idea itself ... giving cheap netbooks to third world countries I was kinda iffy on it all. Seemed and still seems to be that many if not most of these children had greater needs than some cheap barely functional netbook with a dumbed down user interface  Hard to care about programming when you have little to eat and even harder to learn to programming when malnutrition has taken a toll on your health and 'IQ.' Perhaps tho the project had some success stories, some current developer inspired as a child because they ended up with an OLPC machine. As to the fate of the OLPC project I found this article which goes into more detail than I ever needed to know: OLPC’S $100 LAPTOP WAS GOING TO CHANGE THE WORLD — THEN IT ALL WENT WRONG. Make of that what you will. As to a 32bit systems supporting the resource demands of modern applications, I suppose that would depend upon the application and the memory of the system in question. Bodhi runs great with only 1G will run with less but I can't in good faith recommend that. But with 1G or more you can certainly browse the internet and run the typical apps people use. Just pay attention to swap memory usage because your machine will slow to a crawl if it ends up using alot of swap. In a practical sense that means don't open alot of tabs in your web browser or get crazy with the amount of apps you open. Using a lightweight web browser is also recommended. Of course, expanding memory to as much as your machine can support improves performance greatly. For some 32 bit machines that may only be 2G or 4G, but it will make a HUGE difference. Also keep in mind that for about 4 years almost all my Bodhi development was on my Acer netbook, 32 bit 1G of memory. |
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Hard to care about programming when you have little to eat and even harder to learn to programming when malnutrition has taken a toll on your health and 'IQ.' Perhaps tho the project had some success stories, some current developer inspired as a child because they ended up with an OLPC machine.