zlacker

>>Galaxy+(OP)
Over Christmas I tried to actually build a usable computer from the 32-bit era. Eventually I discovered that the problem isn't really the power of the computer. Computers have been powerful enough for productivity tasks for 20 years, excepting browser-based software.

The two main problems I ran into were 1) software support at the application layer, and 2) video driver support. There is a herculean effort on the part of package maintainers to build software for distros, and no one has been building 32 bit version of software for years, even if it is possible to build from source. There is only a very limited set of software you can use, even CLI software because so many things are built with 64 bit dependencies. Secondly, old video card drivers are being dropped from the kernel. This means all you have is basic VGA "safe-mode" level support, which isn't even fast enough to play an MPEG2. My final try was to install Debian 5, which was period correct and had support for my hardware, but the live CDs of the the time were not hybrid so the ISO could not boot from USB. I didn't have a burner so I finally gave up.

So I think these types of projects are fun for a proof of concept, but unfortunately are never going to give life to old computers.

>>sockbo+o5
I used to run a cs1.6 server on an amd 800mhz with 256mb of ram in the 2000s. I'm looking these days to get a mac mini and while thinking that 16gb will not be enough I remembered about that server. It was a NAT gateway too, had a webserver also with hitstats for the cs server. And it was a popular 16v16 type of server too. What happened? How did we get to 16gb minimum and 32gb will make you not sad.

>>amne+IL
i ran my whole house network off a laptop with the specs of a raspberry pi 2 for a really long time. I finally broke and moved it to a VM because the laptop's built in port and USB were finally too slow to route traffic, 11mbit USB! It took a decade+[1] of "innovation" in the US before i could finally buy internet faster than 11mbit. IIRC i switched to VM based IPCop in ~2007.

[1] My first broadband connection was in 1998 at 768/768 kbit symmetrical. My first megabit speed connection was in 2006 or 2007. in 2010 or 2011 we got VDSL and it was 16 whole megabits. Now i have 300mbit on a good day, and 150mbit on a bad day.

I literally wrote the guide on how to use old hardware with VM tech to route your house, first with ipcop[2], then generically[3], and just this week i wrote a guide on how to get ipv6 working with starlink and dd-wrt[4].

i've been in this a long time.

[2]https://web.archive.org/web/20220323223325/https://www.dslre...

[3]https://web.archive.org/web/20131214075417/https://www.dslre...

and the dd-wrt starlink one from this week:

[4]https://nextcloud.projectftm.com/index.php/s/4iScqZbrfYiNcKy

ETA: it is hilarious how much pushback i got about doing all of this in a VM, just scant years before "you should just use a VM for that" became the default answer, and a decade before "just put it in a k8s cluster and pay someone a quarter million a year to babysit it" became a thing...

also ipcop booted and installed off a single floppy forever