Comment by vlozko
5 years ago
PCs didn’t have as long of life in the 90’s to the early 2000’s, either. In 2008 only 33% of PCs were over 3 years old. Today it’s over 60% (haven’t found a more exact statistic). iPads were going through a similar maturing process and rapidly iterating on performance and features. It’s why I can accept the notion of hardware being obsolete sooner when being an early adopter.
The big thing that makes really old iPads not worthwhile to reuse is the battery. It often becomes cost ineffective to replace them. I’m looking at my 9.7” Pro with a cracked corner of its screen. Replacing the battery will damage the screen more causing a replacement for that, too. PCs don’t have the same expectation of parts wearing out - many easily can run 10 years with no hardware maintenance.
That's not taking into account how older machines are typically used though. Yes, you can install the latest Windows on a 1.6GHz dual core PC from 2006, but it's not going to make a great PC. On the other hand, it makes a fine host for a NAS device or some other home server, or a router/firewall, or a media PC to hook up to the TV etc.
An iPad or iPhone would do much of the same, and in some ways better or for different uses. It uses less power. It could be used as an in-wall display. It could be a WiFi repeater, or an access point given a USB ethernet adapter. People are creative, if you give them the chance. And none of those things really care if the battery is flat.
> PCs didn’t have as long of life in the 90’s to the early 2000’s, either.
My parents used their Mac SE at least weekly from 1989 until about 2005, and it still works great today (but hasn’t been turned on in a few years).
It’s quite funny because when I was around 18 I worked with an older guy (he was around 55) repairing and restoring printers. He was complaining that when a motherboard broke we just switched it out for a new and threw the old one out. He remembered a time when he used to replace the broken component on the motherboard and had it working again instead.
Current Linux kernels support the 486 CPU from 1989, and I think you can reasonably run a current distribution and web browser on a PC from around year 2000, and you probably can't distinguish a 2005-2010 system from a current one using only a browser on common websites.
The actual minimum x86 CPU for modern Linux is a Pentium 2 (1997, source - https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/ch02s01.en.html).
The practical minimum for a modern distro is probably a Core 2 Duo (2006). You will likely need a lightweight DE on such a system if using it as a desktop.
Some mainstream distros (e.g. Ubuntu) set their requirements higher than that.
That's the minimum CPU for Debian.
The Linux kernel supports the 486 CPU (also used to support the 386, but it was dropped, although it's probably possible to restore it with some work - the 286 can't be easily supported because it lacks 32-bit registers).
> you probably can't distinguish a 2005-2010 system from a current one using only a browser on common websites
If only this were the case. Common websites have become script ridden monstrosities that aggressively consume RAM and CPU. I routinely have 50+ tabs open; even on fairly recent hardware that can easily cause problems depending on which pages they contain.
while agreeing that software got worse, especially websites.
opera did gracefully open 100+ tabs in 2005 on a dualcore with a gig of ram.
the key was and is: disable javascript
Tried booting an old dual Xeon (Nocona, circa 2004) with 5GB of ECC ram a few months ago with several Linux ISO's. None of the kernels would get very far into the loading process before just stopping.
Meanwhile, FreeNAS worked and booted fine on it. Even though it only had 5GB ram. ;)