[Novalug] Maunderings on Upgrading (was Kernel configuration ...)

Beartooth beartooth@Beartooth.Info
Fri Mar 19 12:45:54 EDT 2010


On Thu, 18 Mar 2010, Ed James wrote:
 	[....]
>    I use old equipment, old distros, and an old brain.  I 
> understand well the new tech, but the old stuff does 
> everything...I...need...it ...to.  [....]

>    There's one big reason I stick with the old stuff - it costs 
> money to keep upgrading, especially needlessly.  But if there's 
> a solid reason to upgrade, I'm all for it.

 	All of a sudden this fascinating if recondite thread 
becomes personally relevant.

 	I've been upgrading hardware every year or three, and 
Fedora every six months, for two reasons. First, I'm not 
competent to recover from damage by a cracker, or even some 
inadvertent self-inflicted damage. (I do try to keep multiple 
backups.) Second, things like browsers (but, so far at least, not 
Alpine) keep slowing up as the sites they hit get more demanding.

 	One of the ways I try to hold down expenses -- for pure 
home use, on a small pension, btw -- is to push tasks that can be 
left apart from my constant ones onto older and slower machines; 
so the oldest one does most of the weather maps, for instance -- 
and is always the slowest at that task, but that's OK. I get to 
and from it with a KVM switch, especially at moments when 
something else on another machine is maxxed out.

 	There's a limit. One day, a year or three ago, a 
friend on the Tech faculty called me on one of my linux boasts -- 
that I could make an older slower machine still usable. He had a 
laptop for his lab that he was going to have to surplus, unless 
it could be speeded up. Despite lots of experimenting and good 
advice, I couldn't make it do all the things he needed at a speed 
worth his while. Maybe the fault was mine ....

 	Otoh, I just sent my oldest machine, bought used along 
about the time 64-bit was glitteringly new -- summer '04, iirc -- 
down to my SIL in the foothills of the Great Smokies, who had 
been running one (on dialup) from 2000. She's glad to have it, 
and has been busy setting it up whenever she has time; it will be 
interesting to see how it does when she actually gets online with 
it.

-- 
Beartooth Staffwright, PhD, Neo-Redneck Linux Convert
What do they know of country, who only country know?



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