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General Computer Thread

My Linux progression is a bit strange.

Started with Redhat in 2003(?), the machine I had dedicated to Linux was a pest though and the thing would just never run right (Compaq Deskpro Pentium II 400) used Windows on it for a bit because I needed it for something, 2004-5 ish Suse 10 or 11 think it was 10 and I managed to update it to 11, by then the Compaq was getting reaaaallly old and slow, so I installed Win2K on it and then got my hands on a Pentium 4 machine, tried Slackware on it which eventually went belly up, then Zenwalk, wasn't zen at all then Kate OS.. Kate is a b#tch! :mad:and then IIRC Kubuntu, that one ran fine, got my hands on a IBM Netfinity 1100 server machine and that one just murders any OS , Win2K runs on it and Xubuntu 6.06LTS nothing else and I mean absolutely nothing else, it even murdered Puppy Linux.. :wtf:
After that Xu and Kubuntu until that first big scandal hit with stuff that should have been opt in instead of opt out..:thumbdown:
That was it for Linux for a bit but after XP was discontinued I needed a new OS for my old laptop, 7 was meh-sluggish and I never tried 8.1 on that machine, and that was when I found Mint so that laptop started with Linux Mint Maya (13.x) it was fast enough until 17.x

So around 2014/5 I had one big ass main-does-everything machine a AMD FX 8350 which is not really known for being frugal with electricity so I put together a small linux machine an Athlon 5350 APU machine with Mint 15(IIRC) on it to start, after a while I just migrated all my non gaming stuff to it so it became my main desktop machine and the FX pure for gaming, in 2020 that old APU was getting too slow to run 18.x and I then built a new main machine and some backup/test machines so in 2020 I built a Pentium Gold 6400 machine which ran as main machine until 2024 it is now a backup and test machine it runs Mint 22.3.
So a not even that long ago I build my current main machine which is a AMD Ryzen 3 4300G which is also running 22.3, I also have a Ryzen 2200G which run Manjaro XFCE, two Huidun H50 mini PC's that run Mint and a whole bunch of other machines which run Debian, Bodhi Linux, Manjaro and other distros.
 
I never thought I'd say this but I think gigabit speeds are getting choked hard.
Everyone is watching Netflix/Hulu/Youtube in 4K.
I might need to update to 2Gig speed soon.
 
I experimented with RH 5 in the late 90s. A copy of it came with a book about Linux. Total pain in the ass to get early GRUB sorted and get X running but it still showed promise. At the time I'd been hoping for a good alternative to Windows and Mac. Minix was interesting but it was severely hampered (the reason Linux went on his own, really, and got us where we are now), GNU was never going to happen as its own thing. Os/2 Warp had lost the war. BeOS was too expensive to play with on my budget.

I was a Novell guy but it wasn't clear how that was going to end up. Anyway, I finally did use Mandrake a couple of years later as a backup DNS server when I needed one more DNS server and my employer wouldn't spring for another NT license. It did its job. a few years later I tried using Mepis full time as a linux distro but it just didn't do what I needed it to do. Went a few years after that with Mint, but in the end I started using some DAW software that just required windows. I'd like to come back to Linux on the desktop again some day when it can handle the software I'm using.
 
Didn't notice anything strange..

I've got a Medion PC MT6 computer, it's one of the infamous machines that was sold at the Aldi supermarkets, it's from 2002/3/4 so really old, mine is not totally original, I had three of these and none of them was complete and this one is built from parts from all three of them and some parts are from the heap of old stuff, the powersuply is a more modern BeQuiet! part, the memory is 2GB which is more than what it came with and the graphics card is a Geforce 6200 which is from 2004 so still in the ballpark for this machine, the HDD is a Maxtor 250GB IDE model and there's a DVD and a DVD R/RW drive, both also IDE not SATA.
The CPU is a Pentium 4 2.66Ghz so the main bus is 133Mhz the frontside bus is 533Mhz, the chipset is the SiS 648 chipset, the machine also came with a modem and a TV card.
The machine's mainboard is a MD 5000 made by MSI, it's high quality and so is the casing, it is made from very thick metal, connectivity wise it makes most modern machines look foolish, 6 USB, firewire front and rear, audio front and rear also the output for the TV card and there's a MIDI/Joystick port.

The OS is of course Windows XP, I replaced the PSU so I needed to have the machine run for a bit (two afternoons) I use the unofficial Service Pack 4 which contains all updated to XP including those for the longer supported versions so it has extra drivers for ExFAT and so on.
www.majorgeeks.com

Download Windows XP Service Pack 4 Unofficial - MajorGeeks

Windows XP Service Pack 4 Unofficial is a cumulative update rollup for Windows XP (x86) English as well as security enhancements not addressed by Microsoft....
www.majorgeeks.com

So two afternoons with this machine, of course I kept it offline but I installed portable apps, copied music to it, and so on, pretty much what you do with a computer, also ran some tests on the hardware and the conclusion is that it is kinda business like usual, yeah a few niggles and things you have forgotten about XP's peculiarities but still usuable. :D
 
I wish I hadn't gone back to a traditional pc case. I had actually less cleaning when I had everything in an open case. Maybe once every couple of months but today had to get new fans anyway as the ones I had were sounding weird, but yikes the amount of dust bunnies in the fans and in the cpu cooler. It was the perfect time also to clean that anyway and do a repaste. Put it all back together and all working. Lots quieter with the new fans in place but I really wish I had kept the old open plan case.
 
Never had that issue, I need to clean my main and gaming machine once a year and they're not even that filthy, does your case have dust filters?
Repasting is not needed unless you break the bond of the TIM aka when your cooler moves/gets displaced, as long it stays put you're good. (that rhymes!)
My FX 8350 usually got 3-5c hotter when the CPU cooler was dusty, so when I cleaned it I took of the fans and blew the dust out of the heatsink itself and temps went down again.
Mine is a real peach of a chip, despite being a 125 watt part it never got really hot, not even while gaming.

Just dug out another older machine to see if it still works, it's a HP Pro 7500, so far it's working flawlessly, it's running Win 8.1, I did upgrade it with a AMD Radeon HD 7850 which is a heck of a lot faster than the on chip GPU, this one has been on the back burner, need to complete the install and make an image of the partitions.
Machines that have this kind of hardware, Ivy Bridge, Hasswell, AMD FX/A8, A10 APU's etc with a fair bit of RAM and so on are still capable machines in these days, not the fastest around but still capable, my Ryzen APU's aren't that much faster and they're half the age.

Think the whole damn hardware crisis is to blame, just want to make sure that I've got enough spares and working hardware around. ;)
 
Indeed. My A8 is still a daily driver (SSD for an upgrade) and with 8gb is fine. - With mint as well, perfectly fine.
My FX-8350 is still adequate for most of my gaming use, though I'd prefer an upgrade for newer games though. (1080p is fine for me, given the monitor size and room size i'm in for gaming :) )
 
I've noticed quite a times that core/thread count was what determins if a computer still can play ball, with Win2K a fast single core could outperform a slow dual core, later on a fast dual core could outperform a slow quad core but when Windows Vista and 7 appeared that changed, at the moment 4 cores/threads is okay for most desktop tasks, 4 core 8 threads is already a lot better again, at the moment a dual core isn't cutting it anymore unless it has hyperthreading/SMT.
 
Santaman said:
Never had that issue, I need to clean my main and gaming machine once a year and they're not even that filthy, does your case have dust filters?
Repasting is not needed unless you break the bond of the TIM aka when your cooler moves/gets displaced, as long it stays put you're good. (that rhymes!)
Click to expand...


I repasted the CPU because the only other time it was done was back when I first installed it in 2021. Just thought that since im changing all the fans may as well do that too since I bought the thermal compound and all
 
Santaman said:
I've noticed quite a times that core/thread count was what determins if a computer still can play ball, with Win2K a fast single core could outperform a slow dual core, later on a fast dual core could outperform a slow quad core but when Windows Vista and 7 appeared that changed, at the moment 4 cores/threads is okay for most desktop tasks, 4 core 8 threads is already a lot better again, at the moment a dual core isn't cutting it anymore unless it has hyperthreading/SMT.
Click to expand...

don't forget to factor in the support for multi-core/multi-thread within in the OS.

When XP came out, single core/single thread was the general rule for desktop users and the OS was optimised for it.

If you wanted more, well it was off to NT Professional.

Then as processors went along and dual core started the wave started for Microsoft to improve the multi-processor support within the standard version of Windows.

Though other OS have had their issues.

Linux scheduler had to catch up as Intel went P&E cores and AMD went chiplet.

I don't know it's still the case but ESXi did not play nice with Performance and Efficiency cores. Craft Computing had a review on a Supermicro rack mount with a lower end Xeon (w series I think). the E cores had been disabled (so it could ESXI without a purple screen of death) but it kicked the performance in the nuts.

though these days it's unlike that anyone buying system could afford ESXi licensing.

Proxmox (Debian userland and kernel but now Debian userland and Ubuntu LTS kernel) also had some issues.

Another Craft Computing video was testing the Minisorum MS-01 when they first came out with 12th Gen Core with P&E cores. Proxmox was unstable and unusable till you made sure that you were fully up today with system firmware and CPU microcode

Software was also licensed per socket then manufacturers realised when you could get just as many cores in single socket as you could in dual they changed it and - turned things into an utter mess.

Seen comment in r/sysadmin about the headaches trying to licence MS software for all the cores when even company's own reps can't get it straight.
 
Marc said:
Software was also licensed per socket then manufacturers realised when you could get just as many cores in single socket as you could in dual they changed it and - turned things into an utter mess.
Click to expand...
I'm a big proponent of "Per Socket" Licensing.
That is the Fair & Balanced way of doing Software Licensing IMO.

Trying to figure out how many cores can be used with said Software is such Asinine BS.
That's just being too greedy.
 
My brother is a sysadmin and any sentence mentioning M$ will contain swear words.

Hmm, something neat for retrocomputing..

Home

Getting error 8007EFE when checking for Windows Updates on your old version of Windows? Legacy Update continues support for Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8.1, etc. where Microsoft left off.
legacyupdate.net

Windows Update Restored: Update Windows 95, NT 4.0, 98, Me, 2000, and XP the old way!

www.windowsupdaterestored.com www.windowsupdaterestored.com

So you can fully update you win 95,98(SE),2000, XP Vista etc computers, will certainly look into that. :mallory:
 
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