💾 Archived View for wirthslaw.flounder.online › gemlog › 2021-05-20-linux-old-computers.gmi captured on 2021-12-03 at 14:04:38. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Cheapskate recently posted an article lamenting the fact that developers of Linux distributions are no longer interested in keeping them running on 15-20 year old laptops.
Linux has Largely Abandoned Still-Useful Near-Vintage Computers
While reflecting on the topic, I conjured up a thought experiment.
If one took an old laptop and installed a version of Linux on it that worked with all the hardware, could they potentially keep using that computer forever - if they never connected to the internet or interfaced with any new hardware?
Since the machine cannot go online, the software on it would not be patched or upgraded. In essence, the computer would be frozen in its configuration.
The internet - or more specifically, the world wide web - is the most common vector for security issues. So by keeping the system offline, one should not have to worry about getting the latest security updates.
Lower spec hardware has difficulty handling a lot of modern websites since they are bloated (and insecure.) However a much bigger concern is that the web browser itself has gradually evolved into a de facto virtual machine running its own OS that requires a lot of resources. So eliminating the need for that application should allow older hardware to continue being used effectively.
While the applications on the laptop would not have the latest features, one would still be able to play music, videos and games, create and read documents and spreadsheets and may be even do some coding.
If one wanted to get data in or out of the computer, they could use a USB flash drive for that purpose. Of course, this assumes that there won't be any Linux malware in the future that can spread through USB drives.
One possible issue with the whole scenario is that there could be some bug in the OS or other software that ends up corrupting the system files over time or causing memory leaks that crash the computer. Barring that, one should have a perfectly functional laptop at least until one of the core components fail.
In reality, I imagine there are not many people who would want to use a computer that cannot go online. In fact, most people probably want to use a computer ONLY to browse the web. So I guess this would all just be a quixotic quest in the end.