Seventeen years old and state of the art

[Lawrence Love]

Came across this article:

Seventeen years old and state of the art
Linux is the perfect catalyst for computer recycling
By Evan Leibovitch , Linux 
July 23, 2001 1:43 PM ET 
Sunday was a time for me to try things that were both old and new. It was my
first time making my own sushi, and finally throwing the switch on Mutt, my
old-new computer. Old, because it's made up of parts I'd collected over my
travels, a product of years of taking what others would throw away. New,
because it was being loaded with the freshest software releases.

At Mutt's core is an original IBM PC-AT, circa 1984. This box was the last
one IBM made a PC standard that the industry adopted, since after this model
IBM started its proprietary and ill-fated PS/2 product line. The original
machine was equipped with a 6Mhz 80286 processor, a full-height five-inch
30MB hard disk (optional!), and a staggering nine megabytes of RAM (also
optional, most of which was added on through an ISA card full of socketed
DRAM chips). Backups were done on 5 ¼-inch floppies, which (new on this
model) had a capacity of 1.2 MB.

Given the horsepower needed to crank up current operating systems (let alone
any applications) it's reasonable to wonder if anyone was actually able to
get any work done on these things. But I well recall that a good
stenographer armed with WordPerfect 4.2 could crank out documents of equal
quality to what today's bloated Microsoft Office can produce. The trio of
WordPerfect, Lotus 1-2-3, and dBASE 2 on top of MS-DOS made for a pretty
powerful desktop combination for a generation unaware of the talking paper
clips to come.

But my goal in Mutt wasn't to run decade-old software. I wanted to see if it
was possible to make, using cast-off parts of almost no value to anyone, a
computer capable of running the most current software. To do so, I ended up
using an old Asus motherboard, a 166MHz Pentium CPU, 96MB of RAM on SIMMs
(does anyone remember SIMMs?), vintage CD-ROM and hard drives, a cast-off
network card from 3Com and unaccelerated video by S3. Absolutely nothing in
Mutt is less than three years old--even the cable used to attach it to the
rest of my home network is good old 10Base2 coax. Just about every major
computer brand is part of it somewhere.

So there I was Sunday, loading one of the most current releases of Linux
onto Mutt. I got Mandrake 8.0. which includes the 2.4 Linux kernel and
up-to-date versions of most open source applications, up and running with
very little effort. The only casualty was an old Dell monitor which refused
to show some of its scan lines, and eventually gave up in a loud pop and a
puff of smoke. Its replacement, an equally old no-name SVGA monitor, did
just fine.

To be certain, Mutt is no speed demon. Running some GUI applications
requires patience. For all I know, I might still be waiting for Mozilla to
load when you read this. But this system is capable of doing real work. Once
an app is loaded, it can compose a document or surf much of the Web as fast
as hardware of more current vintage. As it is, Mutt is already faster than
my NFS/Samba file server and much faster than the system I use as a
firewall.

This, to me, is one of the most underrated benefits of Linux and other open
source operating systems. Linux is driven by users rather than vendors, and
many users view software upgrades as a way to move technology forward, and
not as an excuse to dump hardware.

Have a look at Windows XP or Macintosh OS X. What's the oldest hardware that
can run them? Two years old? In the proprietary software world, a system of
Mutt's age is a doorstop. In the open-source world, it's slower and
relatively less flexible than the current stuff, but hardly ready for the
dump.

The quality and flexibility of Linux and open source applications are key
benefits as developing countries struggle to compete in today's heavily
computerized world economy. Levels of technology that are considered
commonplace here are simply out of reach for those at average income levels
in many developing countries.

As I found out on my visit to Jamaica last year, used and older-generation
systems are the norm for most smaller organizations in developing countries.
Using Linux and open-source applications offers two substantial advantages
over conventional proprietary applications. Not only does free software make
computers cheaper to buy, it also means that users get the most current
software technology. Support for current proprietary software on old
hardware is problematic at best.

The establishment last week of an Indian chapter of the Free Software
Foundation (FSF) is just another indication of how well Linux is faring
globally, thanks to such advantages. The press release announcing the move
says that FSF leader Richard Stallman was "received as an honored state
guest by government officials." Coupled with Linux's growing popularity in
China and other countries, the numbers of Linux users and developers are
ready to take some significant new leaps. And that helps everyone--more
developers means more new applications and more participation in existing
projects. More users means a larger installed base and increased interest in
Linux as a platform by conventional application vendors.

In the meantime, I'll be playing around with Mutt and trying out some new
software on it. And, by the way, the sushi-making was a success too.

Do you think Linux's usability on older computers is a desirable feature?
Tell Evan in the Talkback below or in the ZDNetLinux Forum. 

Evan Leibovitch is Vice President of Business Development for Starnix Inc.
in Toronto. He is also a co-founder of the Linux Professional Institute and
the Canadian Linux Users' Exchange. 





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