Free OS and Free software - is this the way forward

Notmyrealname

fwor wrote: »

I'd say that would probably depend on the graphics card. If it has too little memory it would probably have struggled back then.

It has nothing to do with the graphics card. As long as the graphics card has sufficient RAM to display the colour depth at the resolution required, anything else is surplus to requirements with 2D.

fwor

Notmyrealname wrote: »

As long as the graphics card has sufficient RAM

Well I did say exactly that.

Anyway, my 1.2GHz pentium-M laptop used to play DVDs no problem at all, so as I said, I would suggest playing with the drivers - it's not exactly a complex process.

debitcardmayhem

Notmyrealname wrote: »

Yet in the 1990s we were doing that on computers with far less computing power.

Running in a lot more real estate too, however VM/370 (and its predecessors / successors) ran lots more stuff because they were written as if RAM was precious , unlike today's pathetic code writers who think "RAM is cheap , so I will not worry about writing efficient code". Having said that, Linux is/could be the way backwards/forwards what we need is good code writers...chance of that happening is <= 0.0001%.

letsbehonest

I have this Just installed Ubuntu onto one of my spare drives hoping to run it in a dual boot, the problem,it seems to have knackered the drive,what do I mean? Well upon reboot after installation the drive has disappeared from the bios! Yes I have checked all connection's ect,ect.

fwor

debitcardmayhem wrote: »

what we need is good code writers

Agreed, but bear in mind that the vast majority of Linux is coded/maintained by volunteers in their own time. Some will be good and some won't, and the peer review process is there to try to weed out the not so good.

I'm sure that MS employ both good and not-so-good code writers and, despite their own internal review processes, some bad code still gets produced by them too.

letsbehonest wrote: »

I have this Just installed Ubuntu onto one of my spare drives hoping to run it in a dual boot, the problem,it seems to have knackered the drive,what do I mean? Well upon reboot after installation the drive has disappeared from the bios! Yes I have checked all connection's ect,ect.

I suppose anything is possible, but I've done many (100+ by now) dual-boot Linux installs, and never seen a hard drive fail immediately after an install.

If it's IDE-based I'd suspect a master/slave conflict, and I'd also check the BIOS for an "autodetect" option on the drives (some have it hidden away on a second level menu).

If you do manage to get it detected, I'd do a check on its SMART status, as that may give an idea of whether it's on its last legs...

debitcardmayhem

fwor wrote: »

Agreed, but bear in mind that the vast majority of Linux is coded/maintained by volunteers in their own time. Some will be good and some won't, and the peer review process is there to try to weed out the not so good.
....snipped

Sorry fwor but I feel you mis-interpreted my post,the point I was making about bad coding was general(? universal ?) it was meant to draw attention that modern developers don't have the "constraints" that the developers faced in the 80's and 90's be it on *ix,*ux, *dows or iOS. I remember fitting in 186k of code on a box with 22k of ram and using self designed overlays and a sort routine based on shell sort algorithm. The sort routines were about 75% more efficient than the proprietary
ones bundled with the machine, and the overlays were 2% more efficient(doesn't sound much but hey it meant 2% more time in the pub )

giraffe69

m5rcc wrote: »

All software could be 'free' should one choose to do so....

As could all goods in a shop if one was so inclined (and also lucky)

fwor

debitcardmayhem wrote: »

Sorry fwor but I feel you mis-interpreted my post

You're right, I did, unintentionally.

It makes me sad to see people write that the minimum spec these days for a PC is 4GB of RAM, because it just causes software writers to be profligate in their use of that resource - meaning that people have to throw away perfectly good PCs that would otherwise be fine.

It probably applies nearly as much to Open Source as to proprietary, though MS's close relationship with hardware manufacturers seems (to me at least) to make it in their interests to code so that older hardware has to be thrown away sooner rather than later...