older hardware and OS's

[vinceASPECT]

Hello forum,

Recently i found two beautiful Laptops at the clothes silo near me. They are in astonishing condition for 16 and 20 years old. They almost look untouched and they are very expensive machines. A Sony Vaio and a HP compaq 6190p.

The machines have good chips...... and 3 gig of ram each and both with 320 gig hdd's and optical DVD writers........SD card slots. webcam. HDMI connectors, fingerprint login from 20 years ago?

I just wanted to let the forum know that some OS's are now doing really well and have come a long way....HAIKU is such a free os with tons of free apps and lightening fast performance on any  machine from the last 30 years.

Also, the OS called KOLIBOS which fits on one floppy disc but comes with OCEANS of free tools inside it. Again it is lightening fast and to get internet you just plug in a  usb smartphone in tethering mode. THey offer 2 web browsers with NETSURF being one.

of course. Tinycore is also excellent.

ONe of these machines here is 15.5 widescreen so its great for media and movies.

Also i don't know if people use RAM DRIVES much ........but i always use a free tool to do RD's on my desktop then i install APPS into the RAM DRIVE and run them FAST.

It's a good trick for slower hardware if you can use RAm drives.

thx
C

[Leee]

Also i don't know if people use RAM DRIVES much ........but i always use a free tool to do RD's on my desktop then i install APPS into the RAM DRIVE and run them FAST.

It's a good trick for slower hardware if you can use RAm drives.

Even back in the 1980s, the Amiga OS had provision for RAM disks - I seem to recall there were two different types, one that would survive a reboot and one that would not.  This was particularly important since the stock Amiga 1000 had no hard disk - it reminds me of the Genie in Disney's "Alladin": :"PHENOMENAL COSMIC POWERS!  _{Itty bitty living space.}"

In more modern times, most linux distros, early in the boot process, load an "initrd" (initial RAMDISK) into memory and use that as the root file system until the system is "up" enough to determine where to find the actual "root" file system...  But some distros simply keep the root file system in memory all the time with only specific subdirectories being symlinked to directories on actual persistent storage.

And yes, it can speed up slower hardware significantly although, sadly,"slower hardware" usually implies "older" which in turn usually implies "less RAM.

[vinceASPECT]

Yes

less RAM and somewhat older style RAM.......DDR 2.....

however those operating systems are lightening fast......Hiaku and Kolobri...

many many times faster than win or Lin........on old hardware.

Haiku now has hundreds of free apps in it's own library .......apps such as "firefox latest"
and Falkon chromium

it can also directly run "x64 windows" apps .......and Linux apps too......

although the apps can have issues......and that can be a problem but they will likely work  right for 80 percent of your needs

i love how Kolibrs os can give you tons of apps AND "graphical internet web browsing" all from a single floppy disc..............so if your old computer only has a floppy drive , you are saved

thx
C

[vinceASPECT]

forum,

i also forgot to mention that while Firefox and Falcon on HAIKU is really good ,  if something isn't working for you such as zoom calls...

you can simply go to a free webservice that offers bleeding edge cloud web browsers
and run one of those.

i use BRowserstack which offers unlimited free usage on EDGE on windows in the cloud.

these cloud browsers will be bleeding edge and the latest builds run everything perfect.

it likely won't be needed for many users........ but the above option exists.

thanks
C