> ARMv7 and later, which come with graphics chips optimized for for something different than what X was built for
Are they SO slow on the tasks they are not optimized for they can't even beat a 25-year-old GPU like S3 Trio?
> I'd imagine that running a current distro with a current X WM wouldn't be a great experience on 90s machines.
Why does it have to be? What do we get for this cost? The only things in which I would find a modern Linux better than a 90s Linux are full UTF-8 support, modern crypto and hardware drivers availability.
> The difference will widen as Vulkan
I don't know a single person (among many dozens of Linux users I personally know) who would need it. I can only imagine movie makers using Blender or something like that
What OS's RMS suggest are irrelevant to the gp's comment that RMS saw this slippery slope in computing coming long before most.
> No real way to build a skyscraper or produce a state of the art feature film on free software.
Yes, CAD software is a known issue in FOSS land, but you can still run them in wine on linux when you have to. It is getting better though, lots of consistent updates to some of the foss-cads.
Blender on the other hand, is now often the backbone of the feature film industry. As a matter of fact a large portion of the industry is moving more and more towards at least OSS. (https://www.aswf.io/projects/)
> The whole world moved on to devices where not only is the software nonfree
This is a blanket statement and not true. What about the fact that foss generally runs the vast majority of the internet that allows those non-free devices to function? You've basically got a bunch of linux boxes at the edge of every residential network. Reminds of that time I got into an argument with the Guardians senior technical editor who tried to tell me linux was irrelevant... The supercomputing top 500 certainly doesn't reflect such claims, since you mentioned "state-of-the-art".
> there is not even an option of choosing free software, and, even if there were, there is no comparable free software to choose.
In the vast majority of the cases, there are plenty of FOSS alternatives to choose.
> Why? Because they work better and allow you to get more things done in less time.
Why? Because the school system got locked into to proprietary software when it shouldn't have and thats all they train people on for the most part. Not because of inherent issues in the software interface.
I strongly agree with the Inkscape/GIMP bullet point. In fact I'd say Inkscape/GIMP/Scribus/Blender and I'm probably missing some other tools. It's really a shame how focused design classes are on proprietary software. I've heard the sentence "don't use Blender, it will hurt your chances of employment" a lot and "clashed" with some of the professors here.
I think there needs to be a strong "not Adobe" toolkit and probably something similar for music and film (Blender is good for film actually). Those are creative and content oriented fields that often get overlooked by us programmers but there's so many young folks that need/want good and free tools to express their creativity.
[it doesn't help that digital drawing oards and the like often don't work with Linux so maybe some more hardware as well]
Similar to the TOR point you made, maybe it's not the projects that need the money (eventhough I'd say if in doubt give it to them). More tutorials that focus on the free tools would help a lot in that field. You can actually drive adoption by having better tutorials. If my first 10 hits when I search for "draw comic book character" all lead to Inkscape and not Illustrator tutorials that's a nice win.
Hacker Cinema
3 comments on Hacker News
> ARMv7 and later, which come with graphics chips optimized for for something different than what X was built for
Are they SO slow on the tasks they are not optimized for they can't even beat a 25-year-old GPU like S3 Trio?
> I'd imagine that running a current distro with a current X WM wouldn't be a great experience on 90s machines.
Why does it have to be? What do we get for this cost? The only things in which I would find a modern Linux better than a 90s Linux are full UTF-8 support, modern crypto and hardware drivers availability.
> The difference will widen as Vulkan
I don't know a single person (among many dozens of Linux users I personally know) who would need it. I can only imagine movie makers using Blender or something like that
What OS's RMS suggest are irrelevant to the gp's comment that RMS saw this slippery slope in computing coming long before most.
> No real way to build a skyscraper or produce a state of the art feature film on free software.
Yes, CAD software is a known issue in FOSS land, but you can still run them in wine on linux when you have to. It is getting better though, lots of consistent updates to some of the foss-cads.
Blender on the other hand, is now often the backbone of the feature film industry. As a matter of fact a large portion of the industry is moving more and more towards at least OSS. (https://www.aswf.io/projects/)
> The whole world moved on to devices where not only is the software nonfree
This is a blanket statement and not true. What about the fact that foss generally runs the vast majority of the internet that allows those non-free devices to function? You've basically got a bunch of linux boxes at the edge of every residential network. Reminds of that time I got into an argument with the Guardians senior technical editor who tried to tell me linux was irrelevant... The supercomputing top 500 certainly doesn't reflect such claims, since you mentioned "state-of-the-art".
> there is not even an option of choosing free software, and, even if there were, there is no comparable free software to choose.
In the vast majority of the cases, there are plenty of FOSS alternatives to choose.
> Why? Because they work better and allow you to get more things done in less time.
Why? Because the school system got locked into to proprietary software when it shouldn't have and thats all they train people on for the most part. Not because of inherent issues in the software interface.
I strongly agree with the Inkscape/GIMP bullet point. In fact I'd say Inkscape/GIMP/Scribus/Blender and I'm probably missing some other tools. It's really a shame how focused design classes are on proprietary software. I've heard the sentence "don't use Blender, it will hurt your chances of employment" a lot and "clashed" with some of the professors here.
I think there needs to be a strong "not Adobe" toolkit and probably something similar for music and film (Blender is good for film actually). Those are creative and content oriented fields that often get overlooked by us programmers but there's so many young folks that need/want good and free tools to express their creativity. [it doesn't help that digital drawing oards and the like often don't work with Linux so maybe some more hardware as well]
Similar to the TOR point you made, maybe it's not the projects that need the money (eventhough I'd say if in doubt give it to them). More tutorials that focus on the free tools would help a lot in that field. You can actually drive adoption by having better tutorials. If my first 10 hits when I search for "draw comic book character" all lead to Inkscape and not Illustrator tutorials that's a nice win.