[openbeos] Re: Support for Ancient Computers?

On 7/16/07, Brian Verre <bverre@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

While I sympathize with people wanting to use older machines to mess around
(I have a few myself ATM), as a general question, wouldn't it make more sense
to cut ties with this older hardware while Haiku is a fledgling system?


I think it depends on what benefits this might bring. For example just
how much developer time would be saved if we actively decided not to
support machines older than some decided age?


Target i686/x64 for R1, etc? A quite affordable 'modern' system can run QEMU
at P/200 speeds, or just use virtualization. I built a new AMD64 system for a
friend for around $200 (complete) a few months ago. Used case, 40gb drive and
DVD/CDR drive sure, but the HD can be had for $10 used, and the disc drive
$20 new if I didn't have a couple.


No doubt computers are quite affordable these days (at least to those
of us in Western countries.) But many people have older computers that
could become nice little systems with a good OS like Haiku installed.


Maybe I'm off base here, but it is an honest question about moving on. Use
those old PCs as appliances of some sort instead?


Running what, Linux? That is always an option of course. I for one
would like to be able to run Haiku on some of my older machines.

Again it depends on what effort is required to get Haiku running on
MOST older machines. This seems like an application of the Pareto
principle, aka the 80/20 rules. If with some fairly small amounts of
code (20%) we can support MOST older machines (80%) I think it is
worth it. But I don't think effort should be put in to try and support
every possible older machine. Of course in that case drivers for
peripherals become as much of an issue as the chipset and processor.

Maybe if every developer did the work to support their own older
machines (I for one have quite a collection), that would cover most of
the bases.

Ryan

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