Getting off the software upgrade treadmill

So... what do you do in 2019 with your PC that you didn't or couldn't do in 1998?

I now surf the web slower because of all the JS bloat. And in 1998 I was on dial-up.

Originally Posted by enorbet So... what do you do in 2019 with your PC that you didn't or couldn't do in 1998?

Two areas that are monumentally different for me are audio and video. I'm able to do things now that were pure fantasy in '98. There were so many limiting factors - puny slow drives, ram cost a fortune for tiny amounts, CPUs and GPUs could barely handle the most bare-bones work loads. Now I routinely work with hi-res video or massive audio mixes without batting an eye, using a computer that cost less in real dollars than the device I had back then.

Originally Posted by upnort I now surf the web slower because of all the JS bloat. And in 1998 I was on dial-up.

Agreed, I don't much like the bloated monstrosities that some websites have ballooned into. But having said that, we used to require runners to schlep drives to different offices. Now we transfer hundreds of gigs per day via cloud sharing. I won't be waxing nostalgic for my dial-up 56K Global Village modem ever.

Originally Posted by enorbet So... what do you do in 2019 with your PC that you didn't or couldn't do in 1998?

Oh wow. Realtime audio synthesis is not only a thing, but a reliable thing that's easy to do on low-end hardware. When I started back in the 90's/early aughts, you needed dedicated workstations that cost thousands, and didn't really do the job all that well. Sampling on the fly? Forget it. I mean, even non-real-time rendering took forever and a day. A five minute piece in 2005 would take about an hour a minute, and my chair (who used to have to drive to Bell Labs to render his pieces that would go all night) was like "Wow, that's fast." Now? (About 20 minutes for the whole thing, but to be fair, csound still doesn't utilize modern cpus all that well, which is why I use something else for realtime synthesis.)

Streaming video. Any idiot with a half-way reliable internet connection and a webcam can stream him/herself on various platforms. (Although if that's a good thing, I'm not sure.)

Gaming. When I started using Linux full-time in 2005, you didn't have many options for gaming after Loki Games went under. (And those games were prohibitively expensive, compared to the Windows versions for a starving grad student.)

Computer animation: Gone are the days when you'd need a SPARC or Indigo workstation running Maya.

Back when I started using Linux, there was absolutely no way I could produce decent music scores--I had to boot Windows for Finale or Sibelius. Now there's lilypond, musecore, and a few others I'm probably forgetting. And even then, Windows music applications lagged far behind Mac ones. (Lordy, I do not miss forgetting to set the bit for mac to PC ftp's.)

I'm sure there are other things, too, but these are the areas I bump into on a daily basis, and realize just how far Linux (and computers) have come in about a decade or so.

For me one of Slackware's major appeals is the conservative and cautious approach to upgrades. There are only one or two things I really need up to date outside of security advisories, everything else I'd rather just be left alone. I don't need the risk of random breakage just for some features I probably won't use anyway. I only run slackpkg when i get a message from the security mailing list, and only update my slackbuilds at most once a month, and even then only if it's something that could be security related or a fix for a bug that was affecting me. If it doesn't touch the network then it will probably remain pretty static. ... I'm starting to think my time on Arch Linux might have traumatized me a bit. On the hardware side, I don't do any 3d rendering or anything CPU intensive outside of compiling, so unless the web continues to bloat up until my old thinkpad's i7 can't handle it, I doubt I'll be upgrading for a good while. If it runs quake3, it's good for me.

Originally Posted by phalange I won't be waxing nostalgic for my dial-up 56K Global Village modem ever.

I don't know, I always look back fondly on my time with dial-up. Though the dial-up itself was torturous, it was a fun adventure as a kid trying to make the most of the slow speed, using chron to fetch files, sync rss, news groups and mail at night, setting up a caching proxy, etc. That crappy connection is what got me into Linux, because I'd heard it was more flexible and customizable, prepackaged with developer tools and commonly needed applications, and most importantly offline documentation built in! To a young computer geek trapped on dial-up in a broadband world, that sounded like nirvana.

The nice thing about linux is that there isn't the same financial pressure to update just for the sake of it. There's always bug fixes, feature bloat and new hardware to support, but that is understandable. it is what keeps the hardware business going. compared to ms windows' history from gui with no unified menu and square windows to rounded ones and menu system, then back to square ones and no menu, then a menu returning, and transparency added. The changes are obviously not needed, as they have cycled twice at least, it is just the churn of a "new look" used to sell more.
With slackware we can happily use the same text installer, or keep the same gui until hardware changes force us to do things differently. the down-side are things like bugs which will never be fixed because upstream have moved to a newer version ages ago.
I can't keep up to date with current,(I don't have the bandwidth) but some of my new hardware doesn't work with 14.2. (lack of graphics support for vega). If only a LTS v5.x kernel would come out soon, and slack15 would come out.
I did recently come across a customer still running an old dos application on a win98 pc who was upset that it wouldn't work on win10 64bit (I ended up using dosbox), so there are plenty of people who stick with stuff until it breaks, even as long as 21years!. I was amazed the hardware was still limping along.

Originally Posted by phalange Two areas that are monumentally different for me are audio and video. I'm able to do things now that were pure fantasy in '98. There were so many limiting factors - puny slow drives, ram cost a fortune for tiny amounts, CPUs and GPUs could barely handle the most bare-bones work loads. Now I routinely work with hi-res video or massive audio mixes without batting an eye, using a computer that cost less in real dollars than the device I had back then. Agreed, I don't much like the bloated monstrosities that some websites have ballooned into. But having said that, we used to require runners to schlep drives to different offices. Now we transfer hundreds of gigs per day via cloud sharing. I won't be waxing nostalgic for my dial-up 56K Global Village modem ever.

All hardware changes, with a partial exception for The Cloud which has only a little to do with what is possible on a SOHO Desktop machine..

Originally Posted by garpu Oh wow. Realtime audio synthesis is not only a thing, but a reliable thing that's easy to do on low-end hardware. When I started back in the 90's/early aughts, you needed dedicated workstations that cost thousands, and didn't really do the job all that well. Sampling on the fly? Forget it. I mean, even non-real-time rendering took forever and a day. A five minute piece in 2005 would take about an hour a minute, and my chair (who used to have to drive to Bell Labs to render his pieces that would go all night) was like "Wow, that's fast." Now? (About 20 minutes for the whole thing, but to be fair, csound still doesn't utilize modern cpus all that well, which is why I use something else for realtime synthesis.) Streaming video. Any idiot with a half-way reliable internet connection and a webcam can stream him/herself on various platforms. (Although if that's a good thing, I'm not sure.) Gaming. When I started using Linux full-time in 2005, you didn't have many options for gaming after Loki Games went under. (And those games were prohibitively expensive, compared to the Windows versions for a starving grad student.) Computer animation: Gone are the days when you'd need a SPARC or Indigo workstation running Maya. Back when I started using Linux, there was absolutely no way I could produce decent music scores--I had to boot Windows for Finale or Sibelius. Now there's lilypond, musecore, and a few others I'm probably forgetting. And even then, Windows music applications lagged far behind Mac ones. (Lordy, I do not miss forgetting to set the bit for mac to PC ftp's.) I'm sure there are other things, too, but these are the areas I bump into on a daily basis, and realize just how far Linux (and computers) have come in about a decade or so.

Cool! Someone else who remembers Loki! I seem to recall Loki offered a conversion process to translate your own. I think I may still have CDs for Rune, Soldier of Fortune and Heretic, and of course various Quake releases.

Back to the present all of what you mention is also hardware upgrades, not software upgrades. I submit we all do pretty much what we used to, just more efficiently and effectively due to hardware improvements, especially, of course the switch from POTS Internet connection... though modem squawk was mildly entertaining LOL.

Ping timsoft - I recall reading that AMD/Ati released patches for linux kernel modules adding support.

Mixed feelings when reading today's -current changelog... on the one hand, ffmpeg4 is a great addition since more and more applications presupposes it. On the other hand, stuff needs rebuilding - although only 3 SBo-built packages so far.
I was surprised and happy to see that Eric's vlc still runs OK, at least when just watching a video. Might be different if one tries to capture/convert.

Originally Posted by kgha I was surprised and happy to see that Eric's vlc still runs OK, at least when just watching a video. Might be different if one tries to capture/convert.

The SlackBuild is pretty easy to rebuild with extra options though if you need it.

Originally Posted by kgha I was surprised and happy to see that Eric's vlc still runs OK, at least when just watching a video. Might be different if one tries to capture/convert.

This is because Eric includes VLC as a static library and is built and embedded into the final vlc package. It doesn't use your system ffmpeg at all.

Originally Posted by enorbet Cool! Someone else who remembers Loki! I seem to recall Loki offered a conversion process to translate your own. I think I may still have CDs for Rune, Soldier of Fortune and Heretic, and of course various Quake releases.

I always wanted their port of SimCity and Rune, but never had the money. I could barely afford a computer, and used $50 Boeing Surplus Dells. Good times. Parts are cheap these days.

Back to the present all of what you mention is also hardware upgrades, not software upgrades. I submit we all do pretty much what we used to, just more efficiently and effectively due to hardware improvements, especially, of course the switch from POTS Internet connection... though modem squawk was mildly entertaining LOL.

Very true. When I was in grad school, I did IT for my department, and the 3rd floor was unable to use wifi, because the entire building was nothing but lead paint and cinder block. So for a time (until they put repeaters in and recabled the building), the 3rd floor had to use dialup modems. (The building wasn't wired very well, either.) I had a voice prof call up and say that his internet wasn't working. So I ask him if the modem is actually making any noise. He sings it back to me, and I could get a rough idea at where in the handshake it was failing.

Originally Posted by garpu So for a time (until they put repeaters in and recabled the building), the 3rd floor had to use dialup modems.

In the 90s I cobbled together a computer lab for my classroom of discarded 486 and 386 PCs running Windows 3.11 from local businesses. I was on dial up with a 9600 modem; the connection was just fast enough to send text e-mails to another classroom in America(I taught in Northern Canada). I had the computers all interconnected on one phone line. The students could send their e-mails one at a time. Sometimes someone would pick up the phone in another part of the building and bump us off line. Haha.
I am so grateful for my relatively high speed cable modem these days.

Originally Posted by hitest I was on dial up with a 9600 modem; the connection was just fast enough to send text e-mails to another classroom in America

What a luxury: the first dial-up connection to our (university) Unix server was at 1200 bps and later I ran my own BBS (Bulletin Board System) on a 2400 modem (and a 386sx PC).
Later this became one of the first HST 9600 (split speed, tx 9600 but only rx 300) modems.
The modem could switch those around, so when someone downloaded something FROM the BBS now the speed became 9600 sending TO that person. Of course he/she needed a US Robotics HST modem for that too, it didn't work against other modems.

Originally Posted by hitest In the 90s I cobbled together a computer lab for my classroom of discarded 486 and 386 PCs running Windows 3.11 from local businesses. I was on dial up with a 9600 modem; the connection was just fast enough to send text e-mails to another classroom in America(I taught in Northern Canada). I had the computers all interconnected on one phone line. The students could send their e-mails one at a time. Sometimes someone would pick up the phone in another part of the building and bump us off line. Haha. I am so grateful for my relatively high speed cable modem these days.

Oh yeah. I do enjoy having fast up/down speeds, that's for certain. Fortunately, I was living on my own when I had a computer and dialup, and each room had its own landline. My last year of undergrad, my dorm actually got ethernet in the rooms--had to get a special CISCO card for it. No clue how fast it was, but it seemed insanely fast in comparison. (Would've been like '96 or '97?)

I did basic things like word processing, Finale, and so on. I didn't get serious about computers until towards the end of my Master's. My best friend was a linux geek, so I asked him to show me what this Linux stuff was about. 16 floppies of Debian and a few hours to install, and I was actually using it. I don't miss 16 floppies to install Linux, either.