Guys I truly don’t mean to spam the community but these are legit questions. Yesterday I posted about linux compatibility and computers and every single person gave me knowledge to use and you’re all awesome.
Now my question is, I will undoubtedly be purchasing an older machine, would an older but good running machine still be able to install the latest kernels or versions of distros or are you limited to older versions only, based on the era of your laptop or is it really about the hardware you have? I know ram, disk space, basic stuff like that matters with distros, but I know that will not be a problem. I guess I’m thinking beyond that like processors. are older processors or anything else hold certain machines from being compatible with the newest and greatest kernels? Thanks!
AFAIK if you buy any computer from within the last 20 years, there’s a good chance you can get a 6.X Kernel running on it. 32-bit support is fading out, though. If you buy a 64-bit computer, you’ll be able (with sufficient RAM and hard disk space) to install any modern distro on it.
Then why have I had such a terrible experience with my newer Dell Xps 13 9310 experience? user error or proprietary b.s.? because I have been told that the new Dells are going the more propriety route.
Linux broke compatibility with 386 back in 2012. The kernel maintainers also began considering dropping compatibility with 486 late last year, but as far as I can tell they haven’t actually gone through with it yet (apparently it’s likely to be coming in 6.2).
So, strictly speaking: yes, almost any computer that was ever capable of running Linux should still be capable of running the newest kernel version, with the sole exception of 386s.
Whether it can actually do anything useful beyond getting to a command prompt on a serial terminal is another issue entirely.
This. My spouse is working on an online business and needed a laptop to carry around to do inventory with. I happen to have an old Asus 32-bit Celeron netbook collecting dust, so I gave it a bit of a wipedown, installed the latest version of Debian with XFCE on it, and let them install what they needed from there.
So if you get a 64-bit machine AT ALL, it will absolutely run the latest versions of Linux.
(Why is this a thing?
Lots of computers in industry are very low-spec. They use less power and have fewer requirements. As long as there are people who use that hardware and/or are willing to port fixes and new kernel features to it, it’ll keep getting updates. You only run into the ‘dropped compatibility’ thing when really no one is using it.)
They actually discontinued quite a few architectures (in total 15 architectures). But all of them where cancelled, because nobody in their right mind is still running them if not for a youtube video.
Sparc Sun-4, SPARCstation and SPARCserver are probably the best-known ones after 386.
So long as the computer supports an instruction set from like the last 30 years you can run the latest kernel.
Here’s a 133 Mhz Pentium running Gentoo with a very recent kernel.
I’d probably recommend something like Debian though unless you are really pushing the limits of the hardware.
“Linux Kernel 4.14.8 (Dec 2017)” - Would this be the “very recent”?
4.14 is close to EOL, but it is still very well supported.
As far as I know. nothing done in that video would be impossible on the latest kernel. Everything would compile and run comparably.
Make sure that device doesn’t require proprietary drivers (commonly WiFi or GPU). If the hardware in question needs those and you need the component to work, I wouldn’t take it for free because you’d be stuck with shitty support on an ancient kernel.
Most commonly, thio affects broadcom WiFi and Nvidia GPUs.
I second that about Nvidia GPUs. While Linux hardware support is really good, there is plenty of common, mainstream hardware that never was and never will be supported by Linux, usually due to uncooperative manufacturers. For Nvidia, their non-free driver is terrible and the nouveau driver in Linux is hit-or-miss. (Note, many people use either of those successfully, but the likelihood of success drops rapidly with any of: multiple displays, the need to dynamically change outputs, multi-GPU Optimus hardware or even laptops in general, and fully functional hardware acceleration.)
Sounds like OP is more likely to have a winmodem than a Nvidia GPU that doesn’t work with nouveau
Oh you again, yes Linux supports every normal hardware, and even a lot of crazy ones like Risc-V
On Android the system is bundled with the firmware as it comes from the same people. And for some reason those people dont like providing updates for sane amounts of time, like… 20 years?
haha yes me, no I was wondering about running the latest versions of linux on older machines. are they capable or more limited to older versions just because the age and the older hardware?
Every Linux runs everywhere! This is not Android, iOS or MacOS! Backwards compatibility is the key word here.
Your purse will limit you to older hardware though.
But I just may not be able to run the newer releases that come out and continue to come out? if the machine is a tad old? is that what I’m getting? because that’s what im trying to figure out
No, every Linux works on every regular Laptop.
Yes, the linux kernel will work! I’d say it’s even more likely that wifi, soundcard, etc. work without any problems than if you’d buy a bleeding edge laptop (although these mostly also just work nowadays). The oldest machine I’ve got is a laptop from 12 years ago which easily runs modern linux, but even much older machines shouldn’t have a problem with that, at least not with the kernel.
perfect, so it sorta just depends on the specs like ram and such? are their any other things like cpus that I should be looking for?
I have the various latest release of EndeavourOS running on a 2008 iMac and a Dell laptop that I cannot remember the model of that is even older.
The biggest concern is how much ram and how fast a processor of the older computer. Most modern distros use about a gig of ram on startup and prefer a processor made in the last 20 years. If your computer has 500mb ram and a single core 1ghz pentium its gonna choke trying to run linux mint.
Instead certain Linux distributions are specifically tailored to work on extremely old and underpowered computers such as puppy Linux. These are modern distributions with updated kernels but are extremely minimalist in nature.
