Re: Firefox resource utilization (was Re: A case for supporting antiquated hardware, was Re: A hypervisor for a headless server?)

[Nicolas George]

ce (12023-06-08):
> What about ads for car insurance?

Yes, what about them? What do you think they have special?

(Hint: an ad for a car insurance is not to convince you to subscribe to
any insurance rather than none, it is to convince you to subscribe to
this insurance rather than any other.)

-- 
  Nicolas George


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Re: Firefox resource utilization (was Re: A case for supporting antiquated hardware, was Re: A hypervisor for a headless server?)

[ce]

On 6/8/23 01:34, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:
Ad industry /is/ about convincing people to do things which 
potentially damage them. So it is deceptive by design. Read up on Big 
Tobacco for a good example.

What about ads for car insurance?

Re: Firefox resource utilization (was Re: A case for supporting antiquated hardware, was Re: A hypervisor for a headless server?)

[tomas]

On Thu, Jun 08, 2023 at 12:45:38AM +0200, Oliver Schoede wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 6 Jun 2023 06:05:18 +0200
>  wrote:
> 
> >On Mon, Jun 05, 2023 at 05:59:11PM -0400, Celejar wrote:
> >
> >[...]
> >
> >> The only case I can see in which such offloading would
> >> be unethical is where the website operator is somehow engaging in
> >> deceptive behavior, but assuming it is not [...]
> >
> >A pretty strong assumption given that the crushing maturity of
> >the internet is fuelled by the ad industry [...]

> So somehow there still is no such thing as free lunch. You could just
> as well "blame" a cable TV network for running all those ads, your TV
> set after all won't eat less power. No profit means no fancy
> shows,  sports, nor fancy websites. On the web things get quickly fuzzy
> of course, but in general neither is exactly deceptive.

Ad industry /is/ about convincing people to do things which potentially
damage them. So it is deceptive by design. Read up on Big Tobacco for
a good example.

>  We know what
> we're doing and what we're doing is voluntary and the catches, if not
> obvious, are obviously well known. Know a workaround or work without
> it. I'm still a (somewhat) regular terminal links user, a text browser
> that is, no javascript not to mention anything more demanding [...]

We are some kind of elite, don't forget that. Think of all those
folks pushed to standard browsers (banking) and smartphones (again,
banking, in some countries even basic public services).

They haven't the means to fight that; things are set up so they
don't even realise it, so most of the time they haven't even motive.
So it's on us.

> [...] After all those years uBlock
> Origin probably saved me tangible money too, especially with German
> electricity costs (who's to blame?), but then what's cheating?

Ah. uBlock. A free lunch, after all?

;-)

Cheers
-- 
t


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Re: Firefox resource utilization (was Re: A case for supporting antiquated hardware, was Re: A hypervisor for a headless server?)

[Oliver Schoede]

On Tue, 6 Jun 2023 06:05:18 +0200
 wrote:

>On Mon, Jun 05, 2023 at 05:59:11PM -0400, Celejar wrote:
>
>[...]
>
>> The only case I can see in which such offloading would
>> be unethical is where the website operator is somehow engaging in
>> deceptive behavior, but assuming it is not [...]
>
>A pretty strong assumption given that the crushing maturity of
>the internet is fuelled by the ad industry, which, barred some
>exceptions, can be characterised as "deception for hire".
>
>Cheers

So somehow there still is no such thing as free lunch. You could just
as well "blame" a cable TV network for running all those ads, your TV
set after all won't eat less power. No profit means no fancy
shows,  sports, nor fancy websites. On the web things get quickly fuzzy
of course, but in general neither is exactly deceptive. We know what
we're doing and what we're doing is voluntary and the catches, if not
obvious, are obviously well known. Know a workaround or work without
it. I'm still a (somewhat) regular terminal links user, a text browser
that is, no javascript not to mention anything more demanding, find it
quite comfortable for text-dominated sites, like docs or Wikepedia,
doesn't go well with physics/math content though. Also ok for a quick
brush-up on news sites, where there's still a need, most don't work
anymore but some do, not the ads. After all those years uBlock
Origin probably saved me tangible money too, especially with German
electricity costs (who's to blame?), but then what's cheating?

Greetings,
Oliver

Re: Firefox resource utilization (was Re: A case for supporting antiquated hardware, was Re: A hypervisor for a headless server?)

[tomas]

On Mon, Jun 05, 2023 at 05:59:11PM -0400, Celejar wrote:

[...]

> The only case I can see in which such offloading would
> be unethical is where the website operator is somehow engaging in
> deceptive behavior, but assuming it is not [...]

A pretty strong assumption given that the crushing maturity of
the internet is fuelled by the ad industry, which, barred some
exceptions, can be characterised as "deception for hire".

Cheers
-- 
t


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Re: Firefox resource utilization (was Re: A case for supporting antiquated hardware, was Re: A hypervisor for a headless server?)

[Celejar]

On Sun, 4 Jun 2023 16:17:47 +0800
Bret Busby  wrote:

> On 4/6/23 14:32, Max Nikulin wrote:
> 
> > 
> > I believe, web site creators should be blamed more aggressively than 
> > browser developers for RAM requirements of contemporary web applications.
> > 
> 
> That was the point that I was making - I had not, as a twisted response 
> indicated, criticised Firefox regarding the misuse of resources - I 
> explicitly referred to malignant web application developers (for those 
> that do not understand the term, a web application is the application, 
> on the web application hosting server, that the user accesses, using a 
> web browser, not the web browser itself) that steal users' resources 
> using client-side processing (by using malware such as javascript using 
> client side processing), rather than properly and ethically using 
> server-side processing, such as .jsp or Perl .cgi applications.
> 
> The problem is that some web developers (and, especially, their 
> employers) offload the processing that should be done on the business 
> web application hosting server, to the victim users' personal computers. 
> It is a malignant exploitation, like the "gig economy".

I am quite puzzled by your perspective: you repeatedly express moral
indignation at the offloading of processing to users' machines, calling
this "malignant exploitation" and "steal[ing]" and implying that it is
unethical. Why? What duty does the website owe you to do any processing
at all for you? The only case I can see in which such offloading would
be unethical is where the website operator is somehow engaging in
deceptive behavior, but assuming it is not, why do you feel that there
is an ethical problem here? What right does a user have to demand
that someone else perform some processing for him?

-- 
Celejar

Re: Firefox resource utilization (was Re: A case for supporting antiquated hardware, was Re: A hypervisor for a headless server?)

[Stefan Monnier]

> With no client-side javascript, it's not possible to change just a part of
> a web page[0]. The server must send the whole web page to be rendered by the
> client. So while it decreases CPU usage in the client, it increases network
> usage. Isn't it unethical to also "steal" more bandwidth than necessary?

Indeed, early uses of client side (Javascript) processing really helped
make web sites more efficient: for the server, the client, and the
network in between.

And then web developers realized that a browser-with-Javascript is just
a sort of VM.  So now we have "web applications" running in that VM,
where the backward/forward buttons make you leave/reenter the
application rather than move through past states of it, and you can't
use bookmarks to refer to the current state any more :-(


Stefan

Re: Firefox resource utilization (was Re: A case for supporting antiquated hardware, was Re: A hypervisor for a headless server?)

[tomas]

On Sun, Jun 04, 2023 at 10:34:04AM -0400, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 04, 2023 at 04:30:46PM +0200, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:
> > So the practice is that the whole internet dumps the whole framework
> > schtack [2] on you.
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebAssembly

We need better craftspeople, not better tools.

And no, I'm not actually blaming the people themselves, but an
environment which doesn't encourage that.

Cheers
-- 
t


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Re: Firefox resource utilization (was Re: A case for supporting antiquated hardware, was Re: A hypervisor for a headless server?)

[Greg Wooledge]

On Sun, Jun 04, 2023 at 04:30:46PM +0200, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:
> So the practice is that the whole internet dumps the whole framework
> schtack [2] on you.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebAssembly

Re: Firefox resource utilization (was Re: A case for supporting antiquated hardware, was Re: A hypervisor for a headless server?)

[tomas]

On Sun, Jun 04, 2023 at 08:17:43AM -0300, Eduardo M KALINOWSKI wrote:

[...]

> With no client-side javascript, it's not possible to change just a part of a
> web page[0]. The server must send the whole web page to be rendered by the
> client. So while it decreases CPU usage in the client, it increases network
> usage. Isn't it unethical to also "steal" more bandwidth than necessary?
> 
> [0] There are frames (now deprecated) and iframes, but they only get you so
> far. And each (i)frame must be a complete html page.

This is the theory, yes. In practice, here's one example: my browser takes
roughly 12sec to "boot" our company chat app (a stripe.js monster, AFAICS).

All that to ask me whether I want to download their "native" [1] app or
"view" the thing in the browser. When I opt for the browser it continues
"booting" for a few secs.

So the practice is that the whole internet dumps the whole framework
schtack [2] on you.

Cheers

[1] An electron app. Yeah, right.
[2] A pun, not a typo.
-- 
t


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Re: Firefox resource utilization (was Re: A case for supporting antiquated hardware, was Re: A hypervisor for a headless server?)

[songbird]

Max Nikulin wrote:
...
> I believe, web site creators should be blamed more aggressively than 
> browser developers for RAM requirements of contemporary web applications.

  no kidding, rather poor design in many web sites these 
days, loading and reloading images, large images for 
little purpose, videos which don't really show or say
much, etc.

  my biggest peeves in recent times is login pages which
are full of stuff (when all i want to do is login.  don't
make it a mess which takes too long to load up.  just 
let me login, ok?  grrr!) and pages which want me to 
accept their cookies but are so full of stuff if i click
too soon i get an error, so i'm having to wait a few 
moments before i can click.


  songbird

Re: Firefox resource utilization (was Re: A case for supporting antiquated hardware, was Re: A hypervisor for a headless server?)

[Eduardo M KALINOWSKI]

On 04/06/2023 05:17, Bret Busby wrote:

On 4/6/23 14:32, Max Nikulin wrote:



I believe, web site creators should be blamed more aggressively than 
browser developers for RAM requirements of contemporary web applications.




That was the point that I was making - I had not, as a twisted response 
indicated, criticised Firefox regarding the misuse of resources - I 
explicitly referred to malignant web application developers (for those 
that do not understand the term, a web application is the application, 
on the web application hosting server, that the user accesses, using a 
web browser, not the web browser itself) that steal users' resources 
using client-side processing (by using malware such as javascript using 
client side processing), rather than properly and ethically using 
server-side processing, such as .jsp or Perl .cgi applications.


The problem is that some web developers (and, especially, their 
employers) offload the processing that should be done on the business 
web application hosting server, to the victim users' personal computers. 
It is a malignant exploitation, like the "gig economy".


With no client-side javascript, it's not possible to change just a part 
of a web page[0]. The server must send the whole web page to be rendered 
by the client. So while it decreases CPU usage in the client, it 
increases network usage. Isn't it unethical to also "steal" more 
bandwidth than necessary?


[0] There are frames (now deprecated) and iframes, but they only get you 
so far. And each (i)frame must be a complete html page.


And even with regards to CPU usage your model might not be so great. 
Instead of re-rendering just the part of the page that needs to be 
changed (say, the message pane in a webmail application), with no 
client-side scripting the whole interface must be re-rendered, which can 
be resource intensive. So while I'd agree that with client-side 
scripting resource usage in the client is higher, it might not be as 
higher as you think.




--
Eduardo M KALINOWSKI
edua...@kalinowski.com.br

Re: Firefox resource utilization (was Re: A case for supporting antiquated hardware, was Re: A hypervisor for a headless server?)

[Bret Busby]

On 4/6/23 14:32, Max Nikulin wrote:



I believe, web site creators should be blamed more aggressively than 
browser developers for RAM requirements of contemporary web applications.




That was the point that I was making - I had not, as a twisted response 
indicated, criticised Firefox regarding the misuse of resources - I 
explicitly referred to malignant web application developers (for those 
that do not understand the term, a web application is the application, 
on the web application hosting server, that the user accesses, using a 
web browser, not the web browser itself) that steal users' resources 
using client-side processing (by using malware such as javascript using 
client side processing), rather than properly and ethically using 
server-side processing, such as .jsp or Perl .cgi applications.


The problem is that some web developers (and, especially, their 
employers) offload the processing that should be done on the business 
web application hosting server, to the victim users' personal computers. 
It is a malignant exploitation, like the "gig economy".


..
Bret Busby
Armadale
West Australia
(UTC+0800)
..

Re: Firefox resource utilization (was Re: A case for supporting antiquated hardware, was Re: A hypervisor for a headless server?)

[Max Nikulin]

On 03/06/2023 18:37, The Wanderer wrote:

On 2023-06-03 at 07:18, Max Nikulin wrote:

On 03/06/2023 17:40, The Wanderer wrote:


Hey, now. I once had a Firefox session (with "restore tabs from
previous session" enabled, and about six-to-eight windows) with
5,190 open tabs, and that computer only had 24GB of RAM.


Modern browsers supports "unloaded" tabs, so most of your tabs likely
were similar to bookmarks with page resources not loaded to RAM.


That feature was, AFAIK, first introduced in the BarTab addon which I
mentioned. So, yes, and although in hindsight I didn't state it
explicitly, I intended to convey that by mentioning that addon.


Sorry, I never used BarTab, so I was unaware that tab unloading appeared 
in this add-on earlier than in Firefox. For me an "open tab" is the one 
that is rendered, has DOM tree in memory and perhaps running JS, webasm, 
animated images and styles, so some pages may be really hungry for RAM.


Most of your tabs are just some records and will load resources from net 
when you really open them.


I appreciate that browsers limit consumed resources by unloading page 
content when a tab is not accessed for some period of time. It is great 
that users may have hundreds of tabs despite I mostly have no more than 
a couple of dozens.


I just would not call a tab "open" because I consider it as a synonym to 
"loaded". Anyway add-ons for advanced tab management hides most of them.


I believe, web site creators should be blamed more aggressively than 
browser developers for RAM requirements of contemporary web applications.



P.S. Perhaps in future tabs as UI element in browsers will be merged
with bookmarks and browsing history. The only prerequisite to better
save state of scroll position and partially filled forms.


I'm not sure quite what you're envisioning, but one reason why I keep so
many open tabs rather than using e.g. bookmarks instead is because I
want to be able to preserve forward/back history within each tab; I
don't know of any other feature that enables doing that.


Thanks, I have never considered such use case, but it is not against of 
fusing of tabs, bookmarks, and history. Your tabs are a kind of advanced 
bookmarks, a favorite nodes in browsing history graph. Current bookmark 
UI is just too limited in browsers, so tabs are more flexible and more 
convenient for you.


I mostly open new tabs to follow links (actually it is more close to 
enqueue a page for reading). That is why usefulness of forward-backward 
history is quite limited for me. Unfortunately opener is not saved for 
tabs. (I consider annotating of visited pages is more important, but it 
is another story.)


"Pure" tabs are hot cache of rendered pages where current DOM state is 
important for following interaction. Everything else are just records in 
some database. For me, tabs UI is a kind of L1 cache, a subset of pages 
closely related to the current or planned soon activity.


Of course, I do not insist that everybody should think of browser UI in 
my terms, it is just a point of view.

Re: A case for supporting antiquated hardware, was Re: A hypervisor for a headless server?

[Bret Busby]

On 3/6/23 20:26, Dan Ritter wrote:

Bret Busby wrote:





I don't see how they can be both cheap and cost far too much.

-dsr-



Cheap and nasty construction, selling for excessive prices.

"Here is this thing that cost me a dollar to make. I will sell it to you 
for a hundred dollars, with no worthwhile warranty."


..
Bret Busby
Armadale
West Australia
(UTC+0800)
..

Re: A case for supporting antiquated hardware, was Re: A hypervisor for a headless server?

[Dan Ritter]

Bret Busby wrote: 
> Last year, I bought the computer described below, as a refurbished machine,
> and, it is far superior to the new computers that do not come with enough
> RAM to be worthwhile.
> 
> This computer, with 128GB RAM, I regard as far superior to an i9 computer
> with 8GB RAM.

OK.

> The new computers are rubbish.

No evidence for that, and the statement is so broad as to be
useless.

>   Info: 14-core model: Intel Xeon E5-2660 v4 bits: 64 type: MT MCP arch:
> Broadwell rev: 1 cache:

First sale date: Q1 2016.

The discussion about relative speed of old computers is specific
to a feature which became ubiquitous in 2012, and the
speculation about not being worse than 3x was specifically about
2010 vs current models.

> Some computers, like this one, perform far better, than the cheap and nasty
> new computers (which cost far more, and, far too much)

I don't see how they can be both cheap and cost far too much.

-dsr-

Re: Firefox resource utilization (was Re: A case for supporting antiquated hardware, was Re: A hypervisor for a headless server?)

[The Wanderer]

On 2023-06-03 at 07:18, Max Nikulin wrote:

> On 03/06/2023 17:40, The Wanderer wrote:
> 
>> Hey, now. I once had a Firefox session (with "restore tabs from
>> previous session" enabled, and about six-to-eight windows) with
>> 5,190 open tabs, and that computer only had 24GB of RAM.
> 
> Modern browsers supports "unloaded" tabs, so most of your tabs likely
> were similar to bookmarks with page resources not loaded to RAM.

That feature was, AFAIK, first introduced in the BarTab addon which I
mentioned. So, yes, and although in hindsight I didn't state it
explicitly, I intended to convey that by mentioning that addon.

> P.S. Perhaps in future tabs as UI element in browsers will be merged
> with bookmarks and browsing history. The only prerequisite to better
> save state of scroll position and partially filled forms.

I'm not sure quite what you're envisioning, but one reason why I keep so
many open tabs rather than using e.g. bookmarks instead is because I
want to be able to preserve forward/back history within each tab; I
don't know of any other feature that enables doing that.

I also can't think of another UI paradigm for interfacing with such a
setup that would work any better than tabs do.

-- 
   The Wanderer

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw



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Re: Firefox resource utilization (was Re: A case for supporting antiquated hardware, was Re: A hypervisor for a headless server?)

[Max Nikulin]

On 03/06/2023 17:40, The Wanderer wrote:


Hey, now. I once had a Firefox session (with "restore tabs from previous
session" enabled, and about six-to-eight windows) with 5,190 open tabs,
and that computer only had 24GB of RAM.


Modern browsers supports "unloaded" tabs, so most of your tabs likely 
were similar to bookmarks with page resources not loaded to RAM.


P.S. Perhaps in future tabs as UI element in browsers will be merged 
with bookmarks and browsing history. The only prerequisite to better 
save state of scroll position and partially filled forms.

Firefox resource utilization (was Re: A case for supporting antiquated hardware, was Re: A hypervisor for a headless server?)

[The Wanderer]

On 2023-06-03 at 01:41, Nicholas Geovanis wrote:

> On Fri, Jun 2, 2023, 6:10 PM Bret Busby  wrote:

>> This computer, with 128GB RAM, I regard as far superior to an i9 
>> computer with 8GB RAM.

>> Refurbished computer profile (with 128GB RAM (that runs about 200 
>> windows of Firefox (I have one saved session, with 229 windows,
>> and about 3200 tabs), while viewing movies (I also have about 10
>> movies open at present, in Celluloid and SMPlayer), although, at
>> present, I have only about 127 Firefox windows open, with 1689
>> tabs):
> 
> Holy cow! :-) No wonder you have 128GB RAM. You will need that much
> for that much Firefox. It's a peeve of mine how resource intensive it
> is for a browser compared to the competition.

Hey, now. I once had a Firefox session (with "restore tabs from previous
session" enabled, and about six-to-eight windows) with 5,190 open tabs,
and that computer only had 24GB of RAM.

...And it used BarTab, or rather a variant that I maintained myself
after the original maintainer decided getting a small subset of that
addon's functionality integrated into the upstream browser was sufficient.

I'm doing much better now; I've got only 1,491 open tabs, split across
eight browser windows, on a machine with 64GB of RAM. (I think I had it
down under 1,000 total tabs at one point. I still hope to get it down to
a range of 200-500 total tabs; I don't think I'll realistically be
comfortable running with fewer than that, given what I use them for.)

And all of this is with older Firefox versions, which are considerably
more resource-intensive in my experience than newer Firefox is.

I may dislike a lot of things about where Mozilla has taken Firefox, but
I do prefer to see it criticized for the faults it actually has.
Resource-intensive it may be, but unless extra windows increase resource
usage far more than extra tabs do, you don't need anything *close* to
128GB for ~1700 Firefox tabs in ~128 Firefox windows.

-- 
   The Wanderer

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw



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Re: A case for supporting antiquated hardware, was Re: A hypervisor for a headless server?

[Bret Busby]

On 3/6/23 13:41, Nicholas Geovanis wrote:
On Fri, Jun 2, 2023, 6:10 PM Bret Busby > wrote:


On 3/6/23 06:33, Nicholas Geovanis wrote:
 >
 >
 > On Fri, Jun 2, 2023, 4:49 PM Bret Busby mailto:b...@busby.net>
 > >> wrote:
 >
 >     On 2/6/23 23:55, James H. H. Lampert wrote:
 >
 >     
 >
 >      > Luddites of the World Unite! You have nothing to lose but your
 >     upgrade
 >      > treadmills
 >
 >     If, by upgrade treadmills, you mean the flatbed treadmills,
that have a
 >     belt that is turned by the human walking on it, rather than the
 >     electric
 >     ones with electric motors for lazy humans, the ones that have
the belt
 >
 >
 > I'm afraid he meant the treadmill that used to be called "planned
 > obsolescence". The thought that a perfectly satisfactory machine no
 > longer suffices for you because it is "yesterday's model".
Thereafter it
 > will stop working with newer machines (or software) which are
intended
 > to be incompatible with it.
 > And what is the end in view?
 > Sell you a new machine.
 >
 >

Interesting.

Last year, I bought the computer described below, as a refurbished
machine, and, it is far superior to the new computers that do not come
with enough RAM to be worthwhile.

This computer, with 128GB RAM, I regard as far superior to an i9
computer with 8GB RAM.
.

Refurbished computer profile (with 128GB RAM (that runs about 200
windows of Firefox (I have one saved session, with 229 windows, and
about 3200 tabs), while viewing movies (I also have about 10 movies
open
at present, in Celluloid and SMPlayer), although, at present, I have
only about 127 Firefox windows open, with 1689 tabs):


Holy cow! :-)
No wonder you have 128GB RAM. You will need that much for that much 
Firefox. It's a peeve of mine how resource intensive it is for a browser 
compared to the competition.




The problem in the demand for resources via web browsers, is the 
gratuitous malicious use of javascript; client side processing, that 
steals a user's resources, rather than server side processing, which is 
what ethical web application developers use (server side processing, 
that is, that is used by ethical web application developers).


Running SeaMonkey, with javascript disabled, uses hardly any resources; 
on my i7, 16GB RAM, All-In-One (also, a refurbished Dell), I have 
currently 80 Firefox Windows, 20 Pale Moon Windows, and, (free of 
javascript) 16 SeaMonkey Windows running.


Also, having the primary HD, with an appropriate (I use 32GB as 
standard) swap partition, as an NVVME (?) SSD, causes the systems to run 
better.


My point was, and, is, that the "speed" of a system is not solely 
reliant on, and, should not be assessed solely on, the age of the CPU; 
many other factors, including the amount of RAM, the speed and capacity 
of the primary HD, and, the responsible use of a swap partition, should, 
I believe, be taken into account.


..
Bret Busby
Armadale
West Australia
(UTC+0800)
..

Re: A case for supporting antiquated hardware, was Re: A hypervisor for a headless server?

[Nicholas Geovanis]

On Fri, Jun 2, 2023, 6:10 PM Bret Busby  wrote:

> On 3/6/23 06:33, Nicholas Geovanis wrote:
> >
> >
> > On Fri, Jun 2, 2023, 4:49 PM Bret Busby  > > wrote:
> >
> > On 2/6/23 23:55, James H. H. Lampert wrote:
> >
> > 
> >
> >  > Luddites of the World Unite! You have nothing to lose but your
> > upgrade
> >  > treadmills
> >
> > If, by upgrade treadmills, you mean the flatbed treadmills, that
> have a
> > belt that is turned by the human walking on it, rather than the
> > electric
> > ones with electric motors for lazy humans, the ones that have the
> belt
> >
> >
> > I'm afraid he meant the treadmill that used to be called "planned
> > obsolescence". The thought that a perfectly satisfactory machine no
> > longer suffices for you because it is "yesterday's model". Thereafter it
> > will stop working with newer machines (or software) which are intended
> > to be incompatible with it.
> > And what is the end in view?
> > Sell you a new machine.
> >
> >
>
> Interesting.
>
> Last year, I bought the computer described below, as a refurbished
> machine, and, it is far superior to the new computers that do not come
> with enough RAM to be worthwhile.
>
> This computer, with 128GB RAM, I regard as far superior to an i9
> computer with 8GB RAM.
> .
>
> Refurbished computer profile (with 128GB RAM (that runs about 200
> windows of Firefox (I have one saved session, with 229 windows, and
> about 3200 tabs), while viewing movies (I also have about 10 movies open
> at present, in Celluloid and SMPlayer), although, at present, I have
> only about 127 Firefox windows open, with 1689 tabs):


Holy cow! :-)
No wonder you have 128GB RAM. You will need that much for that much
Firefox. It's a peeve of mine how resource intensive it is for a browser
compared to the competition.

Ned Ludd had his head screwed on straight. And was apparently a legendary
lover :-)
I have read that 3 Luddite sledgehammers have survived. There's your
solution for obsolescent  machinery :-)

Some computers, like this one, perform far better, than the cheap and
> nasty new computers (which cost far more, and, far too much), with the
> new computers being best described as rubbish, produced by increasingly
> malicious manufacturers (that make freedom of choice of operating
> systems, and, performance, impossible)
>



..
> Bret Busby
> Armadale
> West Australia
> (UTC+0800)
> ..
>
>

Re: A case for supporting antiquated hardware, was Re: A hypervisor for a headless server?

[Bret Busby]

On 3/6/23 06:33, Nicholas Geovanis wrote:



On Fri, Jun 2, 2023, 4:49 PM Bret Busby > wrote:


On 2/6/23 23:55, James H. H. Lampert wrote:



 > Luddites of the World Unite! You have nothing to lose but your
upgrade
 > treadmills

If, by upgrade treadmills, you mean the flatbed treadmills, that have a
belt that is turned by the human walking on it, rather than the
electric
ones with electric motors for lazy humans, the ones that have the belt


I'm afraid he meant the treadmill that used to be called "planned 
obsolescence". The thought that a perfectly satisfactory machine no 
longer suffices for you because it is "yesterday's model". Thereafter it 
will stop working with newer machines (or software) which are intended 
to be incompatible with it.

And what is the end in view?
Sell you a new machine.




Interesting.

Last year, I bought the computer described below, as a refurbished 
machine, and, it is far superior to the new computers that do not come 
with enough RAM to be worthwhile.


This computer, with 128GB RAM, I regard as far superior to an i9 
computer with 8GB RAM.


And, on this old computer, apart from (as part of its refurbishment), is 
the 500GB NVVME (?) SSD primary hard drive, the 6TB internal second HD, 
and, using some of the (about)6 USB ports, I have an external USB HDD 
(about 2TB), and a T5 and a T7 external USB SSD drive, with room for 
more; the T5 and T7 drives using the exFAT file system, with 
extraordinarily fast data transfer rates.


So, old computers like this one, are superior to new computers.

And, for years, when dialup computing was used, I had used for a 
mailserver, a used, low spec, HP server that I bought for 100AUD, that 
had an MMX CPU, and, was quite adequate to be a mailserver, running 
postfix and procmail, and, whatever version of Debian was on it, until 
dialup was superseded by "broadband", for which, the modems imposed 
DHCP, rather than static IP addresses, and I had to give up running my 
own mailserver, because it became too complicated, when I could no 
longer use static IP addresses.


And, this computer (not the ex-mailserver) cost about as much as a 
bottom of the range new computer.


The new computers are rubbish.

Refurbished computer profile (with 128GB RAM (that runs about 200 
windows of Firefox (I have one saved session, with 229 windows, and 
about 3200 tabs), while viewing movies (I also have about 10 movies open 
at present, in Celluloid and SMPlayer), although, at present, I have 
only about 127 Firefox windows open, with 1689 tabs):


"
Machine:
  Type: Desktop System: Dell product: Precision Tower 5810 v: N/A 
serial: 

Chassis: type: 7 serial: 
  Mobo: Dell model: 0K240Y v: A02 serial:  UEFI: 
Dell v: A34

date: 10/19/2020
CPU:
  Info: 14-core model: Intel Xeon E5-2660 v4 bits: 64 type: MT MCP 
arch: Broadwell rev: 1 cache:

L1: 896 KiB L2: 3.5 MiB L3: 35 MiB
  Speed (MHz): avg: 1491 high: 2880 min/max: 1200/3200 cores: 1: 1198 
2: 2539 3: 1199 4: 1197
5: 2827 6: 1197 7: 1198 8: 1197 9: 1197 10: 1197 11: 1202 12: 1198 
13: 1357 14: 1201 15: 1199
16: 2880 17: 1197 18: 1197 19: 2727 20: 1197 21: 1198 22: 1304 23: 
1197 24: 1197 25: 2828

26: 1198 27: 1353 28: 1197 bogomips: 111740
  Flags: avx avx2 ht lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx
Graphics:
  Device-1: NVIDIA TU116 [GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER] vendor: ASUSTeK 
driver: nvidia v: 525.105.17
pcie: speed: 8 GT/s lanes: 16 ports: active: none off: HDMI-A-1 
empty: DP-1,DVI-D-1

bus-ID: 03:00.0 chip-ID: 10de:21c4
  Device-2: Sunplus Innovation AAPDQT-0622-W type: USB driver: 
snd-usb-audio,uvcvideo

bus-ID: 3-13:6 chip-ID: 1bcf:2cb4
  Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 1.21.1.4 compositor: marco v: 1.26.0 
driver: X: loaded: nvidia
unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,nouveau,vesa gpu: nvidia display-ID: :0 
screens: 1

  Screen-1: 0 s-res: 1920x1080 s-dpi: 93
  Monitor-1: HDMI-0 res: 1920x1080 dpi: 94 diag: 598mm (23.5")
  OpenGL: renderer: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER/PCIe/SSE2 v: 4.6.0 
NVIDIA 525.105.17

direct render: Yes
...
Info:
  Processes: 556 Uptime: 9d 12h 26m Memory: 125.72 GiB used: 99.99 GiB 
(79.5%) Init: systemd
  v: 249 runlevel: 5 Compilers: gcc: 11.3.0 alt: 11/12 Client: Unknown 
python3.10 client

  inxi: 3.3.13
"

Some computers, like this one, perform far better, than the cheap and 
nasty new computers (which cost far more, and, far too much), with the 
new computers being best described as rubbish, produced by increasingly 
malicious manufacturers (that make freedom of choice of operating 
systems, and, performance, impossible).


..
Bret Busby
Armadale
West Australia
(UTC+0800)
..

Re: A case for supporting antiquated hardware, was Re: A hypervisor for a headless server?

[Nicholas Geovanis]

On Fri, Jun 2, 2023, 4:49 PM Bret Busby  wrote:

> On 2/6/23 23:55, James H. H. Lampert wrote:
>
> 
>
> > Luddites of the World Unite! You have nothing to lose but your upgrade
> > treadmills
>
> If, by upgrade treadmills, you mean the flatbed treadmills, that have a
> belt that is turned by the human walking on it, rather than the electric
> ones with electric motors for lazy humans, the ones that have the belt


I'm afraid he meant the treadmill that used to be called "planned
obsolescence". The thought that a perfectly satisfactory machine no longer
suffices for you because it is "yesterday's model". Thereafter it will stop
working with newer machines (or software) which are intended to be
incompatible with it.
And what is the end in view?
Sell you a new machine.


> that is turned by the human walking on it, having a slight, and,
> adjustable upward grade, then, such treadmills should definitely not be
> abandoned.
>
> The human powered (rather than electric powered) treadmills are far more
> healthy, both directly for the human powering the treadmill, and, for
> the environment, especially, given that most electricity is generated
> either by burning things, and therefore, creating atmospheric pollution,
> and, poisoning most lifeforms, or, by nuclear meltdowns, causing
> radioactive poisoning, and, even worse toxic waste, than from burning
> things.
>
> So, human powered treadmills, that involve an upward grade, should not
> be abandoned, the abandonment of which treadmills, threatens life, for
> the sake of ever-increasing laziness.
>
> ..
> Bret Busby
> Armadale
> West Australia
> (UTC+0800)
> ..
>
>

Re: A case for supporting antiquated hardware, was Re: A hypervisor for a headless server?

[Bret Busby]

On 2/6/23 23:55, James H. H. Lampert wrote:



Luddites of the World Unite! You have nothing to lose but your upgrade 
treadmills


If, by upgrade treadmills, you mean the flatbed treadmills, that have a 
belt that is turned by the human walking on it, rather than the electric 
ones with electric motors for lazy humans, the ones that have the belt 
that is turned by the human walking on it, having a slight, and, 
adjustable upward grade, then, such treadmills should definitely not be 
abandoned.


The human powered (rather than electric powered) treadmills are far more 
healthy, both directly for the human powering the treadmill, and, for 
the environment, especially, given that most electricity is generated 
either by burning things, and therefore, creating atmospheric pollution, 
and, poisoning most lifeforms, or, by nuclear meltdowns, causing 
radioactive poisoning, and, even worse toxic waste, than from burning 
things.


So, human powered treadmills, that involve an upward grade, should not 
be abandoned, the abandonment of which treadmills, threatens life, for 
the sake of ever-increasing laziness.


..
Bret Busby
Armadale
West Australia
(UTC+0800)
..

A case for supporting antiquated hardware, was Re: A hypervisor for a headless server?

[James H. H. Lampert]

On 6/2/23 8:34 AM, Mario Marietto wrote:

You may argue that developing for a small number of old computers
isn't worth trying. But,first of all,I think that there are a LOT of
old PCs in the world,since poor people aren't only a niche.


Nor are they the only ones using antiquated hardware, or expecting new 
hardware to remain in service until it physically deteriorates to the 
point of unreliability.


Some of us are Luddites, and damn proud of it. Earlier this year, I 
finished a months-long project of obtaining a notebook computer old 
enough to be viable as a DOSbook (IBM PC-DOS 2000, with no WinDoze 
whatsoever), and configuring it as such, precisely so that I would once 
again have backup hardware, and mobile capability, for my DOS 
applications. As a replacement for my dying "bionic desk lamp" iMac, I 
eschewed both WinDoze and Mac, in favor of a System76 Meerkat, precisely 
because a state-of-the-art Linux system would presumably have a nice 
long lifespan.


I don't trade in my automobiles for new models; I keep them until it's 
time to have them hauled off to their final rusting places. And I spend 
my Saturdays docenting at the International Printing Museum, where I 
frequently operate presses and linecasting equipment that is nearly as 
old, or older, than I am, some of which was already decades old before I 
was born.


Luddites of the World Unite! You have nothing to lose but your upgrade 
treadmills, and Linux and DOS are your friends!


--
JHHL