The 2025 Operating System Thread

[stj]

i have a macbook-pro from 2007 here,
installing a new pram battery, SSD and Linux in it for a friend.

strange things, i didnt realise till i needed them that it only has ONE FUCKING MOUSE BUTTON and no delete key - only backspace!!
nice lcd on them though.

[momaka]

My web-enabled machine has Windows 8.1 and I will need to "upgrade" to Windows 10 shortly to be able to run a current browser.

Perhaps I've missed it, but did Mozilla/Firefox announce they will be dropping support for Windows 7? (The ESR version that is, I know the regular version dropped support already.) FWIW, this is the only reason I have machines with Windows 7 right now. If the browser game becomes the same in Win7 as it is with XP, I'll probably revert back to XP fully again. Mypal (latest version based on Quantum engine) is actually pretty good on XP... and works fine on 7 too. My guess is that "alternative" browsers will be available for these two for a little while longer, especially Win7.

i have a macbook-pro from 2007 here
...
strange things, i didnt realise till i needed them that it only has ONE FUCKING MOUSE BUTTON

Perfect for browsing badcaps, now that the new forum software made everything right-click-unfriendly.

Also, it's not just the macbooks. Virtually just about any laptop from the last 10 years or so has been made with a single-button "clunck-pad". I absolutely refuse to use these things. Seems like ergonomics have been completely obliterated by designers' obsession to make everything thinner, smaller, and "neater"-looking.

[Topcat]

i have a macbook-pro from 2007 here,
installing a new pram battery, SSD and Linux in it for a friend.

strange things, i didnt realise till i needed them that it only has ONE FUCKING MOUSE BUTTON and no delete key - only backspace!!
nice lcd on them though.

2-finger tap does the same thing as the missing mouse button....but 100% on the DELETE key...

[em132]

Dual boot; XP (x86) / 7 (x64) -- Still on XP about 95% of the time.

If I have to be completely honest, I've been using my Windows 7 machines quite a bit more this year compared to my XP ones. Reason being: browser support.

https://win32subsystem.live/supermium/

And yes, MyPal does need to be updated more often... and be less buggy.

[Topcat]

Even Waterfox has ended support for Win7/8/8.1...

That said, it's hard to believe Win10 is 10 years old.......

[em132]

If I have to be completely honest, I've been using my Windows 7 machines quite a bit more this year compared to my XP ones. Reason being: browser support.

Another one:
Serpent/UXP for XP

It's an XP-compatible port of Basilisk, itself based on Pale Moon. Updated SUPER regularly.

[momaka]

https://win32subsystem.live/supermium/

Thank you for sharing this!!
I don't remember running into this browser when looking for alternatives for XP (or maybe I did, but probably saw Chrome-something-something and abandoned ship --> shows how much I DISLIKE Google stuff.) At one point just a few years ago, there were a lot of people making browsers for XP. Then in the last 1-2, that seems to have died down. Good to hear there is something else besides Mypal - not that I mind it, but indeed it could use more frequent updates, especially if it's going to be used for Youtube, which seems to change its scripts code almost every week just to fck with people. (Not that I care that much as I hardly use it anymore.)

Still on XP about 95% of the time.

Can't blame ya. It's an OS that's too good to die or be considered retro IMO.
I've been using it a little more frequently again, lately. Wih a 3GHz C2D and 2 GB of RAM, it's very snappy and still usable online, even with Mypal.

That said, it's hard to believe Win10 is 10 years old.......

Damn!
I knew it was close, but didn't know it already made it there. Wow!
Still, I don't really see why MS had to make/push Win11, as it's not like it's that much more different from 10. Probably another case of "keeping the wheel turning".

Even Waterfox has ended support for Win7/8/8.1...

I don't think Waterfox was ever really an old OS -friendly browser to begin with, so I'm not surprised.

[Topcat]

I don't think Waterfox was ever really an old OS -friendly browser to begin with, so I'm not surprised.

No, it wasn't.....but they hung in long after Mozilla cut it off.

[momaka]

No, it wasn't.....but they hung in long after Mozilla cut it off.

True... but Firefox still has ESR release for Win 7/8/8.1 (and what I'm posting from right now on one of my Win7 rigs.)

I guess it's impossible to go with just one browser these days. On the flip side, I have found some usefulness in having multiple different browsers on one machine.

[Dan81]

Generally Windows 10 1809 LTSC on my main PC, but my other machines run as follows:

- work laptop, Thinkpad T440p - Windows 11 Enterprise, in tandem with a recently "restored" HP dv6-3114sl (HD5470/i3 1st gen)
- main retro laptop - Latitude C810 - Windows XP Pro SP3 (you'd be surprised how snappy XP SP3 runs on a Tualatin w/ 512MB of RAM!)
- secondary retro - Latitude C610 - 2K SP4
- retro gaming - custom build w/ Athlon 700MHz SLOT A and recapped DFI AK70 - 98SE (most solid build I've had in a long time. This thing is tough as nails.)
- 2nd retro gaming - custom build w/ K6-2+ and Gigabyte 5AX r4.1 (not recapped yet, caps seem to have stood test of time tho!!!) - 98SE
- 3rd retro gaming - custom build w/ Celeron 300A@450 and ABIT BH6 - ME + Mandrake 10.1 dualboot
- 4th retro gaming - custom build w/ P3 650MHz and MSI MS-6168 - 98SE

[Nubstex]

Sorry for writing here, as i can't find if there is any pv here. TopCat, i have contacted thomas, who had manuals database some time ago. I want to revive it and he told me you have this database. What would you say? I think everyone would be happy

[eccerr0r]

All I see in my house is a flock of Pygoscelis papua. I've never had a "10" or newer window, last window I had was an 8 and a 7, not sure if I have any more XP window.

[lti]

I had to look that species up. I missed when that distro was popular and got serious with Linux in the Ubuntu/Arch era.

I'm somehow still on EndeavourOS. I don't like doing a lot of manual configuration on my main system, but in this case, it helps with my stupid hardware choices. Aside from that, Lubuntu is still my choice for old computers that are still capable of running modern browsers (the latest Firefox or a fork like Librewolf), but it also needs some manual configuration to enable Vsync in the compositor on some graphics drivers. Hell, I've been wondering if the 4GB RAM systems should switch to antiX or even Tiny Core (I got Firefox to auto-update on it when I was messing with it several years ago). I should install Tiny Core on something again.

[eccerr0r]

I wonder if I'm really going to give up on my 2GiB Atom eeePC. Took almost a week to do updates which I've done for the past few years keeping latest firefox running with the flock. It missed the last yearly update (and my 1.5GiB Dell Pentium-M, likewise 32-bit only, missed two years I think) but still tempted to go update it... (llvm and clang are the things that really don't like 32-bit anymore, they go OOM when building.)

[momaka]

I wonder if I'm really going to give up on my 2GiB Atom eeePC. Took almost a week to do updates which I've done for the past few years keeping latest firefox running with the flock.

Wow, LOL

I bought an Atom-based small desktop PC (1.6 GHz single core with HT) by mistake a few months back - thought it would be a little more modern PC given the Windows 7 sticker and that the "seller" (poor gypsies trash picker) said it had Windows 10 on it. Of course as soon as I opened it home and saw the i915 chipset with its "mighty" heatsink larger than the one on the CPU, I knew I was in for trouble. On the plus side, at least it is operational. But boy, is it slow. The seller did not actually lie - this thing DID have Windows 10 installed on it. Of course, with the HDD being a 320 GB Seagate "rust-spinner", you can imagine how it ran. I played around with it for one evening, but it just felt wrong. Anything I tried to do, even not online, responded very slowly.
So I ended up putting Windows 7 back on it. With the latest version of FF ESR, it can "get onto the web"... and that's all I will say. It's considerably slower than even my AM2 Athlon 64 X2 PCs. I think even my 2.8 GHz Pentium 4 is faster online. Of course, the P4 guzzles 120 Watts of power to do that, whereas this whole PC runs on a 40 Watt adapter. Actually, about that, the sticker on the case calls for a 19V 3.42A (65/70 Watt) adapter, but the gypsie seller cobbled one together from some small LG TV, and it was only a 40W adapter. So it's a pretty efficient little system, at least. I'm tempted to buy a 2nd hand solar panel in the range of 100-120 Watts capacity (around $25-30 here) and use this for forum browsing and extremely light internet surfing. But we will see. I'm also tempted to re-install it once again, but with Windows XP instead... and on a 2.5" laptop HDD to save even more power. I think this can make a decent-ish WinXp box. With 2 GB of RAM, XP will be plenty happy (not that my trimmed-down Windows 7 installations take much more.) But since the CPU is way too slow to even get on Youtube, I see no reason to not go back to XP (as that's really the only reason I maintain so many Windows 7 PCs now.) Otherwise, Supermium browser, as was suggested by another user in this thread, is a nice and fully up-to-date browser for XP. Only weak side about it is that it can't run online video smoothly like Firefox ESR or Mypal can on the same hardware. I wish the maker(s) of Mypal would keep it updated more often.

Anyways, that's all for that Atom PC. I got it for $14 total, so at least I didn't loose that much money. These Atom-based machines are pretty much useless these days.

[lti]

That's the problem with a distro that compiles every update on the user's PC. My old i3-2330M was strangely slow at compiling C++ (only slightly faster than a low-clocked Thoroughbred Athlon XP, even with a multi-threaded compiler), so I'm definitely running a more "normal" OS on it.

[eccerr0r]

Oh no the atom is indeed sllllllooooww... and yes I made it compile using the rest of the flock as helpers, but they can only help so much. Anyway indeed it's just about useless on reddit oddly enough due to javascript for the text portions of the site, nevermind trying to decode video. Yes it's slower than my AMD A6-3420M laptop though that is quad core. Yes the P4 is slow too, but I think my single core P4 3.4GHz will beat the Atom 1.6GHz by double at least I think.

My Raspberry Pi 2 and 0W's are slower than the Atom however... Likewise my Via C3-1000 and P3-933.

I didn't think the P4 idled at that high power however, wasn't that horrible I recall -- though it does eat power when crunching away.

Incidentally because 64-bit is what I'm more focused now, my Atom C2550 (2.4GHz, 2.6GHz turboboost) is even slower than my P4-650 in single threaded apps (though not by too much). Using all 4 cores on the C2550 will beat the P4 however. (I have a small single core 64-bit gcc compile-only benchmark to compare machines and it took 378 seconds for the P4 to finish, atom took 419 seconds. My "newer" machines are closer to the 140 second mark...)

I was thinking about replacing my Core2 Quad 9550 with the Atom C2550 because the Atom has 16GiB ECC RAM and the C2Q is stuck at 8GiB non-parity RAM, though I balked at the horrible speed. The same gcc benchmark my C2Q completes in 168 seconds.

[eccerr0r]

Yes all of my 'flock' is running the same os (though some 32- and most 64- bit) and they distcc each other. Most likely the low clock rate (and no turboboost) of the i3-2330M is slowing things down, my i3-4160 isn't too bad IMHO just because of its base clockspeed - it beats my Q9550. I'd still be surprised it's slower than perhaps my AthlonXP2200+ -- my AthlonXP is routinely beaten by my Pentium-M 1.6 and all my Core2 machines, so I'd say something is wrong...

[momaka]

Oh no the atom is indeed sllllllooooww...
... Yes the P4 is slow too, but I think my single core P4 3.4GHz will beat the Atom 1.6GHz by double at least I think.

Yup, that sounds about right.
My 2.8 GHz P4 HT seems to load YT pages about 1.5-2x faster than the Atom. I can also watch in 360p without stutter... or 480p on websites with the video embedded and no other heavy scripts to nibble on CPU cycles. The Atom, I can't even get it to show 360p video without stutter. Even 240p tend to be choppy. LOL!
Then again, I feel the sad part about this is how bloated websites have become these days.

My Raspberry Pi 2 and 0W's are slower than the Atom however... Likewise my Via C3-1000 and P3-933.

Hmmm.. I also have a P3-933. Would be fun to compare it to the Atom when I get time. I suspect the P3 won't be that much slower, despite the slower clock speed.

I didn't think the P4 idled at that high power however, wasn't that horrible I recall -- though it does eat power when crunching away.

My Prescott HT machines (no dedicated video card and only a single HDD) eat about 70 Watts idle (from the wall). Heavy CPU load brings them up to about 110-120 Watts. Intel Linpack stress-test: 130 Watts (the highest I have seen.)

my i3-4160 isn't too bad IMHO just because of its base clockspeed - it beats my Q9550.

No surprise about that.
Even the i3-3220 (non-M) is faster than any of the C2Q's when comparing single core performance. Intel really upped the game with the 2nd gen i-series. 4th gen is even better, though not by the same margin. Still, an i7-4770 is plenty of computing power even for today's stuff.

I'd still be surprised it's slower than perhaps my AthlonXP2200+ -- my AthlonXP is routinely beaten by my Pentium-M 1.6 and all my Core2 machines, so I'd say something is wrong...

Pentium M 1.6 should be faster than the atom, I think. I have a 1.7G Pentium M, and it's quite snappy online.
AthlonXP is... pretty outdated at this point. It's a very good CPU for a retro gaming PC, though. If you have a working system with that, you should sell it. Probably would get more for it than you would for a 2/3/4th gen i-series motherboard with CPU. Some of these are at the bottom of the market now in terms of prices - pretty much barely priced above scrap... well, at least the OEM boards.

Anyway indeed it's just about useless on reddit oddly enough due to javascript for the text portions of the site, nevermind trying to decode video.

Ah, reddit.
I NEVER got to like that website, even in the early days. Its layout is, and always was, crap, IMO. And it runs like crap too with all of its scripts. Then there's all the trolls and toxic users that frequent it.
It's one place of the internet that I won't give half a dry shit about if it was to shut down suddenly.

[eccerr0r]

hmm... currently only have a 900MHz Athlon (100MHz FSB) on an abit board with ... bad caps ... on it. I have a Barton (166MHz FSB) underclocked on another 462 board (133MHz FSB) that has a bad onboard GPU or NB. Sigh.

Really dont get why some people want these machines anymore, but hey if they want it and willing to pay for it...

Currently my big box distcc helper is a 64G 10 core 3rd gen Xeon, so that is good on that front. Really need to look into something much newer than that which shouldn't be too hard except for the $$$ problem.