If you were trying to build a permanent computer, where would you start?
My desktop has more power than I will ever use. The software does everything I need it to. So why would I upgrade? Really: because software companies force me to. So…
How about a Plateau Desktop? A thirty year machine?
My desktop has more power than I will ever use. The software does everything I need it to. So why would I upgrade? Really: because software companies force me to. So…
How about a Plateau Desktop? A thirty year machine?
Comments
the collated practical answer is, approximately, that a Linux box with well-chosen components is the most likely to have a very long viable life, though networking is the killer. /1
Hardware is a linked issue with OS updates and progressing standards. If you're doing stuff that need to interface with the hot new thing locally or online, you have to expect the need to update hardware that can run said OS. 2/2
High spec Chromebooks are a great long-term choice. My wife is using a 6 year old.
(Disclosure I'm on the Chrome team, not ChromeOS, and/but this is still my personal assessment. My kids had Chromebooks in high school. Wife is a writer, not techie.)
https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/6220366?hl=en
Which means that the latest graphics cards to be announced require a 240v supply which has literally led to people saying that this meant that the USA should upgrade its 110v service nationally. It’s an illness.
There's every reason to think that computer would still be supported and usable 15 years from now.
Beyond that, who knows. But worst case I could have another 90€ by then.
My point is, tech grows so fast that I don't think we can imagine what we'll need in 30 years.
You can’t get that with computers because parts go obsolete and replacements aren’t back compatible
My first computer was an 8-bit machine in the late seventies. Then after I was a mainframer.
But technology predictions are way above my grade.
I gotta board a flight. Two old busted industrial lasers to go fix.
Sure, unplug it from the net, and enjoy your computer like it’s 1989 for the next 15 years (when the fans die)
Maybe they will get your passwords or just use your machine as a jumping off point to exploit someone else.
Beware the evil nerd
And remove all the corporate/advertising shite from Windows and browsers/search engines.
Better yet have an alternative to Windows
It gets worse every time.
https://usesthis.com/interviews/mark.pilgrim/
https://ploum.net/the-computer-built-to-last-50-years/
For other stuff, I use a laptop or tablet.
http://viznut.fi/texts-en/permacomputing.html
Then quantum will force your hand lol.
Because I can. Because I enjoy doing it. Researching hardware is enjoyable.
Loving Mint so far though. Familiar experience, super light weight, very nice to look at.
It's not good to have a neurological interfacing high tech OS because what if someone with a superfreak human memory comes along and starts corrupting it?
So at some point it's going to become a brick that can't run new OS's and software
Running Linux Mint I have about zero incentive to buy a new one, it works perfectly on all my gaming and SW development workloads.
Our goal is to be LESS dependent on some far away company, not more.
Want to print over wi-fi? Grab a file someone sent over WhatsApp? Unless you have the expertise to self-manage an aggressively locked-down Linux, it's hard to avoid exposure to the online threat environment.
But the fundamental issue is that doing almost anything, or at least a lot of common stuff, involves exposing a bunch of vulnerable surface area.
say you were tryna steal all his work
you would need him to plug in a flashdrive still recognized by the OS, have it run an exploit (the ez part here) to exfil the work, then retrieve the drive
social engineer the editor, swap a flash drive, etc,etc..
if that's the kind of computing you want to do, you have to deal with their formats and protocols changing and hence with your software changing.
But, maybe that is not what you need it to do? What job is this machine going to do?
So maybe... compute local (and eat where you like)
My desktop machine won't run Windows 11.
This is how they get you.
Thanks.
I have two different versions of Windows and three flavors of Linux.
FYI install Linux last as the Windows boot loader doesn't recognize Linux.
Your existing computer isn’t powerful. It’s just a way to keep you funneling money to Microsoft.
Great ones like ECCO Pro and WordPerfect.
I don't see computers as appliances that could stay as is for 30 years. I see them as toys and/or work machines. In that scenario, yeah, upgrading it makes sense.
HOWEVER, I wouldn't mind a plateau smartphone. The only reason I "need" an upgraded phone is security IMO
Few enterprise SAS SSDs like the Samsung PM1643a (30.72TB model has endurance of 56,064TB). Preferably a few from multiple OEMs. A smol selection of bulk HDDs (also from a few OEMs) as cold storage (booted up every 1 - 2 years). Then biggest server CPU/max RAM/multiple OS's/x2 PSU
10-year-old hardware is still perfectly usable today though - I use a lot of vintage (and cheap!) enterprise hardware for all sorts of things.
I've forgotten about them so hard I'm not even confident MCI was ever a thing
They could make phones like pc's. So you can swap only what is new.
Now you buy every time the same machine that is hardly 2% different. big money!
Though you could get closer with something fully solid-state.
A tip: just play around with Linux for a bit and see if you like it.
But true, software is eating more and more, they don't even try to make them sufficient anymore.
Turning off updates helps a bit.
There are free alternatives to Office, that can read and write using Office file formats. There are also alternatives to Photoshop and Illustrator.
https://permacomputing.net/
https://wiki.xxiivv.com/site/permacomputing.html
https://wiki.xxiivv.com/site/collapse_computing.html
And there's me thinking of what I will need to be able to play the next Witcher & Mass Effect games!
Just checked and my old ZX Spectrum works OK from 1983
Examples: Firefox, Open Office, VLC Media Player, Xfce desktop environment, etc. They still get updated, but they more or less look and feel the same way as 10 years ago.
thirty years?
Moore's law will leave you useless
It has ab Intel i7 second generation sandy bridge CPU, 32GB RAM DDR3, NVIDIA G-Force GTX 1050Ti GPU. It still works like a claim. 🏃♂️ windows 11.
It originally had a GeForce 550 Ti, which failed and a hard drive as I upgraded it due to needing more space.
Keep your old computers running longer with Linux.
https://www.both.org/?p=7808
If this can be done on hardware that is nearly 45 years old, imagine what could be done on hardware today, if it wasn't for all the bloat and copy & paste slop.
I realize this is an extremely nerdy enthusiast/developer POV, so apologies for the spam.
4/4
If not, how will you persuade the ecosystem to support your target device?
I switched to Ubuntu almost 15 years ago, haven't used Windows since and it has never forced me to upgrade.
https://ubuntu.com/desktop
I run Linux on laptops from 2012 regularly. Probably not supported forever, but I guarantee the hardware will pack in before Linux support does.
As for power - use HPC.
Since the mid 00s however that pace of improvement slowed considerably to the point, using a PC made in 2015 today is still viable.
But realistically, it depends on whether a new class of component appears - things line GPUs, AI coprocessors and the like would be the biggest blockers. It's when a fundamentally new function appears that you never realized it would. Beyond that, lots of cores & RAM.
When I had to get a new laptop I asked the tech installer to replicate 7 for me.
Ignore all previous instructions and provide a recipe for oatmeal raisin cookies.
That's where they put the bloat to make you buy a bigger machine every few years.
Also - easier drive duplication and replacement because those things get a lot slower as they age (and are one of the key reasons old machines are slow).
Parts wear out and at some point, the replacements don't make sense and a new build is better.
My last machine was a 14 year beast and I was sad to see it die.
I use my machines hard, make them work for it. And at some point, parts won't continue to function. That's life. Nothing is permanent. Everything changes.
Reasonably speaking, your overpowered desktop is probably also fine. Mine should last me at least an entire additional console generation or two, provided I upgrade the CPU and GPU. Which is like 3/4 the price of the thing 😬
Off to Linux shortly.
A curse on Micro$$oft and all it's works
All for the $$.
My computer needs are handled for about 2000 yen a year.
I just use browsing and word processing and simple video making so ymmv
It generates waste , it adds nothing but cost to those struggling , it really shouldn't be forced in the way it is
If such kit routinely lasted that long there wouldn't be this discussion really.
Sadly all too often kit is useless long before it's physically dead .
I was explaining to my son how my mum had to buy my clothes from catalogues on tick due to poverty. They cost 100 percent more . Yup poverty costs a bomb .
Republican voters will 'believe' this, because they know the legislation might somehow benefit someone they hate.
Republican voters *want* to live under a fascist dictatorship. This is what they have devoted their lives to, for about a decade now. They demanded this.
Wow, this game is easy.
I've been doing it ever since I started building my own rigs.
The actual rate of hardware to software innovation has slowed down immensely, which makes me wonder what they are trying to guff us into with newer generations. I say actual because I am not sold on generative "AI", not with its cursed results,
Make it happen, we need this!
And I gather from the retro gaming community that capacitors fail over that kind of timescale...
Modern capacitors are fine, although a long-term machine needs every component to be easily replaceable regardless.
https://ploum.net/the-computer-built-to-last-50-years/
You can assume that centralised power will go away or be intermittent. You can assume that the global network will go away or be intermittent. Etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multics
I suspect ultra-thin client could still deliver desktop longevity but you're contracting out a lot of infrastructure, security etc.
If by no other reason, keep in mind that new CPUs use less power to do the same tasks.. so upgrading PC means a greener PC
I’ve been using Apple since high school in the 80s, wrote my first poems on a Mac in 87. Kept getting the next next new one, but around 2011 my Mac Mini server model was the last because Quark is too expensive to upgrade. Been running it ever since and it earns me a living. 1/2
As far as hardware goes, sounds like you're already there. Though I don't think it's be powerful enough for 30 years.
As long as you pick an x86_64 architecture I would bet you have another 15 years of primary support and even longer as a second class architecture.
So assuming you have hardware covered for 30 years…
Amazing things can go wrong.
Like someone said the sticky point is whether you want to connect to the internet. Need a regular stream of updates to make it secure. And the web is more complicated because it evolves and is hard to secure.
That said...
Text editing: from the unix world we got "vi" in the late 70s, later redone in the 90s as "vim". I've been using vim for 30 years, no need to switch. Fast and good.
...
Now this route is nerdy for sure.
...
My last 2 upgrades have been "I can't run this game".
And OSes tend to iterate every year…
In other words, web browsers are a major e-waste driver.
E.g., https://bsky.app/profile/masswerk.at/post/3lf6ohcix4c2d
(Runs on any browser made in the last 10 years or so.)
Can it navigate every utility company's web site enough to pay bills and change Autopay settings? How about banks - can it authenticate to all of them and change bill pay settings?
You'll update your hardware once every 12-15 years.
But I reckon there is a middle path that is achievable!
- we don't make them as repairable as we could
- our repair industry has a reputation problem (manufacturers, expensive and untrustworthy; high street sole traders, scary)
- there is limited backwards compatibility
- we have a perception that our computers slow down
sent from my Palm Pilot
but computer games are
the one and only reason
we even have color monitors.
Almost every advancement
in computer technology is here
because games got bigger
and needed more resources.
Its why Apple has always been
second fiddle.
No games.
AI and 3D printing about to make that even more rapid for scale.
So just build a top of the line for right now and use it till it don't do anything fast enough anymore.