Meanwhile, I can run modern linux on a first gen Pentium, and many mainstream distros still support the Pentium Pro.
this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2025
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The way I see it, in the past, Microsoft kept things closed source so that nobody would copy them.. now I think they have to keep it closed so we can’t see why the heck it has crazy minimum requirements (4gb ram minimum..?) when a functioning operating system used to just require only megabytes of ram.. I’m guessing when you have qualified people all over the world working on all these different distros (sometimes literally just for fun) it’s bound to outperform the insanely declining quality of work coming out of these behemoth tech companies..
I used to work for Amazon in Seattle and it was amazing how little you can know and be called a “senior developer”.. a lot of the staff was circulated through all the local tech companies (to include Microsoft).. my favorite thing I once heard was “ugh wait this has windows, I think I need at least a Mac or something so I can run python”. 🙄
What's a good distro for this that is well supported?
If you have a Pentium Pro I.e a i686, you have a few options. Debian, Slackware, Puppy Linux, Damn Small Linux and antiX are the first that come to mind. If you have an original Pentium you’re probably stuck with Tiny Core Linux.
Of course, you could also spend about $20 and get yourself a vastly more powerful computer like a RaspberryPi Zero.
You can go for a really minimal install of Arch or Gentoo with no DE
Umm, it should work and there should be legislation to prevent planned obsolescence.
it serves as a floor level for tech support. can't expect tech support people (especially one outsourced to india) to know about troubleshooting windows 11 on 40 year old american hardware
I’m gonna take it that this content is aimed at the kind of people who would buy the higher end model MacBook Pro in 2009 so their facebook would “run better”
They need a bigger screen, too. The Ask! bar, Yahoo bar, Google bar, Bing bar, and browser search bar take up so much space.
Good gravy, I completely forgot about all the browser bars... "Why is my computer running so slow? The genius bar told me to buy a new one.."
It drove me nuts 15-20 years ago when macs started getting popular in my country. Some people would literally buy a brand new premium Mac and the start saying how much better was mad vs PCs. Being PCs the 5 years old family computer that was bought when dial up internet was the hot new thing.
By far, the worse was the photographer who bought an iMac because "you can't do photography without one" and didn't even know it didn't run windows.
Yeah, that's why you're supposed to have people with different skills, but of course nowadays everything's gotta be crap tier all the time
Well shit, I guess I'm gonna downgrade to Win11 using Tiny11.
Damn fine video.
It’s fun and seems surprisingly useful. Although his remark on the 1000w power supply (similar to 2003 era PowerPC G5 Macs) does make sense. Whenever I run a modern Linux on a PowerPC Mac it just turns into a boring slow old computer that feels even older than the same hardware running an ancient MacOS X