this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2024
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It should be possible, right? It's not like we've gotten worse at coding. All the bloat is a function of people not caring, and to some degree different requirements.
I should check if lemmy.sdf.org is back online. Retrocomputing would love this.
Mentioning @CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org, so I can find this easier.
At the operating system level I would say the different requirements are probably the more relevant reason than people not caring. Modern operating systems, even ones optimized for weaker hardware, include a lot of stuff that was either not invented or at least not common in consumer PCs in the 80s and early 90s:
And that's not even talking about people expecting a modern-looking desktop environment, web browser, file browser, image viewer, text editor and so on. The linux kernel is modular so if you compile your own, you can disable a lot of stuff that you don't need to save space and with something written specifically for those old machines, you can strip out even more stuff you don't need.
That being said, the thread title is very misleading. In the video he states the OS he uses works on the original Pentium processor which came out in 1993. Four years after Reagan went out of office.
That's a good point. Supporting all hardware in particular is a pretty big ask. Maybe you could cleverly fit memory management into a small amount of code, but a pile of arbitrary standards can't really be meaningfully compressed.
I was wondering. That didn't look like an 80's computer.