On Mon, 13 Feb 2012 22:32:40 +0100
Pawel Soltys <sh4dou@...> wrote:

> >> As an aside, 3D graphics hardware is not only expensive, it is also
> >> one of the most proprietary and least-understood components in a
> >> typical computer (it also tends to burn out a lot, at least that is
> >> my experience with anything other than an enterprise-grade nVidia
> >> Quadro card). �If nVidia and ATI experienced supply shortages
> >> (don't laugh, remember the recent hard drive scarcity due to
> >> flooding in Thailand) I would still need to be able to use my
> >> computers with not-so-great backup graphics hardware, and possibly
> >> without good OpenGL support.
> > Almost all less than 5 years old PC hardware has either a nVidia,
> > ATI or Intel GPU, that is not necessarily powerful but definitely
> > has enough power to render standard controls with OpenGL.
>
> Please take a note that there are places on earth, where people use
> computers older that 5 years old, simply because they cannot (don't
> have means, like money) to upgrade them.
I know that, having begun to use Linux on 2006 with an AMD K6-II box
on which Mandr{ake,iva}'s KDE3 was too slow to be useful ;)
And the 5 years old is probably conservative considering older hardware
that had decent ATI/nVidia hardware, but I didn't want to include Intel
8xx "Graphics My A**" AGP chipsets on which even Extreme Tux Racer has
the performance of a snail. Still I was talking about HW-accelerated
widget rendering, not current KDE4. KDE4 will run even on Intel 8xx
systems.
> Once linux was considered as a system that could be installed and used
> on nearly antic computers. I remember my friend installing it on a PC
> that come form 1996, and turning it to fully functional computer that
> needed only allow internet access and document handling. It was in
> 2004 or 2004. I don't really remember what he had installed there, but
> probably it was some old (2.x) version of KDE. He ended up with fully
> functional PC that a non-expert user (actually his mother, which
> couldn't distinguish between PC and monitor) could use it. Right now,
> I don't find it possible without need to use a software that only
> experienced linux user could use/configure.
One year ago a not-expert-at-all relative of mine was still using, for
business, a box of which the newest component was a Radeon 9550 (the
rest being from 2000-2001). And still, with just a RAM upgrade
(256M->768M) it runs Xfce4 and KDE3 well (even with Flash and
many tabs of Firefox on them...). KDE4 also runs on it, the performance
is not stellar but still good enough to do useful things. The KDE4
distribution I tested being released 10 years after the motherboard,
I'd call it good :)
> If we are to introduce software that demands bu default more and more
> powerful hardware, we do nothing other that taking away the
> possibility of comfortable usage of computer for those that cannot
> obtain modern(ish) computers, and we do what closed-source companies
> (I don't want to throw names, but all of you can imagine what I'm
> taking about) were doing for years: forcing updates of hardware with
> every new version of the software.
And still KDE4 works well on hardware on which Winblows 7 has no
graphics drivers because the manufacturer doesn't care about it any
more.