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Netbooks: proof the tech industry has gone nuts

Posted by Scott_Ruecker on · 13 comments
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The most exciting bit of kit I've played with in ages isn't a cutting edge graphics card, or a multimedia tablet. It's a netbook - a Samsung NC-10 with a bog standard Atom chip, a bit of RAM and an ancient operating system. It isn't just a great bit of kit, though. It's the canary in the coalmine, chirping that the tech industry has completely lost touch with reality - and that it's caught us in its Reality Distortion Field.

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Comments (13)

tracyanne ·
Quoting:It's a netbook - a Samsung NC-10 with a bog standard Atom chip, a bit of RAM and an ancient operating system.


Obviously he's not using a Linux powered netbook.
techiem2 ·
And he's comparing it to a MacBook Pro....lol
tracyanne ·
You can actually do the things he says you can't, with a Linux powered version
caitlyn ·
Yep. He writes as if Linux doesn't exist or isn't worth considering.

In fairness I'm not sure Samsung offers a Linux version. He'd have to go with another brand.
gus3 ·
Maybe it's Slackware from the early days.

I still have a hankering to try installing the CD from my copy of The Slackware Bible. It had kernel 1.2.13. It might not be very capable, but I'm sure it'd be screaming fast.
Bob_Robertson ·
I finally threw out my Win95 disk and manual. Sorry, should have kept it for someone's netbook.
Steven_Rosenber ·
Stay in the modern world and thrown Slackware 8 on it ...
jdixon ·
> I finally threw out my Win95 disk and manual. Sorry, should have kept it for someone's netbook.

Good luck finding wireless drivers for any of the dos based versions of Windows. :(
Bob_Robertson ·
JD, actually, the reason I finally threw it out was that I gave up trying to find a CD-Rom driver to install it under VirtualBox. Finding the floppy image was quite easy, but no driver for the ROM so, well, I had a booted floppy and nothing else.

Too bad, so sad, such is life.

Really, all I wanted to do was play Privateer again...
d0nk3y ·
Bob - check out out the remake of Privateer universe at http://wcuniverse.sourceforge.net/ (oh, looks like it's offline at the moment).

It's brilliant - works in linux natively too (based on the vegastrike engine)..
Bob_Robertson ·
d0, tried that, bombed out.

VegaStrike all by itself looks quite good, but it's not even stable enough to make it into Debian stable!

I really do miss Privateer. And StarFlight.

Ah, StarFlight. If ever there was a candidate for "releasing to OpenSource", that's it. Phenomenal programming, utterly obsolete.
caitlyn ·
@Steven: Slackware 8 is modern? I've not seen a netbook yet that lacks the horsepower to run Slackware 12.2 in some form or another. The real low end ones would be better off without KDE, of course, but that isn't a mandatory part of Slackware, is it?

What is the advantage of going with an ancient version of Linux other than nostalgia? DOS games, OS/2 software, some old Windows stuff is a very separate issue than old versions of Linux
jacog ·
Bob_R: You could of course also give X3: Reunion a try. X2 was good (well, if you ignore the utterly dismal voice acting and narrative and stick to just playing the game).

http://x3.linuxgamepublishing.com/

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