In the future...

Quick to answer questions about finding your way around Linux Mint as a new user.
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Eddie G. Wilson

Re: In the future...

Post by Eddie G. Wilson »

FedoraRefugee wrote:As Mint is just Ubuntu anyway that sounds like a great plan! Why not use a distro that has done all the work for you for your needs?
Very true. I guess I was creating a problem when one didn't exist. Well it looks like it may be a fun weekend after all.
Thanks to everybody for their comments.

Eddie
Ale

Re: In the future...

Post by Ale »

In the future NO Linux Mint 8 32 bit please, old computers can use Linux Mint 7 32 bit
lagagnon

Re: In the future...

Post by lagagnon »

Ale wrote:In the future NO Linux Mint 8 32 bit please, old computers can use Linux Mint 7 32 bit
So just because you happen to have a 64 bit machine many other users are to get dumped off the side? Nice guy.
McLovin

Re: In the future...

Post by McLovin »

Ale wrote:In the future NO Linux Mint 8 32 bit please, old computers can use Linux Mint 7 32 bit
That will never happen, EVER! There are too many people that use 32bit still, including some us devs, and the community editions are 32bit, so there will never be a complete drop of Mint 32bit, it will be the main edition for a long time to come. The main edition may go to 64 bit sometime in the future, not anytime soon.
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Re: In the future...

Post by exploder »

McLovin, I couldn't have said it any better myself! :D
DrHu

Re: In the future...

Post by DrHu »

wierdo124 wrote:In the future it would be nice if we got a 64 bit release BEFORE the 32 bit. This is the 21st century...almost everyone uses 64 bit if they can.
That's just not true, at the moment

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-amd64-faq.xml
Even though I have been using a 64bit Linux (gentoo) since it became available with an Athlon 64 bit CPU
--long before windows OS or Apple OS-X were ready with their versions..
Kaye

Re: In the future...

Post by Kaye »

tsimonc wrote:
srikkanth87 wrote:64 bit is the future .... its crazy to hang with old stuff like 32 bit even after x64
x64 is more advanced and give improved performance..
True, True I fully agree with you on this. Also if you look at what windows and apple are doing 32bit will no longer be used for most computers I can still imagine netbooks being 32bit though.
Have either of you even read most of the posts in this thread?
vrkalak

Re: In the future...

Post by vrkalak »

I would guess, that in the not too distant future, there will only be 64-bit and whatever comes next. 32-bit will be a thing of the past.

Look how far computer technology has come in the last few years.


I remember going to a Computer Symposium, at a large University, about 20 years ago. The main speaker said, that "a home PC will never be able to hold a Gigabyte of memory, it's no physically possible." My home PC has a Terabyte of memory ... OMG!! I have a flash-drive (a thumb-drive) with 32 Gb of memory.

I am excited about where computers will go in the next few years. 32-bit will be gone or only in antique computers. Not so far away.
Fred

Re: In the future...

Post by Fred »

vrkalak wrote:
I would guess, that in the not too distant future, there will only be 64-bit and whatever comes next. 32-bit will be a thing of the past.
I guess it depends on your frame of reference. I would guess, that in the not too distant future, computers will be biomass, gray matter, that live in a glass jar with a fluid nutrient that you replenish every 6 months. They will be 100 times or more powerful than the human brain and require no keyboard, monitor, or other input/output devices. We will communicate with our computers with ESP.

Having said that, would you mind too much if I kept my keyboard and monitor around a little bit longer? I am a slow learner. :-)

Stay cool out there in NM.

Fred
emorrp1

Re: In the future...

Post by emorrp1 »

32bit is here to stay for foreseeable future. Many developers (including myself) have discovered that modern linux systems run plenty fast enough on their existing rigs (mine's now 3 years old), so feel no compulsion to upgrade anything more than disk-space (which is cheap). True, when I do get round to purchasing a new computing rig, I will make sure it's 64bit (easy enough given that most modern systems ship as such). However I don't anticipate doing so until my current system actually dies in like 3 years time, which is a huge length of time in the linux world.

It was said above about looking at what M$ and Apple are doing, but that is irrelevant in the linux world where the latest software versions rarely require upgraded hardware; the minimum/recommended specs stays pretty much constant because there's no reason for the extra bloat (this is also one of the reasons many releases forget to state them on the release notes).

p.s. you should be careful with the difference between a technical usage of "memory" (RAM) and an everyday user's one (either RAM or disk space). True, the original prediction is still false, since you can easily get 16GB memory on a 64bit system (though at this stage the hardware is ahead of the software's utilisation) Your home PC will not have a TB of memory, and your flash drive has no memory at all.
vrkalak

Re: In the future...

Post by vrkalak »

Fred: the not too distant future ... you know like 10-20 years. Not into the next millinia. :lol:

Look how far technology has come in the last 20 years.
I will be interesting to see, that's all.
emorrp1

Re: In the future...

Post by emorrp1 »

ok, that's fine , I might even guess 5-10 years. I was interpreting "the not-too-distant-future" as 3 years or less (which is a long time in linux) but a decade is enough to see whole paradigm shifts, just compare 1999 to 2009 (especially the web), and the progress is still getting faster.
Fred

Re: In the future...

Post by Fred »

emorrp1,

Time is an infinite, hard to define, commodity. In my case, I am 71. I would be over joyed to think that I have 10 more good years. The future is in your hands my friend, not mine. Make it what you will. Just be careful what you wish for. You might get it. :-)

Fred
optimize me

Re: In the future...

Post by optimize me »

vrkalak wrote:Look how far computer technology has come in the last few years.
Actually, I think the last few years have been kind of a drag. In the mid 90s, if you had a 3 to 500MHz PII, you were king of the hill. '99 rolled around and PIII's were all the rage. I remember my first computer with a 800MHz PIII and how absolutely f'n amazed I was at how fast it ran Windows 98. PIII's only ever went as fast as (I think) 1.4 or 1.5GHz, but they were produced until 2003. P4's hit the market in 2000 and stopped being produced last year. As far as I know, a production P4 (i.e., not modded or overclocked) never went as fast as 4GHz.

These days, all the rage is in slapping multiple cores into a single processor. That's all well and good, but why haven't speeds improved any for the last four or five years? As far as I know, production processors still haven't gone much past 4GHz. Unless everybody is saving up to drop the super-speed, 10GHz, 128bit processors on us for the Christmas season this year, I don't see a whole lot changing in the next year or two given current trends. (That's obviously excluding any breakthroughs in quantum computing, alien visitors giving us advanced technology, etc..)

I talk Pentium because it's all I really know. I never had a computer with an AMD chipset in it, and I don't really know of any other vendors - AMD & Intel are the big dogs in the marketplace. If somebody knows a faster (non-modded) chip, I'd definitely like to hear about it.
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linuxviolin
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Re: In the future...

Post by linuxviolin »

vrkalak wrote:My home PC has a Terabyte of memory ...
I'm sorry but it's stupid! I wonder what you can do with your home PC to be in a REAL NEED of "a Terabyte of memory"... :roll:
vrkalak wrote:I will be interesting to see, that's all.
I would rather say that it will be sad...
K.I.S.S. ===> "Keep It Simple, Stupid"
"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." (Leonardo da Vinci)
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler." (Albert Einstein)
Femacamper

Re: In the future...

Post by Femacamper »

Are we going to be seeing a Universal X64 edition? I would really like support for the latest technology, especially since I'm thinking of an upgrade (perhaps to an Intel I7 with 6 or 12 gig of RAM). I need the memory support, but also I would like to break in a lot of the new 64-bit software. I prefer using free software as much as possible, which is why I like the Universal edition. Which begs the question: do you guys completely remove binary blobs out of the kernel, or is that included? How "free" is the Universal edition, really?

As a side note, what would be involved in getting bigmem support for regular 32-mint?
vrkalak

Re: In the future...

Post by vrkalak »

"Linuxviolin wrote:
I'm sorry but it's stupid! I wonder what you can do with your home PC to be in a REAL NEED of "a Terabyte of memory"... :roll:
I am a Registered Architect using AutoCAD for Linux.
I design and do renderings of buildings; ie: floorplans, structural plans and 3-D renderings.
I can show the client a 3-D walk-through, of a finished building, in vector concept.

This takes up a lot of hard-drive memory, as well as, RAM during the design phase. A Tera-byte goes fast.
I also, have 2 external hard-drives of 500 Gb each.
emorrp1

Re: In the future...

Post by emorrp1 »

Femacamper wrote:I prefer using free software as much as possible, which is why I like the Universal edition. Which begs the question: do you guys completely remove binary blobs out of the kernel, or is that included? How "free" is the Universal edition, really?
I'm fairly sure there are no binary blobs in the kernel until (and unless) you put them there. Proprietary graphics card drivers for instance are not downloaded and installed until you enable them in jockey. Mint universal is as Free as Ubuntu I believe.
http://www.linuxmint.com/download.php wrote:This edition aims to provide the same features as the Main Edition without including proprietary software, patented technologies or support for restricted formats. If you're a magazine, a reseller or a distributor in Japan or in the USA then choose this edition.
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linuxviolin
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Re: In the future...

Post by linuxviolin »

vrkalak wrote:I am a Registered Architect using AutoCAD for Linux.
I design and do renderings of buildings; ie: floorplans, structural plans and 3-D renderings.
I can show the client a 3-D walk-through, of a finished building, in vector concept.

This takes up a lot of hard-drive memory, as well as, RAM during the design phase. A Tera-byte goes fast.
I also, have 2 external hard-drives of 500 Gb each.
OK, let's say you have specific needs because your work but I talked about just a home user. But even... ok I stop here, it's not the place for a debate about this here. ;-)
emorrp1 wrote: Mint universal is as Free as Ubuntu I believe
Yes but as Ubuntu has several/some not free components... Femacamper, if you really want something completely free you should use a distro like gNewSense:
A product sponsored by the Free Software Foundation, gNewSense is an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution released without any proprietary and non-free components, and several enhancements. Notably, all proprietary firmware, restricted modules and Ubuntu logos are removed, while the "Universe" repository is enabled by default and several GNU applications, such as Emacs and development libraries, as well as bsdgames and NetHack, are included in the default installation. The goal of the project is to produce a totally free (libre) Linux distribution.
(Distrowatch)
Neither Debian nor Ubuntu are fully free. Ubuntu installs non-free software by default. Debian provides non-free software through its repositories and includes non-free kernel drivers.
(from the gNewSense website)
K.I.S.S. ===> "Keep It Simple, Stupid"
"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." (Leonardo da Vinci)
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler." (Albert Einstein)
Femacamper

Re: In the future...

Post by Femacamper »

emorrp1 wrote:I'm fairly sure there are no binary blobs in the kernel until (and unless) you put them there. Proprietary graphics card drivers for instance are not downloaded and installed until you enable them in jockey. Mint universal is as Free as Ubuntu I believe.
That's just the enabling software. It still has blobs in the kernel for several things (including ATI, Intel and NVIDIA) if it is using the Ubuntu-patched kernel, which I assume Mint does. (Am I wrong?)
linuxviolin wrote: Yes but as Ubuntu has several/some not free components... Femacamper, if you really want something completely free you should use a distro like gNewSense:
Yes, I've tried distros like gNewSense, but they come short in the functionality and especially, the UI.

Maybe I could just install the free Mint packages on one of those distros? Would that require a distro-upgrade to a more recent version of Ubuntu, do you figure?
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