On Thu, 28 Apr 2022 at 18:18, Barry <barry@barrys-emacs.org> wrote:


> On 27 Apr 2022, at 20:11, Cătălin George Feștilă <mythcat@fedoraproject.org> wrote:
>
> I read this article https://www.theregister.com/2022/04/27/fedora_starts_to_simplify_linux/.
> The question is whether we can still use old laptops. I have an HP 6710b and it works very well at the moment with Fedora 36.
> In this case, my opinion is that the development team will release a special Fedora Spin for laptops with old hardware. What do you think?

The usual issue with old hardware is the lack of people to do the work.
And the lack of hardware for interested people to test on.

Many of us have old hardware that still meets our needs and  live off a pension that 
has not kept pace with inflation.  There are, however,many younger people who don't 
have legacy hardware and can't afford new mainstream PC's.  (One difference
is that older users often have printers that lack drivers for recent distros and non-amd64 
hardware).

Thanks to Windows 10+11, there has been a glut of middle-aged hardware at prices 
even schools can afford.  There is also new hardware using ARM processors (e.g., 
Raspberry Pi 4) that are comparable to 10+ year-old laptop hardware.   High-end laptop 
models a fews old that have broken screens or keyboards but are still perfectly functional 
(with external keyboards and screens) can be found on local buy-and-sell sites.  In
my area such systems are being given away or sold for under $100 with 128GB SSD.

In my view, https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/quick-docs/raspberry-pi/ should
be encouraged (see: https://www.reddit.com/r/Fedora/comments/n5aew0/fedora_on_raspberry_pi_4/).
Many older as well as potential new users can benefit from modern low-cost hardware,
but work is needed to make installation on RPi4 as easy and robust as it is on
current amd64 hardware.

--
George N. White III