[Arm-netbook] "Good enough" computing and the upgrade treadmill

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

---
crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68


On Mon, Jul 25, 2016 at 11:41 PM, Matt Campbell <mattcampbell at pobox.com> wrote:
> Hello:
>
> I read the white paper referenced on the Crowd Supply campaign page [1], and
> I was particularly interested in the section on "good enough" computing. The
> following paragraphs describe some problems that, as far as I recall, aren't
> addressed in the rest of the paper:

 great - ok let's go through it.

> This "upgrade treadmill" has bothered me for a while. Yes, with modular
> hardware like the EOMA68 cards and housings, the environmental impact is
> lessened because we only have to discard computer cards,

 don't do that!!! re-use them in down-stream devices, sell them please
or give them away!  for example using them in a freedombox, router or
low-power NAS device which would normally be served by a struggling
sub-500mhz MIPS, such devices could *really do* with a 1.2ghz
dual-core boost!  don't do it!

> not whole laptops.
> But unless we can stop the upgrade treadmill, we'll still have to discard
> our old computer cards when they would otherwise still be functional.

 $3 / month is the going rate for co-located low-power hosting
services with a static IPv4 address.  2gbyte of RAM would be seriously
welcome, the hosting company would be delighted to be able to slap
more EOMA68-A20 computer cards into a convenient rack, i'm sure
they'll take them off your hands.


> software development, and listening to music. Now I don't know if X would
> run at all in 64 MB of RAM.

 xf86fb version 3 would be fine - i compiled that up in 2004 using
bitbake / openembedded... it worked perfectly, the actual executable
was only... 450k.

 .. but 64mb of RAM is a total luxury for routers, most openwrt
devices have only 32mb, some even only have 8mb.

... looks a bit weird to be running a laptop from that era as a router, but hey.


> So what can we do about this? The only idea I've got is that I and other
> software developers should do all of our work on the most underpowered
> computer that will let us get buy, rather than the nicest one we can afford.
> Then maybe, out of necessity, we won't be so wasteful. But then maybe we
> won't be as productive either, particularly if not being wasteful means we
> have to write everything in C or C++. And of course, it won't do any good if
> I'm the only one who chooses to make those sacrifices.
>
> At least with free software, there's always the possibility to fork projects
> that succumb to the upgrade treadmill. For example, the MATE desktop
> environment is a fork of GNOME 2,

 and Trinity is of KDE 3.5, i actually have that for my clients
because they prefer it and are used to KDE 3.5 - i was forced to put
XFCE4 in front of them recently, they *really* don't like it.

> and one of its explicit goals is to run
> well on non-compositing graphics hardware. I imagine MATE will run quite
> well on something like the A20 card.

 most likely.

> But still, we can't live in a forked,
> time-warped world.

 man i run fvwm2 - i realise i'm odd...

> We have to interact with mainstream websites, which means
> using a mainstream browser or at least one of the major rendering engines.
> In this regard in particular, I wonder if the upgrade treadmill has already
> left the A20 behind, particularly since we can't use full GPU acceleration.
> I can certainly understand why the JZ4775 wasn't chosen, though it checks
> all the other boxes for ethical computing.

 i'd add it... if i had time to, and if i can get past the boot phase.
i have the early bootloader up, i just need to get u-boot into memory
so i can investigate.  but if i add it to this campaign, it will have
to be at quite a high per-unit cost.


> Anyone else have any thoughts on this? Sorry if this is too much of a rant
> or off-topic here.

 no not at all, discussion is great.  interested to hear from other people too

> FWIW, I just backed the campaign by ordering an A20 card.

 yay! thanks matt

> Matt
>
> [1]: http://rhombus-tech.net/whitepapers/ecocomputing_07sep2015/
>
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