Devs should be testing on slow machines - Re: What versions of Linux (or UNIX) are good on old 486 boxes?

On 15 June 2013 06:23, ben <bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca> wrote: Firstly, I made a mistake - my desktop is 2560?1024, not 3480 across. That is, in other words, 2 19" monitors running at 1280?1024. For 2013, that is really low-resolution. These are roughly decade-old TFTs, given to me for nothing by a client. I also tend to zoom in the text in my web browsers, terminals and wordprocessor windows. I am quite short-sighted myself (approximately -6 dioptre); I need glasses to use a computer. The client who gave me these screens now has a 24" Thunderbolt display on his MacBook Pro. I have dropped the resolution on that to about 1280?768 or something for him, so that text is large, bold and fairly easy to read. (He's in his late 70s.) In summary: there are two ways to go. Me, I favour using old, trailing-edge hardware -- it's part of the reason that I'm here -- and I find that older, lower-res screens are easier on my eyes. It rankles with me to run a modern hi-res display at much under its native resolution - it seems a waste and you lose the sharpness of a digital TFT display. OTOH, with devices like the Macbook Pro with "retina display", it is normal to run it at very high resolutions with /huuuuuge/ fonts, for pin-sharp text. Few people have the eyesight to use it at its native res with normal-size fonts and widgets designed for a 72dpi screen. As such, modern GUIs designed to cope with high-DPI displays, with scalable screen furniture, cope well with arbitrary, non-native resolutions. I know a number of people with low vision or other eyesight problems and they seem to like modern very-high-DPI displays, because they can scale stuff and it remains sharp. Scaled displays on older, low-DPI flatscreens look blurred and fuzzy and are harder on weak eyes or poor vision. When 15" laptops started going towards 1400+ pixels across the screen, my eyes gave up the battle. I could no longer comfortably read native-size text. That's when I started using GUI-scaling features. So I would have to argue that of the two routes I suggest - either use displays from before when resolutions exceeded your personal comfort level, or, bite the bullet, make the jump to 150-200+ dpi screens, scale the GUI and enjoy - the latter is significantly better if you have real problems with your vision. I want to cavil over "X-windows" but sod it. It depends when in the 1990s! Personally, with Lasermoon Linux-FT on my work desktop in about 1996, I started off with a 17" CRT at around 1024?768 or 1152?864. It could do 1280?1024 and it looked snazzy and "power-user" like, with lots of tiny windows, but it was too small to comfortably read. When I went freelance later that year, my home system started off with twin 14" screens, I think, and I gradually went to twin 15" then twin 17". IIRC, my preference was 1152?864 or thereabouts - an obscure res, but widely-supported. My eyes don't mind low refresh rates and most 17" CRTs could do 1152?864 at about 70-75Hz, which is good enough for me. By early C21, I was using twin 19" CRTs which is about when I switched to 1280?1024, at first on two separate Matrox cards, and later on a series of single cards with dual outputs. I switched to nVidia by about 2005-2006 or so. I don't actually understand your point here. I only have one Steam game - Portal. It's the first new game in about 6-7y to appeal to me. The last one was Guitar Hero. Before that, Quake III Arena; before that, Quake 1, and before that, Doom. That takes us back to nearly 20y ago. It took me a few years to get my own copy of Portal - I play so little that it's a very low priority for me. Portal itself is about 6Y old now. -- Liam Proven ? Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven MSN: lproven at hotmail.com ? Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884