2018 Brings A New Linux X.Org Display Driver Update For The ATI RAGE 128

[boxie]

I have used a modern desktop on such a system...
It was an iBook G3, in 2014, it had 256MB of RAM, a 40GB 4200RPM drive, a GPU with 32MB of VRAM, USB 1.1, 802.11B WiFi support.
It did work, after 5 minutes, it would finally boot up to a Gnome 3 desktop on Debian 7.5, and 5 minutes later, you could actually do stuff. I took 2 minutes just for IceWeasle to load, and a further 1 minute to get a web-page loaded. Of course, the whole time, the resource monitor revealed, RAM was actually the bottleneck...
With a less intensive desktop, Lubuntu 14.04, it was actually usable, just not for internet browsing, because it still took 2 minutes for Firefox to load, and it still took almost a minute for anything with Javascript to render.
That system now belongs to someone else, who still uses it to this day as a machine to use around the house. It now has 640MB of RAM, but is still on 14.04, same 40GB HDD, same 802.11B.
I suspect, that a 64GB SSD, would vastly increase the performance, because NOW loading anything up, it's actually the 4200RPM drive as the bottleneck.

that's awesome - just goes to show how much more power modern systems have!

[cybertraveler]

did I hear vintage ATi card support? Count me in! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxaR2dkUpLI

Great video, thanks. I enjoyed that. It's a really beautiful system. I was blown away by some of the ergonomic design features like the fanless design. Also the pop-out handle for extracting the hardware cage from the case. The capacitive power button is also a really nice touch.

[trek]

With a less intensive desktop, Lubuntu 14.04, it was actually usable, just not for internet browsing, because it still took 2 minutes for Firefox to load, and it still took almost a minute for anything with Javascript to render.

disabling javascript would give you a 10x improvement on loading pages

[Adarion]

did I hear vintage ATi card support? Count me in! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxaR2dkUpLI

Ah, exsys. Well, well, well. Or not so well. They sometimes tend to end products and then support is gone all of a sudden. And then they just tell you to dump another 120 Euros in the next iteration, even though it was like 5 months ago that I bought the very controller and had some questions about it (v. slow boot and the likes).
Besides, ~ 35 Euros is still quite some money for a card with questionable support and a chip that old.
Nonetheless, an interesting find.