On 2017-01-27 at 12:26:56 -0600, Timothy Pearson wrote:
Something to think about: have you tried developing modern software on that Core 2 Duo? Are you OK with only having hardware that can consume software (libre or not) that was created (compiled) on more powerful, non-free systems?
Please, define "modern software".
I have a deep (mostly) irrational hostility towards (libre|open)office, so i have never tried to compile it (and suspect it may be problematic, but not only because of performance issues).
Other than that, I have an X200 as my main (only, mostly) working computer, updated to the maximum 8GB or RAM (which btw I'm only able to fill when running multiple virtual machines). For my $DAY_JOB I'm mostly working on what I believe is quite a common type of modern software: web applications written in an interpreted language, and that works on such a machine with absolutely no issue.
Lately I've compiled a couple of QT programs written by other people, and I don't remember waiting a significantly longer time than expected; it compares with the time spent running a full testsuite on some of the projects I'm working on, so I expect that I could work on developing such software with no big stumbling block from my computer's performances. Out of curiosity I've just compiled one of the heaviest programs I'm using, darktable, and that took 10 minutes *including downloading all of the dependencies in a chroot* and compiling from scratch (I used the package building tools, because I have them installed and configured, instead of having to install a dev environment).
I haven't (cross-)compiled a full OS for a few years; back when I was using openembedded and did it I was using an even more limited computer and yes, it could take hours. Nowadays however I'm mostly using debian and packages that somebody else have compiled, usually on ARM boards¹ that aren't exactly known for their raw computing power.
¹ Debian doesn't crosscompile their "other" architectures.
One thing that would probably be problematic is compiling something like the android SDK: that's an issue for freedom, but that's not really required to work on modern software *for the free-ish computer I'm using*. Also, IIRC it is something that already required something like 8-16 GB or RAM a few years ago, when this computer would have been considered quite new, and would have come with 4GB RAM max.