Why am I fantasizing about buying an old Mac PPC and installing #OpenBSD on it?
... Probably because despite having a fully modern (x86) computer I still get lags constantly. I thought we were promised newer and faster is better??
@tom 🤣 
I clicked through and the item description says something about if you commit eBay fraud, it will be reported to the authorities.
I imagine what happened was the eBay "short description" algorithm created something predictably nonsensical.
I can highly recommend that. Few years ago, I had a PowerMac G4 (if I recall correctly) running OpenBSD. Ditched it in favor of more recent hardware - but with the recent vulns in x86, I really regret that.
@uranther @h3artbl33d PPC (G4 and up) is affected by Spectre too though...
@uranther @h3artbl33d @galaxis
Package selection on #macppc OpenBSD is limited compared with i386 and amd64.
@starbreaker @uranther @galaxis
Yeah it is. But I didn't care, I used it as a more secure fileserver. As to desktop usage, XFCE is supported. Chromium, Firefox seem to be missing/unsupported. One should do a bit of reseach to see whether favorite apps are available on powerpc - before switching arch.
@h3artbl33d @galaxis @starbreaker Chromium/Firefox not supported is a feature.
@uranther @starbreaker @galaxis
Totally agreed! Just like OpenBSD doesn't have a Bluetooth stack - it isn't missing, it's a feature. With good reason!
@h3artbl33d @uranther @galaxis
I just use my iLamp for writing using console apps. It runs joe and wordnet, so that's good enough for me.
@starbreaker @uranther @galaxis
By iLamp, are you referring to one of those older iMacs?
@h3artbl33d @uranther @galaxis Yeah, the G4 with the hemispherical base.
@starbreaker @uranther @galaxis
Always lovely to see Puffy on 'less common hardware' 👍
@h3artbl33d @uranther @galaxis I couldn't resist. I wanted a low-end machine for the living room where I could write while keeping my wife company if she wanted to watch Netflix, and I saw this on Ebay for a hundred bucks. Since the router is in the same room I just needed 20ft of CAT5 and a pack of blank CDs.
@starbreaker @uranther @galaxis
That is how simple it can be!
@h3artbl33d @uranther @galaxis Well, I did fuck up the installation at first because I didn't put the boot loader in the MBR, but that was obvious and easy to fix on the second attempt.
@starbreaker
@uranther @galaxis
Yeah - and the fact that OpenBSD is installed within the timespan of brewing a decent coffee, prevents a major amount of frustration. Compare that to, eg, installing a Linux desktop distro.
@gme @h3artbl33d @uranther @galaxis
Yup. Got the original keyboard and mouse, too. Only thing that doesn't seem to work is sleep/resume.
@uranther Totally serious: why? I'd love to stop using both, but I'm not aware of any alternatives.
@christianbundy Starting to feel like I am turning into RMS who gets web pages archived by email where he reads them with the convenience of his mail terminal.
@uranther Nothing wrong with that if it works for you! Have you had any trouble doing online research that way?
I currently spend a lot of time serfing the web looking for information, and even with a browser (and occasionally using The Goog) it still feels underpowered. I can't imagine working without a browser, but maybe I'd manage?
@christianbundy I haven't tried it yet, no. But simpler methods seemed to work when that's all was available.
@galaxis @h3artbl33d Then I guess the answer again is to buy the SiFive #RISCV Freedom board and start development. 
"#Spectre is still not a very feasible mea㎱ of attack on Power Macs though the possibilities are better on the G5 & later Power ISA desig㎱ which r faster & have more branch tricks that can be subverted．But the G3 & the G4，because of their limitatio㎱ on ㏌direct branch㏌g，are at least somewhat more resistant to Spectre-based attacks because it is harder to cause their speculatⅳe execution pathways to operate ㏌ an attacker-controllable fashion (particularly the G3 & the 7400，which do not have a l㏌k stack cache)
@uranther POWER4 through POWER9 (including PPC970, the G5, as it's a POWER4 derivative) are quite vulnerable to both Meltdown and Spectre, FWIW.
IBM released firmware and OS updates for mitigations for POWER7 and newer, but that doesn't help on a Mac.
@uranther Going to a PPC Mac won't help with that, really - terrible I/O systems on many of them, and slow processors even for the time (yes, really - don't trust the Apple benchmark guides, they used the least optimized benchmarks they could for Pentium 4s, and unauthorized optimizations for their own hardware, for many of them) mean that'll just make the problem worse.
What makes a fast experience is... developing software for a potato, and then running it on something modern.
@uranther RISC OS, for instance, while it's a janky cooperative multitasking OS (that therefore has its own lagginess), can be /ridiculously/ fast on a Raspberry Pi, which has total garbage I/O. Why?
Because a lot of the software was tuned to be usable on a 30 MHz ARM6 RiscPC from 1994, and performant on a 202 MHz StrongARM RiscPC from 1996, with a 486-era Super I/O chip with ATA-1 for mass storage.
That'll make even a 700 MHz ARM11 with an SD card feel crazy fast on a lot of things.
@bhtooefr I suspected that kind of performance from RISC OS on RPi. I will give it a whirl and see how I can hook into the HiFive1.
