Everything Is Awesome
Computing's Golden Age
The past is a foreign country.
ID:38538
After years of promising myself that I would go there, last week I went to Bletchley Park, home of the code breakers, a sculpture of Alan Turing, and an excellent day out.
Next door to the Bletchley Park museum (but occupying the same wartime site) is The National Museum of Computing. The two museum trusts have had a falling out that my tiny mind can't understand, but the end result is very sad: They are separated by a wire fence, have separate admission charges, and there's an obvious animosity towards Bletchley from some of The National Museum of Computing volunteers.
Apart from my having to walk a bit further and pay a bit more, the effect of this is that the bombes (the mechanical calculators that cracked the German military's Enigma cipher) and Colossus (the first computer, which was built to crack the Lorenz cipher used by the Nazi high command) are kept separate, even though they form part of the same story. Humans are silly.
Human silliness aside, the other thing that stuck with me from the computing museum is how lucky we are. Nostalgia is pernicious; it's easy, and lazy, to say that things were better in the olden days. But in the field of computing, we've never had it so good.
This was brought home to me by the ICL 2966 mainframe. This machine is enormous – the size of four or five fridge freezers. It only runs when the man who knows how it works is there, and it powers a few dumb terminals running Conway's Game of Life and a version of noughts and crosses. The electricity and maintenance costs must be huge, not to mention the cost of buying the thing itself.
On the days when the man who knows how the ICL 2966 works isn't there, they switch it off and use a Raspberry Pi instead.
Yes, a Raspberry Pi. For just a few quid and three decades, the ICL 2966 is rendered obsolete by a cheap, mass-produced machine that a child can set up. Low power, low cost, low maintenance – the Raspberry Pi is better in every way than the ICL 2966 it replaces. Progress is fantastic. Computers are cheaper, faster, and better than they used to be. A gray Amstrad or Psion has nothing to teach me about computing, but it does tell me that today is much better than yesterday.
Things are great. And they're getting better. We're lucky to have people like the volunteers at The National Museum of Computing for their stewardship of the past, but we shouldn't think that the olden days were a golden age – the golden age is now. Unprecedented power is at your fingertips, so go and hack something, and make it beautiful.
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Debian 12.6 Released with Plenty of Bug Fixes and Updates
The sixth update to Debian "Bookworm" is all about security mitigations and making adjustments for some "serious problems."
-
Canonical Offers 12-Year LTS for Open Source Docker Images
Canonical is expanding its LTS offering to reach beyond the DEB packages with a new distro-less Docker image.
-
Plasma Desktop 6.1 Released with Several Enhancements
If you're a fan of Plasma Desktop, you should be excited about this new point release.
-
SUSE Offers CentOS 7 Support with Liberty Linux Lite
SUSE's Liberty Linux support offering now includes CentOS 7, which means businesses won't be forced to migrate those servers for some time.
-
Ubuntu's App Center Finally Supports Local Installs Again
If you regularly download .deb files and would prefer a GUI method of installing, Ubuntu has your back.
-
AlmaLinux Now Supports Raspberry Pi 5
If you're looking to create with the Raspberry Pi 5 and want to use AlmaLinux as your OS, you're in luck because it's now possible.
-
Kubuntu Focus Releases New Iterations of Ir14 and Ir16 Laptops
If you're a fan of the Kubuntu Focus laptops or have been waiting for the right time to purchase one, that time might be now.
-
NixOS 24.05 Is Ready for Prime Time
The latest release of NixOS (Uakari) has arrived and offers its usual reproducible, declarative, and reliable goodness.
-
Linux Lite 7.0 Officially Released
Based on Ubuntu 24.04 and kernel 6.8, Linux Lite version 7 now offers more options than ever.
-
KaOS Linux 2024.05 Adds Bcachfs Support and More
With updates all around, KaOS Linux now includes support for the bcachefs file system.