Quote:
Originally Posted by eschwartz
Code:
git clone git://github.com/eli-schwartz/calibre
git checkout -b WinXP-backports
[...] This should allow a central way to manage calibre 1.48 hotfixes, although I do not know how much desire there is.... |
Thanks kindly for the branch, I will set myself up! Doffs to Kovid Goyal for the excellent work, I understand the plight of the developer who is drawn along by support libraries. Despite your best efforts there will always be a 'trailing edge' of obsolescence over time. Just a bit to add to this 'save XP megathread' (smile), a personal viewpoint some may find interesting or amusing.
I've been with desktops from the mid 70s pre-PC days (Z80 S100 CP/M, Solaris-Linux) and have embraced nearly all of the strides in processor and OS architecture. I've helped folks keep old machines working, suggested many an upgrade. But in the years immediately following 2001 (9/11 of course) something began to change in the way I view technology. I started asking myself --
what if? -- in some uncomfortable ways.
Since ~2008 when I switched from Windows 2000 to XPSP3 (a serious hold out), I evaluate every piece of software or hardware in terms of
autonomy from Internet and
disaster survivability over
performance.
If the music of comfortable civilization stops, I have come to the conclusion that the most recent generation of hardware -- with its extreme component miniaturization, fast clocks and extravagant cooling requirements, will begin to fail. We will not see the lifespan that we've come to expect from well-kept motherboards that are now 10-15 years old. Change an electrolytic capacitor now and then of course. Engineering has run amok. Due to (deliberate, perhaps) shortfalls of cooling and mindful design, many things, especially laptops and notebooks, are cooking themselves to death.
So with the spare time and meager funds I might have spent on acquiring a single monster graphic card and mega-machine to play the latest version of Shootemup-Delux... I am trying to gather many spare machines, motherboards, monitors and notebooks and a set of essential software that runs on them, some of which might still be in good working order in some 20-100 years' time --- *if* the music stops tomorrow.
As you may have guessed, stripped down XPSP3 is my present chosen 'entry-level post-apocalypse' Windows OS version. There are so many old machines that run it acceptably well and Windows 7, some not at all. Long after the gamer mega-machines have self-destructed in a shower of sparks, or with a silent whimper, we will need reliable ways to read ebooks, and bestow on the generation after next at least a few working computers.
If the worst does happen it won't be pretty. If it does not... some day I will be just a silly old man surrounded by practically-useless junk. Oh wait, I think that was yesterday!
Actually I am trying to install Calibre on my bank's ATM machine. 95% of them run XP.