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A comment on GentleOS – Classic operating system with a lovely retro GUI. Parent comment

Re:GentleOS – Classic operating system with a lovely retro GUI by grebc on Tuesday June 09, 2026 @07:34AM (#48459722)
“Vintage” 64 bit PC’s aren’t a thing.

> Edit: I understand a motivation if it is on simplicity choosing one or the other, but other than that I don't see why that should ever be a goal worthy to be pursued. Software should really "just work" no matter the number of bits and bytes.

Not really how software works.

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Re:GentleOS – Classic operating system with a lovely retro GUI by Aldipower on Tuesday June 09, 2026 @07:36AM (#48459751)
> “Vintage” 64 bit PC’s aren’t a thing.

Just sold my SGI Indigo 2 for 900 $ ! Vintage 64 bit is absolutely a thing. :-)

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Re:GentleOS – Classic operating system with a lovely retro GUI by amuradbegovic on Tuesday June 09, 2026 @07:40AM (#48459781)
they said PCs
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Re:GentleOS – Classic operating system with a lovely retro GUI by trashb on Tuesday June 09, 2026 @08:14AM (#48460090)
The DEC 3000 would like to have a word with you.
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Re:GentleOS – Classic operating system with a lovely retro GUI by Aldipower on Tuesday June 09, 2026 @08:25AM (#48460202)
It even has 64 bit "word" size!
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Re:GentleOS – Classic operating system with a lovely retro GUI by nocman on Tuesday June 09, 2026 @11:07AM (#48462134)
Yeah, DEC Alpha was the first thing to come to my mind. I guess some might argue it wasn't a "PC" - if you don't include what used to be called "workstations". This is largely because PC meant "personal computer", and very few people could afford their own DEC Alpha - they were very pricey ($20k at some point in the 90's, I believe).
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Re:GentleOS – Classic operating system with a lovely retro GUI by RobotToaster on Tuesday June 09, 2026 @08:27AM (#48460217)
Itanium was released 25 years ago now...
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Re:GentleOS – Classic operating system with a lovely retro GUI by hnlmorg on Tuesday June 09, 2026 @08:44AM (#48460391)
Whilst that’s definitely old in computer terms, even “retro”, is it old enough to be “vintage”?

Personally I’d have said it isn’t. But these terms are subjective.

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Re:GentleOS – Classic operating system with a lovely retro GUI by rob74 on Tuesday June 09, 2026 @09:29AM (#48460890)
"Vintage" usually refers to actually old stuff, while "retro" refers to new stuff that looks/sounds/feels like old stuff. So GentleOS is a retro OS designed to run on vintage hardware.

(That distinction wasn't clear to me either, so I had to look it up - TIL).

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Re:GentleOS – Classic operating system with a lovely retro GUI by hnlmorg on Wednesday June 10, 2026 @02:45AM (#48472358)
That’s not true in computer terminology. “Retro” has a long history (“vintage” you might say haha) of referring to old hardware and software.

Just type the word “retro” into YouTube (for example) and you’ll see thousands of videos from hundreds of channels spanning decades talking about old games and computers.

Eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retro_gaming

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