Alarmingly, recently many free/open source software developers follow the trend to break backwards compatibility with older Os in favor to much newer Os.
This production frenzy is evident from Apple’s mac Os version history.
Eg. 10.0 - 10.15 (2000 - 2019) and now, users get an new Os every year to break consciously backward compatibility.
I myself have a powerful Macpro (a little bit older than 10 years) with 20GB ram but could add more if I wanted to. My CPU is able to run latest 3d applications, video software smoothly and of course, Obsidian runs as well.
But more and more developers are gradually breaking with older Os and require us to upgrade to newer systems. Why? Seems like a planned end of life phase of a product life cycle, something artificially fixed.
I’m not against change, I just need a working system want to work with it. New operating system come with their own features, settings, bugs, quirks and vulnerabilities which I don’t need.
I need apps with nice features, not an Os with many new features. Mac Os user interface is already enough elaborated.
we all love fixed bugs, new features and so forth, but a computer is an investment. Additionally, new Os often needs new hardware, this isn’t cheap because you mostly pay a lot the brand, less the hardware components.
Anyway, my machine is more than capable and sufficient to run even modern software
Proposal
I want to send a request to the developers of Obsidian, to continue their support for older machines for a prolonged period of time, 3+ years instead of 1 year only. Of course I’d like to say, support Obsidian for older machines forever. Obsidian is a text editor and not a heavy, 3d-resource-hungry-monster application that absolutely needs the latest Os and hardware to write text.
Are Obsidians system Os requirements solely dependent on the Electron framework or the compiler dropping backwards compatibility? Please keep older compilers too if this would help. Thanks
Somebody is ok with a cheap laptop, but I’m not. I’ve spent to have a good rig and to work with heavy duty apps. Besides this applications I use office tools as well.
Obsidian is no exception to the overall development trend, to require always newer Os to run
…and this isn’t about my “feeling” or “fearmongering” -judgement. You can check for each app minimum system requirements. Sorry man, but often I get thrown to my head to be more choosy and careful with my wording, but others can tell me everything, isn’t it? I don’t see the same selective wording applied on the other side. Let’s talk on the same eye level, otherwise this feels condescending and this doesn’t add to the post and its problems.
I posted a problem in the section help describing my issue, finalizing with a possible way to mitigate or resolve this problem. So I’m looking for answers, i don’t think this is forbidden here?
We all love to see how Obsidian matures, so it would be a pity if at some point we were unable to update this awesome software just because of some frameworks or compiler issues.
This is a technology-dictated, problem-solution kind of world. I don’t see a problem right now.
If I sounded patronizing it was because I fear for Obsidian – but in a positive, optimistic way and I’ve seen plenty of examples on this forum where people stand by and for the product and the management/developers.
I’m not going to propose to a wife-to-be saying but you’ll always cook nice meals for me and never cheat on me?
It’s psychology. It’s counter-productive.
We as freestylers (the large majority anyway) are in no position to demand terms with Obsidian, either.
You support the community too by helping people. That’s what we can do.
On the technical side of things, from the user perspective, I’ve got to say that despite not being a coder, I can tell that most things are already in place (I’m thinking Templater/MetaEdit JavaScript execution commands, Obsidian API) for Obsidian to be nearing the peak or upper limit of its potential capabilities.
If they pulled the plug on me today I’d still be able to count my blessings.
Try Open Core Legacy Patcher, it’s a way of running newer OS’s on older unsupported devices and if your mac is powerful enough it should work great (I’m running ventura on a 2013 iMac with 16gb ram, and it runs just as well as catalina).
I believe Obsidian’s backward compatibility depends on Electron. So to play it safe you might avoid updating the installer for as long as possible. You could still accept normal updates. (Or if you want to avoid the occasional update that calls for an installer update you could stop updating altogether.)
The old installers remain available, so if need be you can always run an older version of Obsidian (I don’t remember how to get them but the instructions have been posted here a few times for people using unsupported versions of Windows).
With either of those approaches there will still be the occasional problem of installer updates that patch security vulnerabilities (as happened recently). I’m not sure what you can do if that happens and the current version of Electron doesn’t support your device.
I must admit, the freedom and availability of software able to upgrade older, unsupported machines is as fantastic as it sounds. I already applied a similar patch but Open Core is a newer version of the same concept I used so far. So Open Core is a valid alternative, absolutely. Thanks for reminding me.
After upgrading to Mac Mojave I felt like Mojave is my last Os, so I started working and put back any desire to upgrade again
Also, from time to time I checked what Apple’s was brewing up, but to my own surprise and this might sound curious, very few features caught my interest, but generally the interest to upgrade again, was gone.
Sometimes I look at Linux and think - maybe working with Linux would be more productive because there I have full control what runs on my system and what not. At this point however, I probably had to learn new code languages, expand and perfect my bash knowledge to get all the custom workflows running which I learned to appreciate .
Interesting, I guess I used Obsidians installer just once (facepalm)
This is really something I did not consider, so thanks for letting me know
Yes, Obsidian is hosted on Github, here is the link if somebody needs older releases.
Yeah, this might be an issue. At the moment I am yet in a good position with my Os, but if the developers of Obsidian are somehow forced to use newer frameworks and would ask me to make a jump to Big Sur or higher, then Obsidian would not work anymore on my machine.
So every advice or idea posted in this thread is welcome
