Title: The Old Computer Challenge: day 3 | |
Author: Solène | |
Date: 12 July 2021 | |
Tags: openbsd life oldcomputerchallenge | |
Description: | |
Report of the third day of the old computer challenge. | |
# Community | |
I got a lot of feedback from the community, the IRC channel | |
#oldcomputerchallenge is quite active and it seems we have a small | |
community that may start here. I received help from various question I | |
had in regards to the programs I'm now using. | |
# Changes | |
## Web is a pity | |
The computer I use is using a different processor architecture than we | |
we are used too. Our computers are now amd64 (even the intel one, | |
amd64 is the name of the instruction sets of the processors) or arm64 | |
for most tablets/smartphone or small boards like raspberry PI, my | |
computer is a PowerPC but it disappeared around 2007 from the market. | |
It is important to know that because most language virtual machines | |
(for interpreted languages) requires some architecture specifics | |
instructions to work, and nobody care much about PowerPC in the | |
javascript land (that could be considered wasting time given the user | |
base), so I'm left without a JS capable web browser because they would | |
instantly crash. The person of cwen@ at the OpenBSD project is pushing | |
hard to fix many programs on PowerPC and she is doing an awesome work, | |
she got JS browsers to work through webkit but for some reasons they | |
are broken again so I have to do without those. | |
w3m works very fine, I learned about using bookmarks in it and it makes | |
w3m a lot more usable for daily stuff, I've been able to log-in on most | |
websites but I faced some buttons not working because they triggered a | |
javascript action. I'm using it with built-in support for images but | |
it makes loading time longer and they are displayed with their real | |
size which can screw up the display, I'm think I'll disable the image | |
support... | |
## Long live to the smolnet | |
What is the smolnet? This is a word that feature what is not on the | |
Web, this includes mostly content from Gopher and Gemini. I like that | |
word because it represents an alternative that I'm contributing too for | |
years and the word carries a lot of meaning. | |
Gopher and Gemini are way saner to browse, thanks to a standard concept | |
of one item per line and no style, visiting one page feels like all the | |
others and I don't have to look for where the menu is, or even wait for | |
the page to render. I've been recommended the av-98 terminal browser | |
and it has a very lovely feature named "tour", you can accumulate links | |
from pages you visit and add them to the tour, and them visit the next | |
liked accumulated (like a First in-First out queue), this avoids | |
cumbersome tabs or adding bookmarks for later viewing and forgetting | |
about them. | |
## Working on OpenBSD ports | |
I'm working at updating the claws-mail mail client package on OpenBSD, | |
a new major release was done the first day of the challenge, | |
unfortunately working with it is extremely painful on my old computer. | |
Compiling was long, but was done only once, now I need to sort out | |
libraries includes and using the built-in check of the ports tree takes | |
like 15 minutes which is really not fun. | |
## I hate the old hardware | |
While I like this old laptop, I start to hate it too. The touchpad is | |
extremely bad and move by increments of 5px or so which is extremely | |
imprecise especially for copy/pasting text or playing OpenTTD, not | |
mentioning again that it only has a left click button. (update, it has | |
been fixed thanks to anthk_ on IRC using the command xinput set-prop | |
/dev/wsmouse "Device Accel Constant Deceleration" 1.5) | |
The screen has a very poor contrast, I can deal with a 1024x768 | |
resolution and I love the 4:3 ratio, but the lack of contrast is really | |
painful to deal with. | |
The mechanical hard drive is slow, I can cope with that, but it's also | |
extremely noisy, I forgot the crispy noises of the old HDD. It's so | |
annoying to my hears... And talking about noise, I'm often limiting | |
the CPU speed of my computer to avoid the temperature rising too high | |
and triggering the super loud small CPU fan. It is really super loud | |
and it doesn't seem quite effective, maybe the thermal paste is old... | |
A few months ago I wanted to replace the HDD but I looked on iFixit | |
website the HDD replacement procedure for this laptop and there are | |
like 40 steps to follow plus an Apple specific screwdriver, the | |
procedure basically consists at removing all parts of the laptop to | |
access the HDD which seems the piece of hardware in the most remote | |
place in the case. This is insane, I'm used to work on Thinkpad laptop | |
and after removing 4 usual screws you get access to everything, even my | |
T470 internal battery is removable. | |
All of these annoying facts are not even related to the computer power | |
but simply because modern hardware evolved, they are quality of life | |
because they don't make the computer more or less usable, but more | |
pleasant. Silence, good and larger screens and multiple fingers | |
gestures touchpad bring a more comfortable use of the computer. | |
## Taking my time | |
Because of context switching cost a lot of time, I take my time to read | |
content and appreciate it in one shot instead of bookmarking after | |
reading a few lines and never read the bookmark again. I was quite | |
happy to see I'm able to focus more than 2 minutes on something and I'm | |
a bit relieved in that regards. | |
## Psychological effect | |
I'm quite sad to see an older system forcing me to restriction can | |
improve my focus, this mean I'm lacking self discipline and that I've | |
wasted too much time of my life doing useless context/task switching. | |
I don't want to rely on some sort of limitations to be guards of my | |
sanity, I have to work on this on my own, maybe meditation could be me | |
getting my patience back. | |
# End of report of day 3 | |
I'm meeting friendly people sharing what I like, I realizing my | |
dependencies over services or my lack of self mental discipline. The | |
challenge is a lot harder than I expected but if it was too easy that | |
wouldn't be a challenge. I already know I'll be happy to get back to | |
my regular laptop but I also think I'll change some habits. |