Introduction
Introduction Statistics Contact Development Disclaimer Help
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.
You are viewing proxied material from dataswamp.org. The copyright of proxied material belongs to its original authors. Any comments or complaints in relation to proxied material should be directed to the original authors of the content concerned. Please see the disclaimer for more details.