Title: The Old Computer Challenge: day 6 | |
Author: Solène | |
Date: 15 July 2021 | |
Tags: openbsd life oldcomputerchallenge | |
Description: | |
# Report | |
This is the 6th day of the challenge! Time went quite fast. | |
# Mood | |
I got quite bored two days ago because it was very frustrating to not | |
be able to do everything I want. I wanted to contribute to OpenBSD but | |
the computer is way to slow to do anything useful beyond editing files. | |
Although, it got better yesterday, 5th day of the challenge, when I | |
decided to move away from claws-mail and switch to neomutt for my | |
emails. I updated claws-mail to version 4.0.0 freshly released and | |
starting updating the OpenBSD package, but claws-mail switched to gtk3 | |
and it became too slow for the computer. | |
I started using a mouse on the laptop and it made some tasks more | |
enjoyable although I don't need it too much because most of my programs | |
are in a console but every time I need the cursor it's more pleasant to | |
use a mouse support 3 clicks + wheel. | |
# Software | |
The computer is the sum of its software. Here is a list of the | |
software I'm using right now: | |
* fvwm2: window manager, doesn't bug with full screen programs and is | |
light enough and I like it. | |
* neomutt: mail reader, I always hate mutt/neomutt because of the | |
complexity of their config file, fortunately I had some memories of | |
when I used it and I've been able to build a nice simple configuration | |
script and took the opportunity to update my Neomutt cheatsheet | |
article. | |
* w3m: in my opinion it's the best web browser in terminal :) the | |
bookmark feature works very great and using | |
https://lite.duckduckgo.com/lite for searches works perfectly fine. I | |
use the flavor with image rendering support, however I have mixed | |
feelings about it because pictures take time to download and render and | |
will always render at their original size which is a pain most of the | |
time. | |
* keepassxc: my usual password manager, it has a cli command line to | |
manage the entries from a shell after unlocking the database. | |
* openttd: a game of legend that is relaxing and also very fun to play, | |
runs fine after a few tweaks. | |
* mastodon: tootstream but it's quite limited sometimes and I also | |
access Mastodon on my phone with Tusky from F-droid, they make a great | |
combination. | |
* rednotebook: I was already using it on this computer when it was | |
known as the "offline computer", this program is a diary where I write | |
my day when I feel bad (anger, depressed, bored), it doesn't have much | |
entries in it but it really helps me to write things down. While the | |
program is very heavy and could be considered bloated for the purpose | |
of writing about your day, I just like it because it works and it looks | |
nice. | |
I'm often asked how I deal with youtube, I just don't, I don't use | |
youtube so problem is solved :-) I use no streaming services at home. | |
# Breaking the challenge | |
I had to use my regular computer to order a pizza because the stupid | |
pizza company doesn't want to take orders by phone and they are the | |
only pizza shop around... :( I could have done using my phone but I | |
don't really trust my phone web browser to support all the operations | |
of the process. | |
I could easily handle using this computer for more time if I hadn't so | |
many requirements on web services, mostly for ordering products I can't | |
find locally (pizza doesn't count here) and I hate using my phone for | |
web access because I hate smartphone most of the time. | |
If I had used an old i386 / amd64 computer I would have been able to | |
use a webkit browser even if it was slow, but on PowerPC the state of | |
web browser with javascript is complicated and currently none works for | |
me on OpenBSD. |