Title: The Old Computer Challenge: day 7 | |
Author: Solène | |
Date: 16 July 2021 | |
Tags: openbsd life oldcomputerchallenge | |
Description: | |
Report of the last day of the old computer challenge. | |
# A journey | |
I'm writing this text while in the last hours of the challenge, I may | |
repeat some thoughts and observations already reported in the earlier | |
posts but never mind, this is the end of the journey. | |
# Technical | |
Let's speak about Tech! My computer is 16 years old but I've been able | |
to accomplish most of what I enjoy on a computer: IRC, reading my | |
mails, hacking on code and reading some interesting content on the | |
internet. So far, I've been quite happy about my computer, it worked | |
without any trouble. | |
On the other hand, there were many tasks that didn't work at all: | |
* Browsing the internet to use "modern" website relying on javascript: | |
this is because Javascript capable browsers are not working on my | |
combination of operating system/CPU architecture, I'm quite sure the | |
challenge would have been easier with an old amd64 computer even with | |
low memory. | |
* Watching videos: for some reasons, mplayer in full screen was | |
producing a weird issue, computer stopped working but cursor was still | |
moving but nothing more was possible. However it worked correctly for | |
most videos. | |
* Listening to my big FLAC music files, if doing so I wasn't able to do | |
anything else because of the CPU usage and sitting on my desk to listen | |
to music was not an interesting option. | |
* Using Go, Rust and Node programs because there are no implementation | |
of these languages on OpenBSD PowerPC 32bits. | |
On the hardware side, here is what I noticed: | |
* 512MB are quite enough as long as you stay focused on one task, I | |
rarely required to use swap even with multiple programs opened. | |
* I don't really miss spinning hard drive, in term of speed and noise, | |
I'm happy they are gone in my newer computers. | |
* Using an external pointing device (mouse/trackball) is so much better | |
than the bad touchpad. | |
* Modern screens are so much better in term of resolution, colours and | |
contrast! | |
* They keyboard is pleasant but lack a "Super" modifier key which lead | |
to issues with key binding overlapping between the window manager and | |
programs. | |
* Suspend and resume doesn't work on OpenBSD, so I had to boot the | |
computer and it takes a few minutes to do so and require manual step to | |
unlock /home which add delay for boot sequence. | |
Despite everything the computer was solid but modern hardware is such | |
more pleasant to use in many ways, not only in term of raw speed. When | |
you buy a laptop especially, you should take care about the other specs | |
than the CPU/memory like the case, the keyboard, the touchpad and the | |
screen, if you use a lot your laptop they are as much important as the | |
CPU itself in my opinion. | |
Thanks to the programs w3m, catgirl, luakit, links, neomutt, | |
claws-mail, ls, make, sbcl, git, rednotebook, keepassxc, gimp, sxiv, | |
feh, windowmaker, fvwm, ratpoison, ksh, fish, mplayer, openttd, | |
mednafen, rsync, pngquant, ncdu, nethack, goffice, gnumeric, scrot, | |
sct, lxappearence, tootstream, toot, OpenBSD and all the other programs | |
I used for this challenge. | |
# Human | |
Because I always felt this challenge was a journey to understand my use | |
of computer, I'm happy of the journey. | |
To make things simple, here is a bullet list of what I noticed | |
* Going to sleep earlier instead of waiting for something to happen. | |
* I've spent a lot less time on my computer but at the same time I | |
don't notice it much in term of what I've done with it, this mean I was | |
more "productive" (writing blog, reading content, hacking) and not | |
idling. | |
* I didn't participate into web forums of my communities :( | |
* I cleared things in my todo list on my server (such as replacing | |
Spamassassin by rspamd and writing about it). | |
* I've read more blogs and interesting texts than usual, and I did it | |
without switching to another task. | |
* Javascript is not ecological because it prevent older hardware to be | |
usable. If I didn't needed javascript I guess I could continue using | |
this laptop. | |
* I got time to discover and practice meditation. | |
* Less open source contribution because compiling was too slow. | |
I'm sad and disappointed to notice I need to work on my self discipline | |
(that's why I started to learn about meditation) to waste less time on | |
my computer. I will really work on it, I see I can still do the same | |
tasks but spend less time doing nothing/idling/switching tasks. | |
I will take care of supporting old systems by my contributions, like my | |
blog working perfectly fine in console web browsers but also trying to | |
educate people about this. | |
I've met lot of interesting people on the IRC channel and for this sole | |
reason I'm happy I made the challenge. | |
# Conclusion | |
Good hardware is good but is not always necessary, it's up to the | |
developers to make good use of the hardware. While some requirements | |
can evolve over time like cryptography or video codecs, programs | |
shouldn't become more and more resources hungry for the reason that we | |
have more and more available. We have to learn how todo MORE with LESS | |
with computers and it was something I wanted to highlight with this | |
challenge. |