Title: Old Computer Challenge v3: postmortem | |
Author: Solène | |
Date: 17 July 2023 | |
Tags: occ occ23 oldcomputerchallenge | |
Description: | |
# Challenge report | |
Hi! I've not been very communicative about my week during the Old | |
Computer Challenge v3, the reason is that I failed it. Time for a | |
postmortem (analysis of what happened) to understand the failure! | |
For the context, the last time I was using a restricted hardware was | |
for the first edition of the challenge two years ago. Last year | |
challenge was about reducing Internet connectivity. | |
# Wasn't prepared | |
I have to admit, I didn't prepare anything. I thought I could simply | |
limit the requirements on my laptop, either on OpenBSD or openSUSE and | |
enjoy the challenge. It turned out it was more complicated than that. | |
* OpenBSD memory limitation code wasn't working on my system for some | |
reason (I should report this issue) | |
* openSUSE refused to boot with 512 MB of memory under 30 minutes, even | |
by adding swap, and I couldn't log in through GDM once there | |
I had to figure a backup plan, which turned to be using Alpine Linux | |
installed on a USB memory stick, memory and core number restriction | |
worked out of the box, figuring how to effectively reduce the frequency | |
was hard, but I did it finally. | |
From this point, I had a non-encrypted Alpine Linux on a poor storage | |
medium. What would I do with this? Nothing much. | |
# Memory limitation | |
It turns out that in 2 years, my requirements evolved a bit. 512 MB | |
wasn't enough to use a web browser with JavaScript, and while I thought | |
it wouldn't be such a big deal, it WAS. | |
I regularly need to go on some websites, doing it on my non-trusted | |
smartphone is a no-go, so I need a computer, and Firefox on 512 MB just | |
doesn't work. Chromium almost work, but it depends on the page, and | |
WebKit browser often didn't work well enough. | |
Here is a sample of websites I needed to visit: | |
* OVH web console | |
* Patreon web page | |
* Bank service | |
* Some online store | |
* Mastodon (I have such a huge flow that CLI tools doesn't work well | |
for me) | |
* Kanban tool | |
* Deepl for translation | |
* Replying to people on some open source project Discourse forums | |
* Managing stuff in GitHub (gh tool isn't always on-par with the web | |
interface) | |
For this reason, I often had to use my "work" computer to do the tasks, | |
and ended up inadvertently continuing on this computer :( | |
In addition to web browsing, some programs like LanguageTool (a java | |
GUI spellcheck program) required too much memory to be started, so I | |
couldn't even spell check my blog posts (Aspell is not as complete as | |
LanguageTool). | |
# CPU limitation | |
At first when I thought about the rules for the 3rd edition, the CPU | |
frequency seemed to be the worst part. In practice, the system was | |
almost swapping continuously but wasn't CPU bound. Hardware | |
acceleration was fast enough to play videos smoothly. | |
If you can make good use of the 512 MB of memory, you certainly won't | |
have CPU problems. | |
# Security issues | |
This is not related to the challenge itself, but I felt a bit stuck | |
with my untrusted Alpine Linux, I have some ssh / GPG keys that are | |
secured on two systems and my passwords, I almost can't do anything | |
without them, and I didn't want to take the risk of compromising my | |
security chain for the challenge. | |
In fact, since I started using Qubes OS, I started being reluctant to | |
mix all my data on a single system, even the other one I'm used to | |
being working with (which has all the credentials too), but Qubes OS is | |
the anti-oldcomputerchallenge as you need to throw the more hardware | |
you can to make it useful. | |
# Not a complete failure | |
However, the challenge wasn't such a complete failure for me. While I | |
can't say I played by the rules, it definitely helped me to realize the | |
changes in my computer use over the last years. This was the point | |
when I started the "offline laptop" project three years ago, which | |
transformed into the old computer challenge the year after. | |
I tried to use less the computer as I wasn't able to fulfill the | |
challenge requirements, and did some stuff IRL at home and outside, the | |
week went SUPER FAST, I was astonished to realize it's already over. | |
This also forced me to look for solutions, so I spent *a LOT* of time | |
trying to make Firefox fit in 512 MB, TLDR it didn't work. | |
The LEAST memory I'd need nowadays is 1 GB of memory, it's still not | |
much compared to what we have nowadays (my main system has 32 GB), but | |
it's twice the first requirements I've set. | |
# Conclusion | |
It seems everyone had a nice week with the challenge, I'm very happy to | |
see the community enjoying this every year. I may not be the challenge | |
paragon for this year, but it was useful to me, and since then I | |
couldn't stop thinking about how to improve my computer usage. | |
Next challenge should be two weeks long :) |