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The problem with this tiny projects is that you need a web browser. And good luck browsing the web in old PCs. You can use Lynx and the like, but you know what

The problem with this tiny projects is that you need a web browser. And good luck browsing the web in old PCs. You can use Lynx and the like, but you know what I mean. If you need second life for an old pc, It may be better to repurpose as server or something like that.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
ElectricalUnion 4y ago
> And good luck browsing the web in old PCs. You can use Lynx and the like, but you know what I mean. Hello electron where everything is a browser :) Yes, even if your system is lean doesn't mean a lot if the application you're using on top still needs a lot of TFLOPs and GBs of fast RAM. Trying to use a 2GB 2 thread atom netbook here as a dumb terminal of sorts for other systems - a pain for anything that is not very basic limited remote shell. The closest I got to a "working system with browser" was cheating using mosh + browsh on another computer.
- whitten 4y ago
  Have you tried any of the VNC class of programs? It allows a virtual screen solution to other computers, even servers. Effectively a private Zoom session.
  - usr1106 4y ago
    Worked already smoothly around 2000 over 33.6 kbit/s modem. And lossless compression! I often have to think of that when we share terminals over Google Meet these days and it takes tens of seconds until the encoding artifacts of red fonts have faded away so text becomes reable again. 100 times more bandwidth for a worse experience, that must be progress...
  - mappu 4y ago
    > Effectively a private Zoom session. I just wanted to let you know that this comparison absolutely threw me. Of course you're right, they both let you "screen share" but the way you applied a 2022 metaphor to explain 90s tech made me feel a little weird and old. I guess nano is kind of like a private google docs.
    - brazzy 4y ago
      A typewriter is effectively a keyboard hardwired directly to a printer.
      - someweirdperson 4y ago
        That's the modern case of an electric typewriter. A normal typewriter is a printer with manually actuated print heads for dedicated charcters.
        brazzy 4y ago
        Looks like you haven't heard of typeball and daisy wheel printers. In any case, we were discussing metaphors, not technical details.
    - salmo 4y ago
      You kids and your new fangled nano. Back in my day it was pine and pico. We did SMTP both ways. And we liked it! Actually, it weirds me out that the default editor on most Linuxes now is a pico clone. Some don’t don’t even come with a vi out of box. I started with emacs in college because I liked LISP. But once I was a sysadmin, I learned vi fast because it was the common denominator between Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, BSD, Linux, etc. and I was in a group that absorbed teams that used all of them. …OK, to be fair, our stuff was BSD :). My first instinct on a fresh/new to me host is to vi. And even when I type nano, I can’t stop my hands from doing vi and get peeved. Fine ‘apt install vim’ or whatever.
      - derefr 4y ago
        > Actually, it weirds me out that the default editor on most Linuxes now is a pico clone. Some don’t don’t even come with a vi out of box. It really annoys me, because I learned vi and never learned pico/nano, but now when I e.g. `sudo systemctl edit foo@bar` on a new box I end up in a nano session and have to figure out how to quit and get back in using vi.
- kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
  I have Debian 11 on a 2GB laptop running Xfce and it's very usable. The key is to install a 32-bit distro which can be a bit challenging on 64-bit UEFI systems. I have a dummy 64-bit install just for the bootloader and then installed the 32-bit system alongside it.
  - jcelerier 4y ago
    Instead of 32-bit i686 consider x32 ABI. It uses 32 bit pointers (good for memory) but has access to all the x64 registers, has SSE2 as a min. requirement, etc. which is great for performance - it's the best of both worlds
    - usr1106 4y ago
      If your hardware is not too old. I still have 2 PCs that don't have 64 bit support. They still run Xubuntu 16.04 just fine, but have not upgraded or used them after that when out of support. Which distro offers x32? (Haven't checked, might be a stupid question...) I understood it was a great idea at the time, but implementation took a while and the world had moved on when it was finally ready.
      - smoldesu 4y ago
        > Which distro offers x32? A lot of modern distros are still packaging for i686, but actually installing it might be a bit of a pain. I think your safest bet is to go with an OS like Debian that's sure to offer ample support for older systems, or you could go for broke and run a distro like Gentoo/Arch/NixOS that has package manifests/build instructions for each tool and pray that nothing breaks (spoilers: it will). So, temper your expectations; 32-bit systems aren't a huge priority nowadays, but I'm certain you could put together a usable config if you choose the right base system. Or just keep the machines as they are, I'm sure Xubuntu still runs fine.
        yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
        x32 is different from i686
adrianN 4y ago
You can browse the web on a ten year old machine just fine.
- ElectricalUnion 4y ago
  If you limit yourself to sane, 1.0 web simple pages such as Hacker News, sure. If you need to visit anything using unoptimized 100+ MB of Javascript? Good Luck.
  - oynqr 4y ago
    Are you trying to tell me that you can't browse the modern web on an Ivy Bridge-era system?
    - doubled112 4y ago
      Either it's not that bad, or people are lacking patience. I have a Phenom II desktop next to me that browses the web just fine. Yes, even YouTube and infinite scrolling pages.
      - tssva 4y ago
        Same here. I have a Phenom II X6 desktop and it has no problem browsing the modern web running either Linux or Windows 10.
      - jcelerier 4y ago
        I'd really like to see that "not that bad". > or people are lacking patience If it's not instant, it's a bug. I guess this mindset explains why modern software tires me so much.. There's absolutely no "patience" to have with machines whose CPUs can process a dozen Wikipedia (text) worth of information per second
        doubled112 4y ago
        > If it's not instant, it's a bug If only developers felt the same way. I'm also exhausted by a lot of modern software. There's not much I can do about the modern web though. I've learned to be patient. Stockholm syndrome. It was a pretty powerful machine back then - quad core, 16GB RAM, SSD, 1GB GPU. Not a fast machine today by any means, and not my primary machine, but more than adequate for checking email and watching a tutorial on something. Stick to fast software and it is still a decent experience. Is two or three seconds of loading before the 15 minute YouTube video a long time to wait?
DoctorOW 4y ago
> If you need second life for an old pc, It may be better to repurpose as server or something like that. I'd go as far as a third life. This comment sounds like this is written by someone for whom Windows is not the first life (good for you!). To me, restoring an old PC to something usable day-to-day with Linux is only effective if you're switching away from Windows or switching away from the modern web.
hulitu 4y ago
> The problem with this tiny projects is that you need a web browser. And good luck browsing the web in old PCs. Browsing the web is the last thing i do on an old PC. These old computers are for entertainment. Modern Web is a sh*tty experience.
ranger_danger 4y ago
>need a web browser you'd be surprised how many people here (and many FOSS zealots in general) live in their own little bubble of command-line-only existence. who eschew modern things like javascript and social media and only want to take part in that which is easily done from a text terminal.
synergy20 4y ago
Totally agree, today 'desktop' pretty much means 'browser' for many. Wish someone knows how to build chromium into a light-weight mode, e.g. restrict its tab to 1 or 2 only, remove some fancy but not mandatory features, so that I can run it, e.g. with 100MB RAM. bad news is that some website might be very resource hungry on its own, not sure what to do with that, maybe the browser can also throttle that?
- prmoustache 4y ago
  This is were things like browservice comes to the rescue if you have a bigger machine available and only need more independent terminals: https://github.com/ttalvitie/browservice https://github.com/ttalvitie/browservice Also rdp/freenx/x2go/vnc can help. That doesn't make the old computer a full independent desktop but it can avoid sending a perfectly good keyboard/trackpad/monitor in the landfill. And unless you are a dev, 99% of the time you need a browser you already have network and won't point to localhost so that remote faster box can be connecred through vpn anywhere.
niutech 4y ago
You can use a lightweight and modern web browser like Epiphany or Pale Moon.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

ElectricalUnion 4y ago

> And good luck browsing the web in old PCs. You can use Lynx and the like, but you know what I mean. Hello electron where everything is a browser :) Yes, even if your system is lean doesn't mean a lot if the application you're using on top still needs a lot of TFLOPs and GBs of fast RAM. Trying to use a 2GB 2 thread atom netbook here as a dumb terminal of sorts for other systems - a pain for anything that is not very basic limited remote shell. The closest I got to a "working system with browser" was cheating using mosh + browsh on another computer.

whitten 4y ago
Have you tried any of the VNC class of programs? It allows a virtual screen solution to other computers, even servers. Effectively a private Zoom session.
- usr1106 4y ago
  Worked already smoothly around 2000 over 33.6 kbit/s modem. And lossless compression! I often have to think of that when we share terminals over Google Meet these days and it takes tens of seconds until the encoding artifacts of red fonts have faded away so text becomes reable again. 100 times more bandwidth for a worse experience, that must be progress...
- mappu 4y ago
  > Effectively a private Zoom session. I just wanted to let you know that this comparison absolutely threw me. Of course you're right, they both let you "screen share" but the way you applied a 2022 metaphor to explain 90s tech made me feel a little weird and old. I guess nano is kind of like a private google docs.
  - brazzy 4y ago
    A typewriter is effectively a keyboard hardwired directly to a printer.
    - someweirdperson 4y ago
      That's the modern case of an electric typewriter. A normal typewriter is a printer with manually actuated print heads for dedicated charcters.
      - brazzy 4y ago
        Looks like you haven't heard of typeball and daisy wheel printers. In any case, we were discussing metaphors, not technical details.
  - salmo 4y ago
    You kids and your new fangled nano. Back in my day it was pine and pico. We did SMTP both ways. And we liked it! Actually, it weirds me out that the default editor on most Linuxes now is a pico clone. Some don’t don’t even come with a vi out of box. I started with emacs in college because I liked LISP. But once I was a sysadmin, I learned vi fast because it was the common denominator between Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, BSD, Linux, etc. and I was in a group that absorbed teams that used all of them. …OK, to be fair, our stuff was BSD :). My first instinct on a fresh/new to me host is to vi. And even when I type nano, I can’t stop my hands from doing vi and get peeved. Fine ‘apt install vim’ or whatever.
    - derefr 4y ago
      > Actually, it weirds me out that the default editor on most Linuxes now is a pico clone. Some don’t don’t even come with a vi out of box. It really annoys me, because I learned vi and never learned pico/nano, but now when I e.g. `sudo systemctl edit foo@bar` on a new box I end up in a nano session and have to figure out how to quit and get back in using vi.
kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
I have Debian 11 on a 2GB laptop running Xfce and it's very usable. The key is to install a 32-bit distro which can be a bit challenging on 64-bit UEFI systems. I have a dummy 64-bit install just for the bootloader and then installed the 32-bit system alongside it.
- jcelerier 4y ago
  Instead of 32-bit i686 consider x32 ABI. It uses 32 bit pointers (good for memory) but has access to all the x64 registers, has SSE2 as a min. requirement, etc. which is great for performance - it's the best of both worlds
  - usr1106 4y ago
    If your hardware is not too old. I still have 2 PCs that don't have 64 bit support. They still run Xubuntu 16.04 just fine, but have not upgraded or used them after that when out of support. Which distro offers x32? (Haven't checked, might be a stupid question...) I understood it was a great idea at the time, but implementation took a while and the world had moved on when it was finally ready.
    - smoldesu 4y ago
      > Which distro offers x32? A lot of modern distros are still packaging for i686, but actually installing it might be a bit of a pain. I think your safest bet is to go with an OS like Debian that's sure to offer ample support for older systems, or you could go for broke and run a distro like Gentoo/Arch/NixOS that has package manifests/build instructions for each tool and pray that nothing breaks (spoilers: it will). So, temper your expectations; 32-bit systems aren't a huge priority nowadays, but I'm certain you could put together a usable config if you choose the right base system. Or just keep the machines as they are, I'm sure Xubuntu still runs fine.
      - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
        x32 is different from i686

adrianN 4y ago

You can browse the web on a ten year old machine just fine.

ElectricalUnion 4y ago
If you limit yourself to sane, 1.0 web simple pages such as Hacker News, sure. If you need to visit anything using unoptimized 100+ MB of Javascript? Good Luck.
- oynqr 4y ago
  Are you trying to tell me that you can't browse the modern web on an Ivy Bridge-era system?
  - doubled112 4y ago
    Either it's not that bad, or people are lacking patience. I have a Phenom II desktop next to me that browses the web just fine. Yes, even YouTube and infinite scrolling pages.
    - tssva 4y ago
      Same here. I have a Phenom II X6 desktop and it has no problem browsing the modern web running either Linux or Windows 10.
    - jcelerier 4y ago
      I'd really like to see that "not that bad". > or people are lacking patience If it's not instant, it's a bug. I guess this mindset explains why modern software tires me so much.. There's absolutely no "patience" to have with machines whose CPUs can process a dozen Wikipedia (text) worth of information per second
      - doubled112 4y ago
        > If it's not instant, it's a bug If only developers felt the same way. I'm also exhausted by a lot of modern software. There's not much I can do about the modern web though. I've learned to be patient. Stockholm syndrome. It was a pretty powerful machine back then - quad core, 16GB RAM, SSD, 1GB GPU. Not a fast machine today by any means, and not my primary machine, but more than adequate for checking email and watching a tutorial on something. Stick to fast software and it is still a decent experience. Is two or three seconds of loading before the 15 minute YouTube video a long time to wait?

DoctorOW 4y ago

> If you need second life for an old pc, It may be better to repurpose as server or something like that. I'd go as far as a third life. This comment sounds like this is written by someone for whom Windows is not the first life (good for you!). To me, restoring an old PC to something usable day-to-day with Linux is only effective if you're switching away from Windows or switching away from the modern web.

hulitu 4y ago

> The problem with this tiny projects is that you need a web browser. And good luck browsing the web in old PCs. Browsing the web is the last thing i do on an old PC. These old computers are for entertainment. Modern Web is a sh*tty experience.

ranger_danger 4y ago

>need a web browser you'd be surprised how many people here (and many FOSS zealots in general) live in their own little bubble of command-line-only existence. who eschew modern things like javascript and social media and only want to take part in that which is easily done from a text terminal.

synergy20 4y ago

Totally agree, today 'desktop' pretty much means 'browser' for many. Wish someone knows how to build chromium into a light-weight mode, e.g. restrict its tab to 1 or 2 only, remove some fancy but not mandatory features, so that I can run it, e.g. with 100MB RAM. bad news is that some website might be very resource hungry on its own, not sure what to do with that, maybe the browser can also throttle that?

prmoustache 4y ago
This is were things like browservice comes to the rescue if you have a bigger machine available and only need more independent terminals: https://github.com/ttalvitie/browservice https://github.com/ttalvitie/browservice Also rdp/freenx/x2go/vnc can help. That doesn't make the old computer a full independent desktop but it can avoid sending a perfectly good keyboard/trackpad/monitor in the landfill. And unless you are a dev, 99% of the time you need a browser you already have network and won't point to localhost so that remote faster box can be connecred through vpn anywhere.

niutech 4y ago

You can use a lightweight and modern web browser like Epiphany or Pale Moon.