6 ms·
This definitely gets a nerd award, I like doing that myself when working on win32 code (i.e. if possible and not to cumbersome, try to use functions that have b
by iforgotpassword 3y ago
This definitely gets a nerd award, I like doing that myself when working on win32 code (i.e. if possible and not to cumbersome, try to use functions that have been around in old windows versions). But it begs the obvious question if there's a legitimate use case for this, other than having a modern browser when spinning up your retro machine for that nostalgia once a year. And even then, unless you're visiting vogons, any modern website probably chokes your machine to death if it's a period-correct XP/7.
Old POS terminals for example? But I think they would just display an ancient website in an ancient browser anyways, and again if the hardware is as old as the rest of the system, this will probably just add slowness with no actual benefit.
Oh and yeah, nice job with the name, I misread it the first time. :-D
- oynqr 3y agoA period correct Windows 7 era machine is something like a Core 2 Quad with 4-8 gigs of RAM, I'd hope that even the worst modern web abomination runs on that.
- creshal 3y agoThe vast majority of systems back then had Core 2 Duos, modern web apps (or overcomplicated sites) can easily choke those.
- drewzero1 3y agoI was using a Core2 Duo with 4GB as my main home computer until about a year ago, and while some sites made it run slowly (mostly recipe sites and others with a lot of video ads) it was certainly still usable. The trick was to keep the browser down below 10 or so tabs and close it when I needed to use some other heavy piece of software.
- iforgotpassword 3y agoInteresting, maybe it actually is Firefox being slower than chromium, but incidentally a few days ago I was trying to make an old core 2 duo laptop a browser-only machine for a friend's kid, and with debian 12 and Firefox, the start page of YouTube with no video playing had both cores hover at around 70%. The page worked but was notably slow. Videos played smoothly. So I guess if you don't mind the fans spinning constantly it's usable, but eh...
- creshal 3y agoGoogle regularly tries to break Firefox, Chromium probably works a lot better, if you can convince it to use GPU acceleration on Linux.
- pantalaimon 3y agoYou probably didn’t have Hardware Video Decoding enabled in the browser, that’s still not the default on Linux.
- iforgotpassword 3y agoBut as said, that was on the landing page with no video playing. What is it even doing there that can load up the CPU like that? I was rather surprised then that playback was actually smooth at least at 480p. Otoh I doubt core2duo had any sort of hardware acceleration for video decoding, but don't quote me on that...
- pantalaimon 3y ago> I doubt core2duo had any sort of hardware acceleration for video decoding That would be the job of the GPU anyway, but H.264 decoding was pretty much standard back then. That's why plugins like h264ify[0] exist for old hardware. [0] https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/h264ify/aleakchihdccplidncghkekgioiakgal https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/h264ify/aleakchihdc...
- conradfr 3y agoI have machines like that and it runs OK if you have a SSD, and more than 8GB of ram definitely helps.
- ape4 3y agoHopefully you can read hackernews without an SSD and many GBs
- Wowfunhappy 3y agoTo be fair, you can also read Hacker News in links, so if that's your only goal, Chromium is overkill.
- Narishma 3y agoYou can. Old reddit as well. I do that regularly on a 1st gen Atom netbook with 1GB of RAM and no SSD.
- bsimpson 3y agoI just donated a couple of ~20 year old Vista machines. One was an Athlon; the other was a Core Duo. They both had 1GB RAM.
- idiotsecant 3y agoDonated to who??? Isnt that like donating your old socks?
- bsimpson 3y agohttps://www.computercorps.org/ https://www.computercorps.org/ but I don't think they take old socks.
- nraf 3y agoOur first computer was an MS-Dos machine that our local high school were getting rid of back in 1994. I learned a lot from playing around on the machine, trying to understand the command line.
- idiotsecant 3y agoThis is a different time though, computing resources are ubiquitous and cheap. I'm not sure what anyone can do with a 20 year old machine
- tomcam 3y agoYou make that sound like it’s a bad thing https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1993/12/28/bill-clintons-great-skivvies-give-away/0dac853d-cf3d-4faf-8104-bcf124bd93b4/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1993/12/28/...
- shortrounddev2 3y agoSome people don't like modern UI design and continue to use windows 7 and before
- postalrat 3y agoSome people don't like computers and continue to watch television.
- da768 3y agoSome people like computers but don't like half-assed Control Panel replacements, a task bar/start menu filled with msn.com tabloid contents, Copilot search bars, Microsoft 365 nagware and advertising
- kanbara 3y agothey also must love millions of vulnerabilities and outdated software too!
- zozbot234 3y agoIf that's a concern for you, there are themes for GTK3 and GTK4 that replicate classic 3D widgets and remove much of the excess padding in modern apps. https://github.com/B00merang-Project/Windows-95 https://github.com/B00merang-Project/Windows-95 https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95 https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95 (You should install both; Chicago95 is more actively developed, but B00merang gives you a GTK+4 theme that's currently missing from Chicago95.) Works reasonably well as a daily-driver, giving you a similar look to the modern SerenityOS GUI on a standard Linux system. Even the modern GTK+4 "responsive" apps work as designed, though with some non-critical graphical quirks.
- shortrounddev2 3y agoI use windows 11 personally. I'm not a w7 user
- GartzenDeHaes 3y agoWindows XP is the last version of Windows that's generally thought to be free of backdoors and US spyware. This is possibly why Putin seems to still use it (a photo of Putin was all over the internet a few months ago https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-lm&q=putin+with+winxp https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-lm&q=putin+...). There are private companies that claim backport security updates, although I don't know how effective they are. Their customers are primarily government and defense.
- gruez 3y ago>Windows XP is the last version of Windows that's generally thought to be free of backdoors and US spyware On what basis? Depending on your crankiness level you could argue that "backdoors" far predate that[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY
- wkat4242 3y agoOr Dual_EC_DRBG.
- squarefoot 3y ago> Windows XP is the last version of Windows that's generally thought to be free of backdoors and US spyware. This is possibly why Putin seems to still use it Although it is very possible that more recent proprietary OSes contain spyware, Putin showing himself using XP is almost certainly propaganda to fuel distrust towards Microsoft and western governments/corporations in general. They have top notch FOSS developers in Russia, and I'm sure he can obtain a 100% spyware free Linux/BSD/whatever PC, unless he doesn't trust the hardware itself which can be bugged just like OSes and software (firmware, binary blobs etc.) so that he uses very old iron that most certainly don't contain malware but can run only ancient OSes. If that's the case, then it could make sense.
- jtriangle 3y agoIntel IME, AMD PSP, have both long been thought of as hardware backdoors. AMD's licensed zen1 chips that China makes, whose name excapes me at the moment, have the AES instructions and PSP removed. They're also banned from being imported by the state dept, so, that's either because they're also backdoored by china somehow, or, they aren't backdoor-able, maybe both. Suffice to say however, modern computers (and smartphones) are chock full of potentially spooky SoC's and someone like ol'vlad might just be paranoid enough to not trust them.
- Unfrozen0688 3y ago>But it begs the obvious question if there's a legitimate use case for this, other than having a modern browser when spinning up your retro machine for that nostalgia once a year. There are lots of Windows 2008 / 2012 servers out there. Not internet facing hopefully. But that still may need something better than Internet Explorer to display webpages. Also lab machines that are still on XP or 7.
- josephcsible 3y agoIf old OS's have been air gapped since they've gone EOL, then shouldn't the last browser version they already had be able to support everything they can access?
- Unfrozen0688 3y agoYea but it just sucks to use
- Paianni 3y agoMaybe offline web development on old, perhaps proprietary, hardware platforms? Security and the risks of running untrusted code wouldn't matter so much.
- Jerrrry 3y agoI have been proudly using the same instance of Windows 7 as my "daily driver" for 11 years.
- iforgotpassword 3y agoI guess as long as daily driving (regarding online activities) isn't much more than browsing reddit and Facebook that might work, but wouldn't using Online-Banking/PayPal/Amazon on a system that hasn't been patched in years make you nervous? I mean the browser is a good sandbox but still...
- carlosjobim 3y agoThe opposite I would say. Facebook and Reddit are the worst hogs you can find. Advanced productivity software and most websites have no problems running on old machines.
- iforgotpassword 3y agoAh that was worded poorly I guess; I was saying that in regards to security, but that sentence got awful long now that I re-read it. As in, you're probably not doing anything too critical on there.
- FirmwareBurner 3y agoThe recent Reddit frontend update is insanely bad for both UX and performance. I had no idea further enshitification was even possible but holy crap they knocked it out of the park this time. I wonder at what point having a company with a terrible product like that on your resume ruins your chances of being hired somewhere that actually cares about quality products?
- Jerrrry 3y agoReddit, Facebook, Paypal, Amazon are all the only sites this computer connects to. The attack vector of malicious ads on these sites are the largest attack vector - which is nearly abysmally small since Chrome is a better sandbox than windows is. Aside from 0-days, which are basically/practically out of scope, the only thing to worry of is automated scans and 3 letter agencies. I am behind a NAT, and the 3 letter agencies are inescapable - but a defense of "my computer is old and insecure" may retro-actively be the only plausible deniability that the "layman" such as myself can muster. Hypothetically. Similar to having an open wifi network for the sole purpose of muddying the waters and adding noise to a signal.
- rcarmo 3y agoI have a use case. I keep a Windows 7 laptop solely for dealing with old microcontroller boards (flashing, reconfiguring, sometimes coding whole chunks). A browser like this is going to come in really handy.
- beeboobaa 3y agoDo yourself a favor and wrap that thing in a VM
- FirmwareBurner 3y agoWhy? I have a Windows XP laptop online only for that exact same use case and I don't do any banking on it, nor am I signed in any accounts whatsoever, so what's the risk? If some malware were to compromise it somehow, there's absolutely no credentials or valuable info on there to steal or encrypt for ransom, and the machine is on it's own VLAN, so if it were to hypothetically get infected with something, the malware has nowhere else to pivot in my network just in case someone made some ultra-specific malware that can target both Windows XP machines and Amazon Alexa devices together as if I'm running Iranian nuclear centrifuges or something and have state actors targeting me. Plus, is there any Windows XP malware still circulating in the wild online mainstream? Feels like worrying about catching smallpox today.
- rcarmo 3y agoI wouldn't compare it to actual diseases. As an European, the anti-vaxxer movement provokes profound disillusionment in me, and that last sentence... Apologies, I had to say this. (You are correct in that using a XP machine is likely less risky today if you're only doing so in a LAN and with minimal access to the Internet)
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago>Apologies, I had to say this. Why? It was just a silly example, not a anti-vax promotion.
- 3y ago
- ptek 3y agoWindows XP64 (amd64) supports multiple cores and up to 128GB physical memory (maybe 8 years till that is standard on laptops?) Is the problem the website or the browser? Do modern web sites need all that spyware crap added e.g modern media sites, YouTube? Or is it the frame works that slow it down. I guess to use winXP 64 you need to be a driver coder as well to create drivers for latest internal gfx hardware built into intel cpus. Good on them for getting it to compile and work. I miss WinXP and Win7 with classic UI theme.