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So, I know I'm quite behind in actually writing out my thoughts and experiences during the Old Computer Challenge, but here we go!
So, my week of old computer usage started out like a nightmare. I originally planned on doing the challenge with a dual boot configuration. My OSes of choice were Windows XP and AntiX linux. Well on the first day of the challenge, both installations became incredibly unstable for reasons beyond my comprehension. I got thinking about the challenge then, and decided that It'd still be in the spirit of the challenge if I were to use the Dell e4300 laptop in it's "stock" configuration of Windows 7 pro and 2gb of ram. So I spent about 14 hours going through the process of installing Windows 7, installing LegacyUpdate and letting the computer auto update. Fun fact! Windows 7 really really likes just dumping update data to ram instead of of to the hard drive before actually commiting the update. Which means that the entire 1.8Gb or so of update wouldn't fit into available memory. Why doesn't it just use a pagefile? I don't know. I tend to not understand or question the infitie wisdom that is Microsoft. Anyway. After setting that up and using it for ~6 hours, the guys in IRC convinced me to try again with a different distro. So That night at work I played around with a few options. I checked out FreeBSD, which just wasn't something I felt like dipping my toes into just yet, I also tried out Alpine Linux. Which is a cool little thing, but I mostly just wanted something that was easy to use, and stable.
Enter, Debian 12.
Debian 12 had come out not too long before I started the challenge. So out of curiosity I booted up the installer, only installed XFCE and started the journey. It became my go to OS for the rest of the challenge. While researching lightweight Destkop Enviroments, I stumbled on WindowMaker (yes, I know WMaker is a window manager). And I tried that out for a bit. Mentioned to a friend that I like Wmaker, but felt it was a bit too bare for what I wanted, she mentioned off hand that maybe GSDE might work better.
Enter, GSDE.
the GNUstep Desktop Enviroment is everything I wanted for this challenge. Lightweight, fast, intuitive and also aesthetic as all hell. By this point, I was leaning full into late 90s aesthetics. Browsing Neocities, chatting in IRC, tiling backgrounds, grey bars everywhere. I absolutely loved it. GSDE is.. quirky, to say the least. It has a workflow so engrained in it, that you either "get it" or you don't. I personally enjoy it. But it also got me thinking about a few things. After the challenge I wanted to run GSDE on my desktop. Well, it just sort of doesn't handle dual monitors in a way that I like.. So I decided to take the rest of the challenge and see how much I could make XFCE behave like it. Let me tell you, you can get really close! By using Xfce's desktop option of minimizing windows to desktop icons, having those icons line up to the bottom left horizontally. removing the top bar, moving the dock to the right hand side, and putting a workspace switcher in the corner. You can get REALLy close to how GSDE's workflow.. works.
I'm not a programmer. Sometimes if the code is simple enough, I can sort of understand what it's supposed to do, but I don't code things. Infact, out of a lot of people who did the challenge, I'm probably one of the more Consumption focused people. But during the challenge, I actually had very little troubles consuming content. for youtube, the combination of SMtube into YT-DL>MPV worked like a treat. For web surfing, I used a combination of NetSurf, Chromium (for heavier websites), and W3m. For browsing lemmy isntances, I finally got NeonModem to work and quite enjoyed the BBS trappings of it. Mastodon I mostly surfed using Chromium. For IRC I much prefer Hexchat over anything else. Though using TalkSoup (included in GSDE) was my go to. For other forms of entertainment, I played a LOT of LTris (pro tip: install the flatpak of Ltris. It's much more updated than the version in the Debian repo), and Block Attack, which is a clone of Tetris Attack (Panel de Pon).
Now confessedly, I did use my phone quite a bit during the challenge. If I needed a quick answer or actually needed to deep search the internet for a problem I was having. My phone was the go to. As well as communication with friends through Discord and Telegram. I definitely limited how much I used the phone for pure entertainment though. Only occasionally watching a youtube video a friend sent me, or checking in on the hellscape that is Twitter from time to time. Overall, my phone usage likely went up, but if it did, it wouldn't be by much.
I also used my Chromecast With Google TV a lot. I thought to myself "what is something that people in the early 2000's had that I currently don't?" And it dawned on me that the answer was Cable/Sattelite TV. So I mostly simulated that through free live TV services like Pluto. I also allowed myself to watch youtube videos on the TV, as long as they were long form content, and were substantial in some way. No getting stuck in a shorts hole!
I found the challenge to be a lot of fun! I liked talking to everyone in the IRC chat, and definitely have plans on doing it again next year. At some point, I think I'd also like to spin up my own challenge or sorts. I'm still thinking about rules or someway to make it interesting. Maybe something that would be more in-line with my childhood experiences with computers. Who knows. But otherwise, it's definitely got me thinking about how I use my computer. I now feel a bit more conscious about not using my technology. I forgot how much fun it is to spend time with a piece of tech that is "outdated" or "obsolete." Keyboards, screens and touchpads have gotten better on laptops. Battery life has gotten longer, and things are more efficient overall. But The speed that my current laptop (Macbook Air M1, 16gb RAM) does things, doesn't *feel* much faster than that old Dell e4300 when it's not under any restrictions. Especially when using a piece of software that is well made, and was made to be efficient. My Macbook can handle heavier tasks. But are those tasks purely heavier from the actual workload I'm putting on it?
Thanks for reading,
~Ehrin