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Check here for more info on the challenge!
This is my first year doing the Old Computer Challenge, and I have chosen to use my trusty Thinkpad x61. I will be updating this page throughout the week with updates. I have my system set up as follows:
So I already had AntiX on this system, and had it set to boot directly into the console. I had it set up this way to write code and fiddle around at the console with the distractions of having a window manager and web browser pulling my attention away. It was not used frequently, so I figured this was a perfect starting point and should be easy to get ready.
One of the first things I did on this setup was remove slim to boot directly to the console and not have a graphical login. I used the system only at the console several times, and did not realize the problems I had created for myself until earlier today. I booted up, went into the BIOS and turned off the additional core on the system. Easy, off to a good start. After booting into the system, I changed my grub config to mem=512MB. update-grub and a reboot and we're off to the races, or so I thought.
I decided to start X and see how a browser would function with the restrictions I had placed on the system. I was greeted with a mouse cursor frozen in the middle of the screen, and a non functioning keyboard. I was doing some of this setup while at work, so I simply forced a shutdown and figured I'd get back to this later.
By the time I got back to working on this, it was almost the end of the day on the 9th, mere hours before the beginning of the challenge. I eventually discovered X would run with a functioning mouse and keyboard if I was running as root. I thought about simply running as root all week to avoid additional troubleshooting, but I decided I wouldn't be happy unless I solved the problem.
I decided to do all the troubleshooting from the console, using lynx as my browser. After stumbling around various links and many failed searches, I eventually found a solution with chmod o+rw /dev/inputs/*. This allowed my user to have access to the mouse and keyboard as a non-root user.
I anticipate running into more issues as the week progresses, but onward to day 1!
I started off day 1 going back to the same issues I had with X not being able to access my mouse or keyboard. /dev/input/* had reset back to only being rw by root. I decided a simple solution would be to add a line to my .bashrc to set them as user readable everytime I log in. I decided to set my user account with NOPASSWD privileges for sudo. Doing this while also trying to get work done was a bad idea, I didn't pay attention and messed up my sudoers file. I had to use a recovery USB to get it fixed, and then that solved my first issue.
Spent a portion of the day hanging out in #oldcomputerchallenge on IRC. Some of y'all are running such crazy set-ups, I love it! Asked there for some opinions on using a Smart TV during the week for streaming. I'm choosing not to use any streaming services, but I am streaming content from my NAS of media that I already have. I think this is a good compromise.
Struggled at times to avoid my cellphone. Once I had to pay a bill, and I chose to use the banking app on my phone instead of powering on my desktop. I hadn't turned off notifications for several apps, so of course when those would go off, I would look at my phone without even thinking. Muting notifications from most apps has helped. I did not mute text messages.
Towards the end of the day I decided I would set up brutaldon on my host so that I could access my Mastodon account from a text browser. At 800Mhz and 512MB of RAM, I can access the web interface from Seamonkey, but scrolling for any length of time really starts to slow everything down and eat up RAM. After doing a git clone of brutaldon, I set out install via pipenv. This pretty much locked my computer up for a solid hour while I my free memory dropped to zero and the fan started spinning like crazy. After the hour was up, my battery was in the red, and attempting to started brutaldon resulted in numerous python errors, even with pipenv. I may end up using an online instance of brutaldon for the week, but the security engineer in me doesn't like putting my password in random people's sites.
Day 2 was a busy day for me at work, so didn't get much time to even be on the computer. I defintely ended up looking at my email too much on my phone. I tried to hop into IRC to catch up with how everyone else was doing, but couldn't pay attention. No technical issues to speak of today, at least!
I plan on working on my binary golf entry throughout the week on this machine if time permits. I think this is an interesting challenge that some of you would enjoy as well.
Onwards to day 3!
After writing my post on the night of day 2, I began to work on my binary golf entry for this year, a self-replicating HTML file. I had a POC written on this machine, but it wouldn't work on any of the browsers I had, despite them supporting javascript. I realized I needed a modern browser that also supported HTML5, after I broke down and used a modern laptop for testing. I did install firefox on this machine, and it really is amazing how much I can accomplish within the limits of this machine, until you want to use a modern web browser.
Simply starting firefox to load my locally hosted HTML file takes close to a minute, and leaves me with under 50MB of free RAM. Closing firefox after each test also takes a significant amount of time. Most articles or websites I want to read, I can do so using links2 in graphical mode, so the web is not impossible to use, but for anyone other than an enthusiast such as the people doing this challenge, it would be considered unuseable.
Day 3 did not see me having much free time to play around with this machine. Working on two teams at my job has really eaten up my free time. I tried to pop into #oldcomputerchallenge on IRC a few times, but wasn't able to spend much time in there apart from saying some hellos.
I began to miss some YouTube content, so I searched via duckduckgo in links2 to grab some YouTube urls I wanted and passed them through to yt-dlp. 1080p content plays flawlessly on this machine, yet I can't even open the YouTube page in a browser with locking everything up for a few minutes. The modern web is a mess.
Once again, work kept me busy most of the day. I had to use my phone to access my banking app again, which I don't consider much of a slip as it is a necessity. Only spent a short while on IRC. We finally had a day where it wasn't raining or horribly hot, so I was able to grill outside and walk the dog a few times. I'll probably close out the night by downloading some more YouTube videos until my battery dies.
Not even sure if I got to be on the computer more than 15 minutes during the day. I did wake up in the middle of the night not feeling well and scrolled too much on my phone to kill the time until I could fall back asleep, but I'm not going to hold that against me for this challenge.
We're almost to the finish! I started using toot on the command line for mastodon, and it is really fantastic. I see myself continuing to use it well after this challenge. Getting that app installed has made such a big difference in my day to day usage of this machine.
While I can't wait to get the RAM back up 4GB and the processor back to both cores at 2.0GHz, that is still a pretty modest machine by today's standards. This 15 year old machine can still hold its own for an enthusiast on a daily basis with these restrictions, and when not restricted can still function as a day to day machine for most people. I really forgot just how much I love this keyboard and a 4:3 form factor screen. I am really beginning to wonder what made me feel like I needed to upgrade several years ago.