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The Old Computer Challenge (Day 1)

Sunday July 9th, 2023

I read about Solene's Old Computer Challenge about a week ago. I found the challenge by searching for "netbooks" across Gemini Space and came across a user who decided to use one for the challenge in either 2020 or 2021. I can't remember which.

The idea immediately intrigued me as I had recently been playing around with an old Pentium 3 Thinkpad, a Compaq Netbook, and a Dell Latitude e4300. I had a choice to make. I could either use the old Thinkpad as it falls perfectly within spec for the challenge (Single core cpu, 512mb ram) or I could use one of the other machines.

My first pick was the Netbook. With an Intel Atom N270 dual-core clocked at 1.6ghz and 1gb of ram, it could easily be limited through grub boot flags to run as the challenge required. So I tried it out. and found some parts of it way to lacking to live with for a week. Number one problem was the screen size. at 10.1 inches and 1024x600, the screen just didn't have enough realestate for me to comfortably use every day. I did order a new 6 cell battery for it so the battery life was fantastic (around 6 hours). I was using AntiX Linux (debian 11 based) and i3 for the window manager. While I probably could've made it through the entire week with that setup, I felt it to a little too limiting for myself.

I turned my attention to the Dell Latitude e4300. The Dell is a machine I picked up on a whim off ebay for about $70 US. It sports a Core 2 Duo P9400 @ 2.40GHz, 2gb of RAM, a 13" 1280x800 display and a keyboard that feels about as quivelant to some Thinkpads I've used.

So the plan started to form. I was going to dual boot Windows XP and AntiX Linux. I thought there would be some fun in using a dual boot system for the challenge, and try to find unique uses for both OSes. The few days prior, I got everything setup and working pretty well. Or so I thought.

For schedule reasons, my "day one" of the challenge was planned to start Friday. Just a couple days early of everyone else. Come Friday morning I begin to use the laptop. The full setup while I'm at home includes using the VGA port of the laptop to hook up to an older Dell 1080p monitor, and to use the USB hub on the monitor for a keyboard, mouse, and audio interface. This was all working well until I had to actually use it for real.

Windows XP started bluescreening complaining about memory (I was using BOOT.ini to limit the system's available memory), so I moved over to Linux. "Day saved by Tux!" I thought. Nope. AntiX was freezing and locking up like mad. No clue why. But the computer just was not happy with me. I decided to modify the rules for myself. I figured that by running the computer "as it came from the factory" it would still be in the spirit of the challenge. So I went through the ardous task of installing Windows 7.. and then updating Windows 7. This task ate my entire Friday night and Saturday morning. By the end of it though, I had a damn solid Windows 7 SP1 install that was still slow enough to make me consider my relationship with my PC.

Hopped on IRC that night and someone convinced me to try again just using a raw Debian install. So here I am. Now using a Dell Latitude e4300 limited to 512mb of ram and a single core in Debian 12. The laptop is running fantastically well. I have also fallen in love with GnuStep on Debian, specifically through GSDE. It took about 15 minutes to compile and install, but I'm so glad I took the time to do it. The way this DE works just absolutely tickles my brain in the right way. The workflow make so much sense to me!

So that's the story so far.

We'll see how I do in the coming week!

wish me luck,

~Ehrin