Prepping for the Old Computer Challenge

It's almost time for the third annual Old Computer Challenge (starts Monday, July 10). I did a modified version of the first year's, by limiting the RAM and CPU of a computer that was old, but not old enough to meet the challenge's requirements. The second year was limited online time, and I missed it somehow. This year is the same as the first, but leaning into the SLOW computer requirements. Using a not-so-old computer and limiting it is explicitly okay. I'm going to use the same computer as the first year, an Asus EeePC 1015PX. From 2013, it has a 2-core, 4-thread Intel Atom processor at 1GHz to 1.6GHz, 2GB of RAM, and a very slow spinning-rust hard drive.

Solene: The Old Computer Challenge V3

This time, I already have a 32-bit Linux distribution installed on it (AntiX, a lightweight Debian derivative), so it will be a little more memory-efficient. With everything at full power, I can do pretty much everything I need, though watching videos requires some mpv configuration and doesn't really work in the browser. I can run Epiphany, a light but full-featured WebKit browser, and it will handle modern websites /to some extent/. Pinafore (SPA Mastodon client) works fine, Mastodon website itself works /barely/, my Lemmy sites choke entirely, as does the chain pizza ordering website. I run a lightweight X Window manager (WindowMaker), and graphical Emacs.

I've been playing with different levels of restriction, thinking I might go even lower than the requirements. For funsies, I have also tried just disabling SMT, for 2 cores, 1 thread per core, and I /literally/ cannot tell the difference between having all 4 virtual cores active. Dropping to 1 core is a huge difference, though...

Comparisons of restrictions

512MB RAM, 1 CPU core — the #OCC requirement

For my normal use, if I'm not trying to use Epiphany for anything, I hardly see any difference from the memory restriction — my normal working set is well below 512M. I can still browse sites with Epiphany, but it starts to make more sense to use SeaMonkey: slightly fewer sites are supported, but the ones that aren't were not going to work anyway. Emacs usage is unchanged, though filtering long lists of completions is noticeably slower. The 1 core makes a big difference for a lot of things.

I'm only able to restrict the CPU to 1GHz, as that's the slowest speed it supports.

256MB RAM, 1 CPU core

Now I start to see significant slowdown due to swapping. My working set starts below 256M, but if I'm using a graphical Emacs, it quickly starts to creep up. The slow mechanical hard drive in this computer makes swapping as painful as I remember from the 1990s and 2000s.

Dropping out of X and running fbterm and Emacs on the console lets me continue to do most of what I want in this configuration without swapping, but I lose the ability to, e.g., read web comics. Eww continues to work for most web pages where I only care about the text, and Gopher and Gemini are mostly unaffected, as are email and journaling. Fbterm gives the advantage over the built-in Linux console of supporting Unicode characters and TrueType monospace fonts.

128MB RAM, 1 CPU core

Surprisingly, this doesn't boot, with the default 32-bit Debian kernel. It gets to enabling huge page support, and just hangs with no more kernel messages. I'm guessing I /could/ compile a custom kernel that would boot with this configuration, but that's more than I really want to do.

Not done yet

I don't have a working setup of ement.el and pantalaimon working yet on this computer, but it would really behoove me to get it working.

What I'm still going to use modern computers for

The challenge specifically excludes work, of course.

I'm going to use my phone for instant messaging; for SMS, there is no alternative, and desktop Signal won't run in these limited specs. I'm going to /try/ to stick to my Slow Computer for Matrix, but I guarantee nothing. I may continue to use the phone for pure entertainment consumption, like web comics.

The jailbroken Fire Stick hanging off the back of my TV also exceeds the OCC specs, but I will probably continue to use it for movies. Perhaps I will avoid YouTube and similar, sticking to things that I could /theoretically/ watch on DVD.

There's a whole category of computing that I consider neither work, nor, home, but *B▲byƚøn*. Paying bills, paying taxes, buying things that you can no longer get at local shops, ordering take-out. All of these things require a very modern browser and a substantial amount of RAM. I reserve the right to use my normal daily driver (which is also 10 years old, but substantially upgraded), as I take no pleasure from *B▲byƚøn* computing.