Old Computer Challenge 2024

[day 0 - 07/13/2024]

I am late to the party, but on the other hand:

> Well, as nobody enforces you to do the OCC, you can just do it when you want, even in December if it suits your calendar better than mid July, nobody will complain at you.
via: https://dataswamp.org/~solene/2024-06-24-old-computer-challenge-v4-announce.html

so I feel absolved.

I do not have any real Old Computer, so I chose slowing down way. My current machine (i7-6700K, 16 GB RAM) was limited on:
CPU - by changing bsd.mp kernel to bsd.sp and limiting frequency with apm -L.
RAM - to 512M (via: https://occ.deadnet.se/how/, but it does not seem to be working perfect as top sometimes shows more than 512 megs on real memory)
Internet - by trickled(8) and trickle(1):
with .xsession OpenBSD starts trickled -u 64 -d 64 then browsers are started by e.g. trickle ungoogled-chromium

I also plan to change mpv to mpd/mpc as I really do not watch any movies.

First impression: it is not so bad, of course slackening is visible. Ungoogled Chromium works too good what is probaly related with not correctly working RAM limitation.

[day 1 - 07/14/2024]

Some thoughts about browsers which I normally use:
Ungoogled Chromium - as yesterday, it works too well. Even fat java script sites load, but it just takes longer. Smaller sites load almost normally. Update: you probably know that, but most "mainstream" websites are so heavy, but they show only text and pictures... Generally, it is usable, but in very limited way.

Tor Browser - that's interesting case: browser is able to connect with tor, but first site hangs and connection with tor is dropped. It seems that tor needs faster connection than 64 KBps to work correctly.

Funny thing: you can slow down pkg_add with trickle what makes it unusable...

Finally I was able to set up mpd/ncmpc. It just plays without siphoning dozens of megs in web browser.

It seems that yt-dlp does not acknowledge trickle :/

[day 2 - 07/15/2024]

Well, mpd is still mystery for me. One day it works, next day it stops. Problem solved by changing mpd/ncmpc to amused/amused-monitor (via: https://projects.omarpolo.com/amused.html). Very nice application, but its only issue is scope of filetypes which it handles (for sure wav, flac, mp3 and opus). It will not work with mp4a and webm which are standard audio files which can be downloaded from YT. Thus I found that it is possible to easily convert webm/mp4a to flac with ffmpeg. Works good but due to unkown reason final file is much bigger :/

I am still supriprised by the fact that Ungoogled Chromium works not bad. Of course some sites do not load at all (like github), but most imporatant ones are fine.

Also I was able to download 34 MB file what took circa 1 hour... It was not frustrating, but rather unbelivable.

At least for day 2 impressions are stil good and even I have a feeling that machine is not slow enough.

[day  3 - 07/16/2024]

Great appreciaton to Prahou for *yt* script, I do not need to open invidious in web browser, just fire script and then place it in yt-dlp. (via: https://automa.triapul.cz/occ/day1.html) Also viable via gopher: gopher://triapul.cz/1/files/gophub. 

BTW It is great to have alternative front-ends for mainstream media-delivering websites. Invidious works good with Old Computer, YT cannot even show up bloody cookie popup.

For now I was using RSSyl plugin for Claws Mail to check my RSS sources, but after starting OCC refreshing RSS, Claws Mail dumped core. It was rather not a CPU/RAM issue, but rather with trickle as mail part refreshes correctly. Going *Unix way* I moved RSS to newsraft(1) which is smaller/ligher alternative for newsboat. Initial configuration do not take so long, just copy sample configuration, add RSS links and run. The only thing I need to think out is how to open RSS news in browser... Oh, newsraft works with trickle, but it drops when I try to refresh all channels - what convinces me that it is really connectivity issue.

I forgot to mention that I also use lagrange(1) to surf through gopher and gemini. Works as usual - not a surprise.

[day 4 - 07/17/2024]

What a coincidence, I found spare, working Old Computer (Athlon 64 X2 3800+, 2 GB DDR2 RAM, nice MSI mobo with
1 IDE, 2 SATA and FDD), but it is missing HDD. It would be nice object for Old Computer Challenge after
removing half of RAM, adding HDD and changing PSU (it has 20-pin ATX plug, but mobo has 24-pin). I am going to
rip out a mobo with CPU and RAM, rest will return to scrap. There is no
interest in buying old computer parts in Poland...

Still struggling what should I do with Tor Browser, in fact I removed it, but it is really hard to assess if
using it is good in my case. On the one hand, you lose some security (due to using FF based browser and
nodes may be intercepted), on the other hand, gain of privacy/anonimity
is unknown when you try to avoid scrapping data by corpos.

On day 4 I can say that using Old Computer sometimes might be tedious. It is not a problem of slowly loading
websites, but some of them just does not load at all. I tried to use links(1) for a while, sites load very
fast, but using them is at least complicated. We shall see. For now Ungoogled Chromium works okay enough.

[day 5 - 07/18/2024]

Two main thoughts:
(1) I do not use so much my main PC, so probably the difference between
"usual" and Old one is not so visible at first glance. After those few
days I can say that the main problem are not working fat websites (some
of them are not social media or media in general, so from my point of
view loss is bigger than zero).

(2) For work I use separate machine (laptop) which theoretically is
newer than my PC (hardware), but it is just a little bit faster than my
Old Computer. It makes me thinking why it works so slow. Or I should
rather say (because I am aware what it make working so slow) what is the
point of throwing many software? It is delegating duty of learning
people how to use computer securely to dumb software which is meant to
provide security. What makes it more interesting as daily driver I use
OpenBSD which is well-known for sacrificing performance over security,
but I did not see any performance gain when using Linux - at least for
daily tasks, a difference in I/O operations like copying or dd-ing is
clearly visible. Heck, it does not make sense that older hardware with
performance inhibitors works faster than newer machine running OS which
is meant to work quick.

BTW I have old (like 10 years) Creative speakers and they have annoying
function: if volume is too low, they turn off. Listening ambient music
is like half time of rain, half time of silence. Well, someone might say
that this is a feature, because they turn off to listen ambience sounds
not coming from PC...

[day 6 - 07/19/2024]

To anyone who will try to use trickle for *fun* - be prepared that using it will give
unstable experience. You expect that all connections will slow down so much and that is
true, but as I mentioned earlier some websites just deny to load even if they are not big.
This concerns "mainstream" and "non-mainstream" sites. I do believe that slowing down
connection is not enough to feel that nostalgia. You probably will need to reject
"mainstream" sites and live in Neocities/Webrings/Web 1.0 world. This might emulate feelings
from these times. But it will never be the same.

If OCC will run next year, I will probably go other way (if DIY topic will be available).
Not so much changed through those few days, but it does not mean that slowing down computer
and connectivity is wrong, it just does not give same feeling as then.  

Oh, one more thing. If you are going to use trickle, be prepared that
many sites will throw errors related with canceled connection or will refuse SSL at first time.

[day 7 - 07/20/2024]

Probably I did wrong math. OCC was meant to be ran from 07/13 through 07/20, Solene wrote that
challenge will last a week. Between 13th and 20th there are 8 days, so something is wrong. Anyhow,
it is official last day of OCC and even for me being late it is also last day. That being said, I
am going to leave a note at day 8 after winding up clocks to full speed and comment if there is any
difference.

I generally wrote my feelings about those few days using Old Computer, to sum up:
- bigger sites do not want to load at all or they throw errors like cancelled connection
- great part of smaller sites deny loading HTTPS version and work only in HTTP one
- from my point of view I was not able to do all usual tasks due to point 1
- other network-related apps (like claws-mail or newsraft) are very picky and they easily dump core
- OpenBSD itself work in usual speed except from boot step which takes a little more time (but not
so much, something like 15 vs 25 seconds)

That was interesting journey, but it did not impact my life so much. The struggle was not so significant, so I
should probably conclude that it was not real "challenge", but I still find there appreciation that now
everything works "fast". I would probably take part in OCC again but using different machine. Hope that someone
who read that dairy will find something interesting. As on occ.deadnet.se my sites is marked with trickled(8)
at the end I will say that if anyone is looking for a way to decreasing Internet speed, it is nice, easy application which does not need broad configuration.

[day 8 - 07/21/2024]

Well, everyone would guess. Returning to more than 512 MB of RAM, all cores and full clocks speed makes
computer working faster. BUT it is not so great acceleration as one might think. Applications load at same
speed, OS boots slightly faster. Most visible difference is with Internet. All sites load, no connection
errors, SSL loads. 

It is just my opinion - it is not worth to slow down "New" computer, because even on single core efficiency
will is much better than on old CPU. Unless you are running big apps, you probably will not see significant
difference. If you really want to have a challenge, turn off computer for 7 days or change smartphone for
dumbphone. But YMMV.

Hope that next year OCC will launch and we will be able to return to these times for a while again.