Title: The Old Computer Challenge: day 7
       Author: Solène
       Date: 16 July 2021
       Tags: openbsd life oldcomputerchallenge
       Description: 
       
       Report of the last day of the old computer challenge.
       
       # A journey
       
       I'm writing this text while in the last hours of the challenge, I may
       repeat some thoughts and observations already reported in the earlier
       posts but never mind, this is the end of the journey.
       
       # Technical
       
       Let's speak about Tech!  My computer is 16 years old but I've been able
       to accomplish most of what I enjoy on a computer: IRC, reading my
       mails, hacking on code and reading some interesting content on the
       internet.  So far, I've been quite happy about my computer, it worked
       without any trouble.
       
       On the other hand, there were many tasks that didn't work at all:
       
       * Browsing the internet to use "modern" website relying on javascript: 
       this is because Javascript capable browsers are not working on my
       combination of operating system/CPU architecture, I'm quite sure the
       challenge would have been easier with an old amd64 computer even with
       low memory.
       * Watching videos: for some reasons, mplayer in full screen was
       producing a weird issue, computer stopped working but cursor was still
       moving but nothing more was possible.  However it worked correctly for
       most videos.
       * Listening to my big FLAC music files, if doing so I wasn't able to do
       anything else because of the CPU usage and sitting on my desk to listen
       to music was not an interesting option.
       * Using Go, Rust and Node programs because there are no implementation
       of these languages on OpenBSD PowerPC 32bits.
       
       On the hardware side, here is what I noticed:
       
       * 512MB are quite enough as long as you stay focused on one task, I
       rarely required to use swap even with multiple programs opened.
       * I don't really miss spinning hard drive, in term of speed and noise,
       I'm happy they are gone in my newer computers.
       * Using an external pointing device (mouse/trackball) is so much better
       than the bad touchpad.
       * Modern screens are so much better in term of resolution, colours and
       contrast!
       * They keyboard is pleasant but lack a "Super" modifier key which lead
       to issues with key binding overlapping between the window manager and
       programs.
       * Suspend and resume doesn't work on OpenBSD, so I had to boot the
       computer and it takes a few minutes to do so and require manual step to
       unlock /home which add delay for boot sequence.
       
       Despite everything the computer was solid but modern hardware is such
       more pleasant to use in many ways, not only in term of raw speed.  When
       you buy a laptop especially, you should take care about the other specs
       than the CPU/memory like the case, the keyboard, the touchpad and the
       screen, if you use a lot your laptop they are as much important as the
       CPU itself in my opinion.
       
       Thanks to the programs w3m, catgirl, luakit, links, neomutt,
       claws-mail, ls, make, sbcl, git, rednotebook, keepassxc, gimp, sxiv,
       feh, windowmaker, fvwm, ratpoison, ksh, fish, mplayer, openttd,
       mednafen, rsync, pngquant, ncdu, nethack, goffice, gnumeric, scrot,
       sct, lxappearence, tootstream, toot, OpenBSD and all the other programs
       I used for this challenge.
       
       # Human
       
       Because I always felt this challenge was a journey to understand my use
       of computer, I'm happy of the journey.
       
       To make things simple, here is a bullet list of what I noticed
       
       * Going to sleep earlier instead of waiting for something to happen.
       * I've spent a lot less time on my computer but at the same time I
       don't notice it much in term of what I've done with it, this mean I was
       more "productive" (writing blog, reading content, hacking) and not
       idling.
       * I didn't participate into web forums of my communities :(
       * I cleared things in my todo list on my server (such as replacing
       Spamassassin by rspamd and writing about it).
       * I've read more blogs and interesting texts than usual, and I did it
       without switching to another task.
       * Javascript is not ecological because it prevent older hardware to be
       usable.  If I didn't needed javascript I guess I could continue using
       this laptop.
       * I got time to discover and practice meditation.
       * Less open source contribution because compiling was too slow.
       
       I'm sad and disappointed to notice I need to work on my self discipline
       (that's why I started to learn about meditation) to waste less time on
       my computer.  I will really work on it, I see I can still do the same
       tasks but spend less time doing nothing/idling/switching tasks.
       
       I will take care of supporting old systems by my contributions, like my
       blog working perfectly fine in console web browsers but also trying to
       educate people about this.
       
       I've met lot of interesting people on the IRC channel and for this sole
       reason I'm happy I made the challenge.
       
       # Conclusion
       
       Good hardware is good but is not always necessary, it's up to the
       developers to make good use of the hardware.  While some requirements
       can evolve over time like cryptography or video codecs, programs
       shouldn't become more and more resources hungry for the reason that we
       have more and more available.  We have to learn how todo MORE with LESS
       with computers and it was something I wanted to highlight with this
       challenge.