Lynx is the oldest web browser still being maintained • Hacker News Board

Re: Lynx is the oldest web browser still being maintained

#111

Post by anthk » Mon, Mar 17, 2025, 11:16 AM UTC

udev4096 wrote: post #108

anthk wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you head these services (and more) under an atom n270 netbook or a lesser machine, you'll understand why you would love Gopher, Usenet, IRC (and bridges like Bitlbee) and Email. Tons of JS made lots of serviceable machines obsolete. Even an i3 -and i5- is not enough today to browse the web with 2GB of RAM without a heavy ad blocker like UBlock.

Old machines should not be used for anything serious anyway. It will lack firmware and OS updates, modern exploit mitigations and probably has a high power usage. The main reason gopher died was due to lack of openness in the protocol development. They corrected it in the early 2000's but it was too late by then

>Modern exploit mitigations >OS updates

Good luck with modern intel exploits there, and I'm running OpenBSD 7.6 on an Atom n270 nebook like a champion. Power? Maybe a bit high for a machine from late 2000's, but is not so bad compared to a current powerhouse as a desktop.

I can play 720p video with no JS needed at all (mpv+yt-dlp), chat with Jabber/IRC/telegram, some of them over Bitlbee. I have locally curated playlists and music from both Jamendo and Internet Archive.

I can comment on both HN and Mastodon with https://brutaldon.org

I can program in AWK, C and Go. I can plot stuff faster with AWK+GNUplot than most people battling with CUDA, Python and months of GPU usage drawing more power for a mundane task than a quality beef restaurant in a month.

I have several services routed from the web to Gopher, even Internet Archive. I can read the news using a laugable bandwidth and CPU on the remote servers.

The average desktop today uses far more power with local and remote services in a month than my machine and the Gopher servers over a year.

Re: Lynx is the oldest web browser still being maintained

#112

Post by lawrenceyan » Mon, Mar 17, 2025, 6:08 PM UTC

anenefan wrote: post #107

lawrenceyan wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> set up a repeater by hanging an old phone over my curtains so it could catch Wifi from the cafe across and connected to the phone's internet over bluetooth. I had no idea this was possible. Can you explain why this works? Sounds fascinating.

Basically you are making a network connection via bluetooth. Depending on the OS you drive, there's probably a guide such as [1] to set up bluetooth via the modem adapter to act as an internet connection. Of course it relies on both devices being able to create and maintain a good bluetooth connection. It would be nicer if phones could run two wifi networks at the same time, allowing a mix of leach or hotspots but I…

Oh I see. So you technically could have placed the laptop where the phone was to get a connection, but it was in an awkward location so placing the phone there instead and setting up a hotspot was better.

Re: Lynx is the oldest web browser still being maintained

#113

Post by kapitar » Thu, Mar 20, 2025, 11:39 AM UTC

andai wrote: post #36

Many moons ago I was on a constrained internet connection -- I set up a repeater by hanging an old phone over my curtains so it could catch Wifi from the cafe across and connected to the phone's internet over bluetooth. I had like 2KB/s. This made most of the internet unusable, but it turns out the parts I care about are text. So I just browsed it through a text browser. This didn't really work either, because it tur…

Ah yes. I remember having to do something similar. My connection was via 3G on an old Sony Ericsson K750, which was acting as a Bluetooth modem.

I think I did manage to get about 5k/s by placing it at various points around the room, but it was mostly dropped packets and 1k down.