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Permacomputing

permacomputing.net

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Re: Permacomputing

#31

Post by usrbinbash »

hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #6

The best way in to permacomputing, imo, continues to be: Get an old used Thinkpad. Put Linux or one of the BSDs on it. Use low-resource options: LDXE, i3wm. Go about your business driving this thing however you want to. Learn to live within its limits. This is truly the computer as bicycle for the mind.

> Get an old used Thinkpad. Put Linux or one of the BSDs on it. Use low-resource options: LDXE, i3wm.

And then people use this upcycled, environmentally friendly option to connect to social media, their music provider, 2-3 streaming services, their workplace account, and various AI systems, all of which require datacenters eating up so much energy, that by now we consider building nuclear power plants just for them.

Re: Permacomputing

#33

Post by krige »

EndShell wrote: post #14
hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #6

The best way in to permacomputing, imo, continues to be: Get an old used Thinkpad. Put Linux or one of the BSDs on it. Use low-resource options: LDXE, i3wm. Go about your business driving this thing however you want to. Learn to live within its limits. This is truly the computer as bicycle for the mind.

Any older business class laptop really. I have an two older Laptops. One is a Dell 6410. The former has Debian on it with Gnome and I've stuck 8Gb of ram on the machine, slapped in an SSD. The machine is 14 years old and it can reasonably handle browsing, mail, Youtube, Discord and VSCode. Gnome actually performs better than XFCE or any of the light-weight DE as long as I am using Wayland.

Also have a Dell 6410, it's a scrappy little thing. The brushed metal brick aesthetic is pleasing. It's probably time to go full linux on it.

Re: Permacomputing

#34

Post by nehal3m »

usrbinbash wrote: post #31
hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #6

The best way in to permacomputing, imo, continues to be: Get an old used Thinkpad. Put Linux or one of the BSDs on it. Use low-resource options: LDXE, i3wm. Go about your business driving this thing however you want to. Learn to live within its limits. This is truly the computer as bicycle for the mind.

> Get an old used Thinkpad. Put Linux or one of the BSDs on it. Use low-resource options: LDXE, i3wm. And then people use this upcycled, environmentally friendly option to connect to social media, their music provider, 2-3 streaming services, their workplace account, and various AI systems, all of which require datacenters eating up so much energy, that by now we consider building nuclear power plants just for them.

Great point. Aside from the energy requirements that also makes you dependent on infrastructure availability. You seem kind of cynical about the tendency to simplify but we have to start somewhere and taking care of your own setup first seems like a good first step. We ought to be mindful of the complexity we're making ourselves dependent on and solving for that in the use cases you mentioned. Most streaming platforms will let you save a local copy, for a start. You can also rip your physical media, or forego using a computer for media consumption altogether (or in permacomputing terms, self-obviate).

But your point stands and from the perspective of permacomputing is indeed a problem.

Re: Permacomputing

#35

Post by jdmoreira »

alpaca128 wrote: post #29
Philpax wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://tilde.team/~ben/suckmore/

Half those links are broken, the other half about the accusation that they’re nazis because they do torchlight marches, and inbetween a wiki article about a "Unite the Right rally" that contains zero mentions of suckless and seems a bit out of place. Is there anything more concrete?

Yeah. My thoughts exactly. Sounds like a witch hunt.

How about we start calling people nazis when they are actually literal nazis?

Re: Permacomputing

#36

Post by markus_zhang »

EndShell wrote: post #30
aqueueaqueue wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I get a new non mac laptop I max out the warranties and accidental damage. Top service level. Then consider that real OG price. Without those extras you have a brick-in-waiting.

Contrary to popular belief the Dell and Thinkpads are really reliable as long as you buy their business laptops. The consumer laptops are often not great, but the business ones are rock solid, easy to repair and built like bricks. You can also repair them yourself, so most people just wait until business update their inventory and you can get a cheap Dell/Thinkpad from ebay for a few hundred. I have a T480s, 24GB of…

I'm really inclined to install Ubuntu or something else for my "new" used Dell 32GB laptop.

The only issue is that I also installed it on my 16GB ThinkPad and the desktop experience has a lot of rough edges.

Re: Permacomputing

#37

Post by EndShell »

krige wrote: post #33
EndShell wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any older business class laptop really. I have an two older Laptops. One is a Dell 6410. The former has Debian on it with Gnome and I've stuck 8Gb of ram on the machine, slapped in an SSD. The machine is 14 years old and it can reasonably handle browsing, mail, Youtube, Discord and VSCode. Gnome actually performs better than XFCE or any of the light-weight DE as long as I am using Wayland.

Also have a Dell 6410, it's a scrappy little thing. The brushed metal brick aesthetic is pleasing. It's probably time to go full linux on it.

OpenBSD and Linux work well on it. OpenBSD as much as I like it has too many usability issues on Desktop IME, you might find it absolutely fine.

If you are using Linux make sure you are using Wayland. For decent Youtube performance turn off "Ambient Mode" in the Web UI, it wrecks the video playback performance. The box shadow effect with the video playing on top of it is too much for these old iGPUs to handle.

Totem won't work properly in Gnome due to it not having a OpenGL 3.X compatible GPU. VLC will work fine. So just remove Totem and install VLC.

Re: Permacomputing

#38

Post by EndShell »

markus_zhang wrote: post #36
EndShell wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contrary to popular belief the Dell and Thinkpads are really reliable as long as you buy their business laptops. The consumer laptops are often not great, but the business ones are rock solid, easy to repair and built like bricks. You can also repair them yourself, so most people just wait until business update their inventory and you can get a cheap Dell/Thinkpad from ebay for a few hundred. I have a T480s, 24GB of…

I'm really inclined to install Ubuntu or something else for my "new" used Dell 32GB laptop. The only issue is that I also installed it on my 16GB ThinkPad and the desktop experience has a lot of rough edges.

Generally most of the Linux's have rough edges on the desktop experience. I am using Debian 13 (Current Testing) and while it is pretty decent these days there are lots of annoyances. I still dual boot for gaming and at work I use Windows.

Re: Permacomputing

#39

Post by markus_zhang »

EndShell wrote: post #38
markus_zhang wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really inclined to install Ubuntu or something else for my "new" used Dell 32GB laptop. The only issue is that I also installed it on my 16GB ThinkPad and the desktop experience has a lot of rough edges.

Generally most of the Linux's have rough edges on the desktop experience. I am using Debian 13 (Current Testing) and while it is pretty decent these days there are lots of annoyances. I still dual boot for gaming and at work I use Windows.

Thanks. It's Youtube keep crashing on Ubuntu 22.04 every 10 minutes and I don't know why. I turned off hardware acceleration and did a few other tweaks, but judging the look of reddit posts I found, there is no solution. That's why I also keep a Windows laptop.

Re: Permacomputing

#40

Post by EndShell »

markus_zhang wrote: post #39
EndShell wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally most of the Linux's have rough edges on the desktop experience. I am using Debian 13 (Current Testing) and while it is pretty decent these days there are lots of annoyances. I still dual boot for gaming and at work I use Windows.

Thanks. It's Youtube keep crashing on Ubuntu 22.04 every 10 minutes and I don't know why. I turned off hardware acceleration and did a few other tweaks, but judging the look of reddit posts I found, there is no solution. That's why I also keep a Windows laptop.

I don’t use Ubuntu personally, but there should be a newer LTS out.

If you are using a nvidia card it might be worth checking if you are using Wayland or X11, Nvidia and X11 typically work better.

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