Re: Default Revival of a ten years old computer : how would you do it?
Hi, h...@mailo.com wrote: i have tested "recent" openbsd releases, since 2022, and almost all of them are a bit slow with xfce/firefox etc. i was wondering, for laptops range of 2013/16 years old, what would you recommmend them for a common web browsing using openbsd? I like to run BSD and Linux on a variety of older hardware, so I have some experience here. First, OpenBSD is nice, but essentially, given "the same userland", that is the same X11, same desktop setup, same browser will be reasonably similar in performance to NetBSD or a good linux. Do not expect some "magic speed" in average user. What helps, usually is that you have a clean setup and install selectively what you need. So, usually, I have a a very clean system on NetBSD and OpenBSD, while perhaps on e.g. Debian you start with a big "gnome desktop setup" and then customized later, but removing is harder than adding. A good Devuan setup (no systemd) with basic X11, wm and firefox performs for me similarly to a NetBSD and OpenBSD system for browsing. Other differences? Hardware support. On your system you might have the luck that the OpenBSD driver for some of your chips (e.g. network) works better than others. FFS is just faster than certan journaled file system you get as default elsewhere. Also "old".. it might be a low-end system with some crippled processor and low on ram.. or a good i5 with 8GB of RAM (top of the line back then). Key for browsing is RAM in any case. Under 3/4GB you cannot often open more than one or two tabs nowadays! "common web browsing" can be an incredibly demanding task. Graphic and intensive website can kill current and top systems. Using chrome with 10 GitHub Tabs open and then open YouTube? Or browse some manpages, use wikipedia and duck-duck-go... that you can also on an old Centrino. Given that... on selected systems OpenBSD works just very well. My aging HP laptop has suspend-to-ram support, wifi support... just everything out of the box. Easy to configure too! Riccardo
Re: Default Revival of a ten years old computer : how would you do it?
On Mon, Nov 06, 2023 at 11:29:22AM +0100, h...@mailo.com wrote: > > > since few months im discovering openbsd ; as linux has been often > recommended for windows's users with a very slow system, i guess that > it's not that unadvised to use openbsd with a GUI for web browsing and > little software (eg LO, gimp..) > > i have tested "recent" openbsd releases, since 2022, and almost all of > them are a bit slow with xfce/firefox etc. > > i was wondering, for laptops range of 2013/16 years old, what would > you recommmend them for a common web browsing using openbsd? > > I thank you vm > My two cents, just to balance some of the "you must be out of your mind" answers you've been getting. You are talking about 10 year-old laptops, which are likely to be memory-limited, and in some cases have weaker CPUs and GPUs. Ten years ago, Firefox 25 recommended 512MB of RAM, a reasonably good digital camera took 12Mp images and recorded 1080p 60fps videos. Nowadays, it all increased fourfold: Firefox recommends 2Gb RAM, and a smartphone will get you 48Mp images and 4K video at 60fps. A ten year old laptop probably will only have USB 2, now you'll get (you guessed it) four times the bandwidth with USB 3.2, etc. None of this has anything to do with whether you use OpenBSD. I'm just stating that it is not reasonable to expect that running OpenBSD (or Linux, or whatever) will suddenly botox your aging hardware to make it look 5 years younger. Will it run faster than on Windows? Almost certainly. Will it be capable of running Firefox with eight tabs open? Probably, but it sure won't be "snappy" and "responsive". In summary, manage your/the end user's expectations. I've thought of repurposing an old laptop for my 10yo kid, but I known that within a week or two I'd be hearing complains about the videos on the n-th firefox tab not playing properly, or how nothing happens when you click on some link. I'd be able to live with that machine, my kid probably wouldn't. You can probably guess from what I wrote above that, in *my* experience, the main frustrations with running older machines -- and by older I mean at least 10 years old -- is web browsing (most browsers are bloated memory-hogs, and the sites have followed suit), manipulating my own photos and videos (and I mean just moving them around, not editing) because of file size, and transfer rates to/from USB devices. That being said, I've used a ThinkPad X201 for many many happy years, after getting as much RAM as possible into it. But admittedly, I work mostly on the terminal, with a lightweight WM (dwm, but there are many more options), mutt for email, vim for work (statistical programming with R + LaTeX), the ocasional, inkscape-ing and minor gimp-ing, and some usage of LibreOffice. It was certainly faster than Windows, and I don't think it was much slower than Linux, if at all. OpenBSD doesn't target speed (even if it runs pretty lean, compared to most Linux distros I've come across), it targets security and consistency. If speed is all you're after, maybe other OSs will better suit your needs. Otherwise its a trade-off, and only you will know if its worth it or not. I am using OpenBSD like I said above for about 15 years now, the machine I'm writing this in about five years old, and I've been doing fine. You'll probably do too. Just stay clear of NVIDIA hardware, which can't be properly supported. Oh, and forget about bluetooth. In the end, the proof is in the pudding. If you have a spare HDD around just install OpenBSD (not onto a USB device if the machine only has USB2!), which is pleasantly quick, pkg_add firefox and browse about a bit. I won't take you long, and you'll get a good feel of how the machine will behave. Then, you can do some customizing (https://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq11.html), add LibreOffice and Gimp, move around a bit more, and then decide whether you find it worth it or not. It all depends on the kind of usage you are planning, it depends on the hardware, it depends on the your (or the machine's final user's) expectations, and on how much you value security, stability and consistency over "performance" (however *you* define it). Cheers Zé --
Re: Default Revival of a ten years old computer : how would you do it?
On Mon, Nov 06, 2023 at 11:29:22AM +0100, h...@mailo.com wrote: > > > since few months im discovering openbsd ; as linux has been often recommended > for windows's users with a very slow system, i guess that it's not that > unadvised to use openbsd with a GUI for web browsing and little software (eg > LO, gimp..) > > i have tested "recent" openbsd releases, since 2022, and almost all of them > are a bit slow with xfce/firefox etc. > > i was wondering, for laptops range of 2013/16 years old, what would you > recommmend them for a common web browsing using openbsd? > > I thank you vm > Unless you are an OpenBSD developer, porter and/or port tester or make OpenBSD Youtube content, in my view you'd have to have a certain amount of masochism in your personality to run OpenBSD as a daily driver. Most people who do run gui have more than the ten year minimum memory spec, generally 8GB or more, which was high end ten years ago. You will find quite a few new content creators on Youtube bragging about 'ricing' OpenBSD to look supercool running suckless terminals and eye-popping statusbars. But they are usually never on for more than a couple of months and then slowly fizzle out perporting to have moved on to Arch or some other 'wonderful Linux'. Mileage may vary, but in general for people 'discovering OpenBSD', there is a lot of studying to do in tackling OpenBSD Desktop that is not everybody's cup of tea. But if you want to be part of a very select crowd and be prepared to change the system to your liking and share your development with the community, see this as a challenge. -Ampie
Re: Default Revival of a ten years old computer : how would you do it?
On Nov 06 11:29:22, h...@mailo.com wrote: > since few months im discovering openbsd ; as linux has been often recommended > for windows's users with a very slow system, i guess that it's not that > unadvised to use openbsd with a GUI for web browsing and little software (eg > LO, gimp..) the fact that linux "has been often recommended" has nothing to do with whether openbsd will work for you. > i have tested "recent" openbsd releases, since 2022, > and almost all of them are a bit slow with xfce/firefox etc. That depends largely on the machine. If you have a specific machine in mind, this email should include a dmesg. > i was wondering, for laptops range of 2013/16 years old, > what would you recommmend them for a common web browsing using openbsd? Common web browsing using openbsd means install the base system and then pkg_add firefox. There are much more lightweight window managers than xfce, such as the base cwm. Whether that will be "slow" is anybody's guess as we known nothing about your machine. That being said, I happily run firefox on older Thinkpads similar to the one below (a 2014 Thinkpad E145). Jan OpenBSD 7.2-current (GENERIC.MP) #911: Wed Dec 28 10:45:43 MST 2022 dera...@amd64.openbsd.org:/usr/src/sys/arch/amd64/compile/GENERIC.MP real mem = 5647761408 (5386MB) avail mem = 5459165184 (5206MB) random: good seed from bootblocks mpath0 at root scsibus0 at mpath0: 256 targets mainbus0 at root bios0 at mainbus0: SMBIOS rev. 2.7 @ 0xbe5c4000 (47 entries) bios0: vendor LENOVO version "HSET57WW (2.02 )" date 02/24/2014 bios0: LENOVO 20BCMC acpi0 at bios0: ACPI 5.0 acpi0: sleep states S0 S3 S4 S5 acpi0: tables DSDT FACP HPET APIC MCFG SBST FPDT UEFI MSDM UEFI SSDT SSDT UEFI SSDT SSDT SSDT SSDT SSDT acpi0: wakeup devices GPP0(S4) GPP1(S4) GPP2(S4) GPP3(S4) GFX_(S4) XHC0(S3) OHC1(S3) EHC2(S3) OHC3(S3) EHC3(S3) SBAZ(S4) LID_(S4) acpitimer0 at acpi0: 3579545 Hz, 32 bits acpihpet0 at acpi0: 14318180 Hz acpimadt0 at acpi0 addr 0xfee0: PC-AT compat cpu0 at mainbus0: apid 0 (boot processor) cpu0: AMD E1-2500 APU with Radeon(TM) HD Graphics, 1397.40 MHz, 16-00-01 cpu0: FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,CFLUSH,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,HTT,SSE3,PCLMUL,MWAIT,SSSE3,CX16,SSE4.1,SSE4.2,MOVBE,POPCNT,AES,XSAVE,AVX,F16C,NXE,MMXX,FFXSR,PAGE1GB,RDTSCP,LONG,LAHF,CMPLEG,SVM,EAPICSP,AMCR8,ABM,SSE4A,MASSE,3DNOWP,OSVW,IBS,SKINIT,TOPEXT,DBKP,PCTRL3,ITSC,BMI1,XSAVEOPT cpu0: 32KB 64b/line 8-way D-cache, 32KB 64b/line 2-way I-cache, 1MB 64b/line 16-way L2 cache cpu0: smt 0, core 0, package 0 mtrr: Pentium Pro MTRR support, 8 var ranges, 88 fixed ranges cpu0: apic clock running at 99MHz cpu0: mwait min=64, max=64, IBE cpu1 at mainbus0: apid 1 (application processor) cpu1: AMD E1-2500 APU with Radeon(TM) HD Graphics, 1397.40 MHz, 16-00-01 cpu1: FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,CFLUSH,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,HTT,SSE3,PCLMUL,MWAIT,SSSE3,CX16,SSE4.1,SSE4.2,MOVBE,POPCNT,AES,XSAVE,AVX,F16C,NXE,MMXX,FFXSR,PAGE1GB,RDTSCP,LONG,LAHF,CMPLEG,SVM,EAPICSP,AMCR8,ABM,SSE4A,MASSE,3DNOWP,OSVW,IBS,SKINIT,TOPEXT,DBKP,PCTRL3,ITSC,BMI1,XSAVEOPT cpu1: 32KB 64b/line 8-way D-cache, 32KB 64b/line 2-way I-cache, 1MB 64b/line 16-way L2 cache cpu1: smt 0, core 1, package 0 ioapic0 at mainbus0: apid 4 pa 0xfec0, version 21, 24 pins, remapped ioapic1 at mainbus0: apid 5 pa 0xfec01000, version 21, 32 pins, remapped acpimcfg0 at acpi0 acpimcfg0: addr 0xf800, bus 0-63 acpiprt0 at acpi0: bus 0 (PCI0) acpiprt1 at acpi0: bus 1 (GPP0) acpiprt2 at acpi0: bus 3 (GPP1) acpiprt3 at acpi0: bus -1 (GPP2) acpiprt4 at acpi0: bus 4 (GPP3) acpiprt5 at acpi0: bus -1 (GFX_) acpiec0 at acpi0 acpibtn0 at acpi0: PWRB acpipci0 at acpi0 PCI0: 0x0010 0x0011 0x acpicmos0 at acpi0 "SMB0001" at acpi0 not configured acpithinkpad0 at acpi0: version 1.0 acpiac0 at acpi0: AC unit offline acpibat0 at acpi0: BAT1 model "45N1174" serial 898 type LION oem "SANYO" acpibtn1 at acpi0: LID_ "PNP0C14" at acpi0 not configured "PNP0C14" at acpi0 not configured "ASD0001" at acpi0 not configured acpicpu0 at acpi0: C2(0@400 io@0x841), C1(@1 halt!), PSS acpicpu1 at acpi0: C2(0@400 io@0x841), C1(@1 halt!), PSS acpitz0 at acpi0: critical temperature is 100 degC acpivideo0 at acpi0: VGA_ acpivout0 at acpivideo0: LCD_ cpu0: 1397 MHz: speeds: 1400 1200 1000 900 800 MHz pci0 at mainbus0 bus 0 0:1:0: rom address conflict 0xfffe/0x2 pchb0 at pci0 dev 0 function 0 "AMD 16h Host" rev 0x00 radeondrm0 at pci0 dev 1 function 0 "ATI Kabini" rev 0x00 drm0 at radeondrm0 radeondrm0: msi azalia0 at pci0 dev 1 function 1 "ATI Radeon HD Audio" rev 0x00: msi azalia0: no supported codecs pchb1 at pci0 dev 2 function 0 vendor "AMD", unknown product 0x1538 rev 0x00 ppb0 at pci0 dev 2 function 2 "AMD 16h PCIE" rev 0x00: msi pci1 at ppb0 bus 1 rtwn0 at pci1 dev 0 function 0 "Realtek 8188CE" rev 0x01: msi rtwn0: MAC/BB RTL8188CE, RF 6052 1T1R, address 20:16:d8:41:c4:fd ppb1 at pci0 dev 2 function
Re: Default Revival of a ten years old computer : how would you do it?
On Mon, Nov 6, 2023 at 1:14 PM wrote: > > since few months im discovering openbsd ; as linux has been often > recommended for windows's users with a very slow system, i guess that it's > not that unadvised to use openbsd with a GUI for web browsing and little > software (eg LO, gimp..) > OpenBSD is not linux though. It may look somewhat alike on the surface, but almost every component is very different these days. > > i have tested "recent" openbsd releases, since 2022, and almost all of > them are a bit slow with xfce/firefox etc. > > i was wondering, for laptops range of 2013/16 years old, what would you > recommmend them for a common web browsing using openbsd? > First of all, nothing except the last two releases would get any type of support other than "please upgrade to the latest stable", and security patches are not backported more than one release before the latest, so I doubt anyone would recommend running an old version. I love OpenBSD for a lot of things. It's reliable, predictable, stable, *well documented*, intuitive, but honestly, it's probably the slowest among the free software OS. Are you looking for ways to squeeze the last performance out of OpenBSD in particular, or is it more of an X-Y problem that you're looking for a good Windows alternative for older computers?
Re: Default Revival of a ten years old computer : how would you do it?
You are out of luck, many of us are with old hardware as well and they are very happy with the latest releases of OpenBSD. Then when you talk about your legacy hardware you do not quote any cpu or ram spec. Eventually to start a good dialog you need to do that. -- Daniele Bonini Nov 6, 2023 13:15:47 h...@mailo.com: > > > since few months im discovering openbsd ; as linux has been often recommended > for windows's users with a very slow system, i guess that it's not that > unadvised to use openbsd with a GUI for web browsing and little software (eg > LO, gimp..) > > i have tested "recent" openbsd releases, since 2022, and almost all of them > are a bit slow with xfce/firefox etc. > > i was wondering, for laptops range of 2013/16 years old, what would you > recommmend them for a common web browsing using openbsd? > > I thank you vm
Re: Default Revival of a ten years old computer : how would you do it?
On Mon, Nov 06, 2023 at 11:29:22AM +0100, h...@mailo.com wrote: > what would you recommmend them for a common web browsing using openbsd? The surf browser in www/surf works quite well on older hardware.
Default Revival of a ten years old computer : how would you do it?
since few months im discovering openbsd ; as linux has been often recommended for windows's users with a very slow system, i guess that it's not that unadvised to use openbsd with a GUI for web browsing and little software (eg LO, gimp..) i have tested "recent" openbsd releases, since 2022, and almost all of them are a bit slow with xfce/firefox etc. i was wondering, for laptops range of 2013/16 years old, what would you recommmend them for a common web browsing using openbsd? I thank you vm
