Ask HN: How can I browse public GitHub repos on 128kbps connection? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How can I browse public GitHub repos on 128kbps connection?

7 pointsxeonmc14 comments

I am stuck on 128kbps connection for a while. The only website that loads without the server timing out is HackerNews.

I cannot even click on the commit history of a GitHub repo on the web, it seems to be some sort of bloated react interface for what amounts to an excruciatingly slow `git log`.

Cloning the entire repo is not feasible unless I know in advance that the repo is small, but I cannot know that unless I browse the log and directory beforehand.

I cannot search Google for advanced git commands, as Google times out 90% of the time, while 9% of the time it sends me to a captcha which is even more bloated to load and times out again.

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Provision a VPS/VM/Cloud instance/etc, install your dev tools on it and use it over mush.

And remember for things like looking up git commands or even a lot of your dependency documentation, you do not need a web browser. Git comes with manpages, many libraries will have docs in .md or whatever in them.

Timeouts over TCP/IP do not happen due to a lack of bandwidth, they happen when individual packets fail to get acknowledged. You will need to have patience, but that connection should not break the ability to use the web. I've seen problems like this quite a few times, and resolved them by working with the ISPs to actually trace the connection and find the problem router/hardware. As often as not, they'd find some old failing hardware on a telephone pole somewhere near the end user who was reporting such problems.

I would run this on VPS and use it via SSH: https://github.com/fathyb/carbonyl

Alternate front-end: https://gothub.lunar.icu/

Thanks for that, though unfortunately it’s missing the ability to see commit history

I checked Lynx and it doesn't work, but Elinks and Links works in terminal with GitHub, so you can use a very thin device and a little bandwidth to go to an online repo.

elinks https://github.com/arise-project

You might be able to try the lynx terminal web browser

Perhaps something like this to get just one commit with no large files: git clone --depth 1 --filter=blob:limit=100k

For looking at the commit history rather than the files, apparently one can use git-ls-remote .

How can you be stuck at 128kbps in 2025? Are you in jail? I'm very intrigued.

Any kind of ship is a plausible explanation.

Is starlink an Option?(in case you did not know)

No, but Starbucks is an occasional option though not always available 24/7.

How about these:

- github cli (https://cli.github.com/manual/)

- github tui (https://github.com/chshersh/github-tui)

- another github tui (https://github.com/skanehira/github-tui)

- github cli extension (https://github.com/jrnxf/gh-eco)

Or you could build a custom one with the github api: https://docs.github.com/en/rest

Hope you find a solution.

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