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Comment by hiAndrewQuinn | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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.

I agree. I flip between Apple's ecosystem and FOSS a few times a year. My wife recently dropped her cracked iPhone SE in the tub so it died. I gave her my 13 mini and decided to challenge myself to switch back to my Thinkpad and Fairphone for at least a year. Since I wouldn't really be needing sync features either I disabled iCloud and moved back offline.

Much simpler, much more in my control. At the end of the day most computers built in the last 10 years don't break a sweat doing the things I need one for. Same for phones. It makes you much more resilient against hardware failure, and if you go through the pain of converting your stuff to open formats you're basically free as a bird.

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.

Yes, I use a (librebooted) Dell Latitude e6220 with 8Gb RAM and a 275Gb SSD when travelling, great apart from the low resolution screen.

I did look at getting a 1080p screen for it. I am pretty sure I could fit one but the price was prohibitive.

If you like staying in a post-soviet hostel, that's perfect.

I rather like something comfortable these days, so I'll stick with my M1 MacBook Pro. The creature comforts genuinely make my life better so I'm willing to pay for them.

I'm using an M1 Macbook myself, but from a Permacomputing standpoint it's rather terrible. Everything is soldered, nothing can be fixed, replaced or expanded.

You can buy parts for it absolutely no problems at all so this is an exaggeration.

Ok, so how do i increase the RAM, the SSD and upgrade the CPU?

SSD is fine. I have a rework station. I haven't upgraded the other things in a computer for about 15 years.

Maybe we should challenge ourselves more! Here are the Plan 9 4th edition system requirements:

https://plan9-4th-edition-tutorial.readthedocs.io/en/latest/...

- 90 MHz or greater Intel/ARM 32-bit processor

- 32 MiB of RAM (system memory for physical and viritualized installs)

- SVGA capable of 800x600 screen resolution or greater

- Network connection

- 300 MiB of storage (SD, IDE, SATA, SAS)

- Either a CD/DVD drive or a USB port for booting the installer media

Nowadays I only purchase used mobile workstations. I can get a 32GB Dell under 700 CAD including tax and delivery. It was really a deal.

New laptops are so expensive and unreliable that they might actually break down sonner than my used ones...

They use a ton of electricity. Probaby not sustainable for most (unless you have lots of solar)

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 Ram and a 8th Gen i7 processor that I picked up for £300. Granted the laptop is old now, but it runs all my dev software well.

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.

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.

It's gonna be more expensive though. Might as well go with a Mac...

In my case 33% extra on top for 3 years coverage. Or approx a YT premium subscription.

Got the entire thing replaced in that time due to issues plus lots of micro fixes. Pays off when you get a lemon!

Having someone come to you is huge. Sending a laptop back for 6 weeks because of default warranty is a PITA and you need to source another laptop and then get it set up. As well as backup data, delete, restore etc.

For an apples to Apples comparison you should add AppleCare, since the accidental damage cover is in the price I mentioned.

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