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Title: Old Computer Challenge - Just some thoughts
Date: July 13, 2024

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  So, I'm not taking part in this year's Old Computer Challenge[0], but I
ended up seeing Matto's phlog post about their first day[1], and I felt like
talking about it. Honestly, the only reason I'm not taking part is because I've
got enough on my plate at the moment that I wouldn't be able to enjoy it, and
that's the point of these "challenges": to have some fun.

  That said, the whole /roll your own experience/ for the challenge this year
looks like it's going to make for a great time. I've got an old Dell Inspiron
E1505 from 2007 that I would've used if other things hadn't been going on, as
it would've been perfect for the role. 4GB of DDR2 memory, a Core2Duo, and a
256MB Radeon mobile GPU, all running Windows XP (though I probably would've
used something else). I love that I'm even thinking about that massive brick of
a laptop, because it's something I lusted after around the time it was released
to stores, and I was still using Linux at the time.

  Probably wouldn't go as far as some and restrict myself to text-only, as I do
need to work with images occasionally. I could still view them with something
like `fbi` in a simple framebuffer, like I did during my days on Gentoo, but I
would still need X for editing images, sadly. Everything else would be fine,
though. I'm already do nearly everything in a terminal on my modern laptop, so
outside of image editing, a bit of web browsing where I absolutely need a GUI,
and watching videos with my lovely mate occasionally, no real change there. And
one could say the speed would make a difference, but...no. Not really.

  I mean, let me take inventory here...

* Emacs (terminal)
* newsboat (terminal)
* weechat (terminal)
* lynx (terminal)
* slrn (terminal)
* mutt (terminal)
* amfora (terminal)
* txtnish (terminal)
* cmus (terminal)
* modplug123 (terminal)
* pass (terminal)
* yt-dlp + ytfzf + mpv (terminal + GUI)
* GIMP (GUI)
* Xpdf (GUI)
* Firefox/Pale Moon (GUI)
* Discord (GUI)

  So, out of my daily-use applications, only four are GUI, and the rest are TUI
or CLI apps, and one hybrid piece for videos. I'd say that'd still be a little
challenge of sorts.

  Maybe another year, I can join in with something when I'm not already whelmed
by other matters. I'll definitely be reading the phlogs as they roll in. As we
say in gaming, "GLHF" (Good luck, have fun).

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[0]: gopher://occ.deadnet.se/0/users/matto/the-old-computer-challenge-explained.txt
[1]: gopher://box.matto.nl:70/0/first-day-of-the-old-computer-challenge-2024.txt