On Mon, Nov 06, 2023 at 11:29:22AM +0100, [email protected] 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 --
