table of contents
- what is this?
- lightweight websites
- lightweight software
- desktop environments for low-end PCs
- linux distributions and other OS
what is this?
the old tech user's guide is mostly focused on operating systems to replace old and unsupported versions of windows. what the other pages don't cover, however, is what applications you can actually use on these alternative operating systems. particularly if you have one of the older systems i support, like a 32-bit pentium 4 with 512 megs of RAM: what the hell can you even do with it?
this is a living document, containing a wide variety of useful software, from small utilities like command line music players, to whole desktop environments and operating systems. if i decide that a software recommendation or tangent is too irrelevant to the other pages, or too nerdy and specific, i'll put it here instead. if someone contacts me with software recommendations that i wasn't previously aware of, in the name of getting them added to the guide, those will probably also go here.
the other pages are designed to be simple and beginner-friendly - at least, proportionally beginner-friendly to the difficulty of the things they will tell you to do. this one is instead aimed towards people who are already using linux or BSD, and who are looking for useful utilities to make maximal use of their nugget computer on such an OS. as such, it doesn't explain itself as much, taking more of an intermediate to expert tone than the other pages, especially the early ones like the windows 10 pages. you will probably have to take the information you learn here, and pop the names of the programs into your search engine of choice to find more information and figure out how to install them.
enough yapping. on to the list!
lightweight websites
- https://lite.duckduckgo.com/lite/: a modern search engine that is, well, lite. extremely quick to load, extremely simple, works well in pretty much any modern browser from the latest google chrome down to text-mode browsers like lynx. if you want to brave the modern web on your old or slow computer, but you'd like a leaner search engine to make the experience more bearable, this is it.
- https://html.duckduckgo.com/html/: an intermediate weight version of duckduckgo. it looks less like google from 2001, and more like google from 2011. slightly flashier, with some images and responsive content - still no image results or categories, though, so the contents are pretty much the same as the lite version. no AI features and much less potential for tracking here compared to the full site, if that means anything to you.
- https://inv.nadeko.net/: my preferred invidious instance. it offers a slightly faster and more efficient youtube watching experience. if you have a computer new enough that it has a fighting chance of streaming youtube videos, this site will give you the best chance possible to get through it without the video skipping or freezing. if you have a slow CPU, remember to install the h264ify browser extension or a mid-low-end browser like palemoon, and turn down that resolution! this site requires javascript.
- https://brutaldon.org/login: a very lightweight mastodon web instance. with this, you can use mastodon (and therefore, big chunks of the fediverse) from a text-mode browser like lynx or elinks, as well as from lightweight to midweight graphical web browsers (see below).
lightweight software
- palemoon: i consider palemoon to be a "mid-weight" web browser, somewhere between the lightweights (below) and a mainstream browser like firefox or chrome. some websites on occasion do not work in palemoon, or have weird graphical problems. but on a system with less than 4 GB of RAM, or a low-end CPU older than about 2016, it has substantial performance benefits.
- basilisk: a fork of palemoon, designed for even older computers. still supports 32-bit CPUs on a variety of operating systems, which mainstream browsers increasingly do not. it's the only decent browser that runs on most of my computers from before 2010. runs fine on systems with 2 GB of RAM. requires SSE2 instructions, so it won't work on a pentium III.
- netsurf: the ideal ultralight modern web browser. i test this site on netsurf. development is quite slow, but the developers claim it'll run on a 30MHz computer with 16 MB of RAM, although i suspect that it'd be extremely slow on those specs. support for modern website styling is better than the alternative (see below), and it's very portable, being available on a ton of different operating systems and CPU architectures. you can even get it on a 3DS!
- dillo: the last word in lightweight graphical web browsing. it'll run on a 486 with 16MB of RAM - below those specs, you're stuck with an ancient browser or something in text mode (see below). its support for even fairly basic CSS is less than stunning, but i do test this site on dillo, and many basic sites, for instance, the classic web sites in a subsequent section, wikipedia, and AO3, will be perfectly readable.
- elinks, lynx: the end of the line for low-end web browsing. both run in pure text mode, the difference is that elinks is navigated with a more familiar drop-down menu system, and has basic CSS and color support, while lynx is navigated with keyboard shortcuts and only gives you the raw text of the page. other related browsers, like links, are abandoned, as far as i know. i test this site in both elinks and lynx. i recommend elinks, if possible, but in cases where elinks may not be available on your operating system, lynx is a good fallback.
programming
- geany: an IDE fast enough to load on most of my computers. good for programming and web development on low-end hardware that'd struggle in VS code. a decent extensions ecosystem too, at least for web stuff. if you enable the extensions, it takes about 100 megs of RAM to run, so it probably wouldn't be fun on computers with 256 megs of RAM or less.
- scite: a classic code editor, so lightweight that it will run on literally every computer i own (and i own some really old ones). an experience not dissimilar from notepad++, just super fast and low-impact.
internet messaging
- abaddon: a lightweight discord client for low-end 32 and 64-bit computers. also see its work in progress replacement, acheron.
- pidgin: possibly my overall favorite internet messenger i have ever used. extremely lightweight (easily running on systems with only 128 MB of RAM), available on a wide variety of operating systems, and quite easy to set up. it supports IRC, XMPP, and many other protocols, with an ecosystem of plugins adding support for new programs. i use it with the "libpurple-discord" plugin, which allows it to log into your discord account and send and receive text messages (no voice chat).
web browsing
desktop environments
- trinity desktop environment: a darling of mine - this is a relatively friendly and full-featured linux+freebsd desktop experience that'll run on pentium 4 era hardware and newer. it needs at least 512 megs of RAM to be usable, preferably 1 gigabyte. later windows XP machines had that much or more, and you make a lot less compromises than you would running some other, clunkier, lightweight desktops. this is a windows XP-spec linux desktop that your grandparents would probably be able to use.
- LXQT: the younger, slightly heavier, better maintained sibling of LXDE, this desktop environment is clunkier than TDE in my opinion, but it can work miracles in terms of hardware compatibility. running on netBSD (another great project), it can divide TDE's recommended hardware spec by four - it was perfectly usable on my system with 256 megs of RAM and a pentium III 450MHz. that makes it usable on high-end windows 98 machines through early windows XP machines.
- openbox: a lightweight window manager. often paired with pieces of other desktop environments, usually bits of XFCE, LXDE, or LXQT on lightweight systems, but can instead be used standalone for a much lighter RAM impact, albeit with some missing features. it is my go-to on systems with under 256 MB of RAM, where LXQT and its older sibling LXDE won't run or won't run well. it is also my window manager of choice to run under LX**, since you need to choose your window manager when running that. if you want to run a beginner-friendly desktop environment, but don't have enough RAM for your full desktop of choice, i'd install both the full desktop and openbox, then start openbox and then enable a limited number of the desktop components, like the taskbar, to autostart as RAM permits. basically, this allows you to choose exactly which parts of the desktop you get, saving you however much memory you need.
- iceWM: a very barebones window manager, looking like windows 95. a bit frustrating and manual to use compared to the other options (why can't the start menu just update with the items i have installed? why do i have to open a text editor and edit the start menu configuration???), but also very lightweight, smaller even than bare openbox by some measurements. if you have a very, very low RAM system, this may be your best choice, but you'll probably be using the terminal and/or editing config files in a text editor a lot, at least for the first while before you get it set up how you want it.
linux distributions and other OS
- ultramarine linux: a fairly beginner-friendly linux distribution. can be considered as an alternative to linux mint cinnamon. it doesn't go on the windows 10 refugee page, because i decided that that page should be simple (linux beginners don't tend to like Options in my experience), and out of the two distros, i think mint is the better choice for most people. heavyweight, comparable to mint cinnamon if not slightly heavier. somewhat more feature-rich. geared more towards people with some linux experience, or people who are slightly technical. you will not need the terminal often, but you're more likely to encounter edge cases where you need it than on mint.
- slackware: a distribution i'm debating adding to the 32-bit page. it asks for a pretty high amount of memory compared to the other distros on that list, while also being not very user friendly, so i'm a bit reluctant to add it to the list. it may compete with void and alpine on usability in my mind, though, so i'll probably do more testing and possibly add it there at a later date.
- antiX linux: like MX linux from the older 64-bit CPUs page, but ... more of that. more customizable, less beginner friendly, lighter, faster, weirder, smaller community, older hardware support.