old tech user's guide

tricks i've learned from using old (and ancient) computers on modern linux and BSD

foreword

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something very sad happened to me in august of 2026: after 26 years of faithful service, my IBM thinkpad 390X's hinges failed, and the poor thing snapped in twain. that computer was passed down through three generations of my family, but now, it is sadly time for it to retire.

...wait, what? what does she mean, "it's time for it to retire"? surely, a pentium III 450MHz from late 1999 and 256 megabytes of RAM can't get you very far in 2026, unless you were doing a bunch of retro gaming on windows 98?

no, i meant what i said - right until the end, i was doing normal, garden variety Computing on that thinkpad. browsing the web, chatting on IRC [hi, frutiger aero archive!], listening to music locally and from internet streams, playing some basic low-end games, even a spot of working on this website here and there. i even got close to getting discord text chatting to work! (sadly, i wasn't able to fully figure it out before the computer gave up.)

i wasn't using windows 98, either - i was on a modern, supported operating system, with security updates and a full (although pretty basic) desktop environment. of course, getting there was a process, and it was a lot more limiting and a bit slower than a newer computer... but i've now done all of the hard work of research, trial and error to keep such relict computers alive - and supported - in the modern day, and finding useful applications and sites that still work on 20+ year old hardware. and if i could do all that on such an old computer... imagine what your, probably much newer and several times faster, computer can still do with the right resources!

my thinkpad is sadly dead. the things it taught me, however, are still alive. this is a central place to put all the knowledge i gathered, for my own future reference and to help people like me.

table of contents

i'm on windows 10. so this doesnt matter for me, right?

actually, yeah it does. you might be okay for now, but the clock is ticking, and some programs, like certain online games, have already dropped official support for windows 10 - a list that will continue to get longer with every passing month. it might not affect you yet, but it will soon, and it'll only get harder over time to keep using windows 10. soon, some things you want to do will become increasingly difficult or impossible. sure, switching to linux is hard (but way easier than you might think, especially with steamOS arriving and bringing desktop linux to the mainstream), but at some point soon, continuing to use windows 10 will be harder.

okay, but i'm doing fine for now. can't i just ignore it?

if your computer is still running windows 10, or something even older, you're on a sinking ship. some of you are probably on ships that are already at the bottom of the ocean, like windows 8 or windows vista.

there are ways to keep windows 10 going for another few years, (and i will cover those), but those will only buy you a little bit more time to prepare - microsoft has already signed your computer's death certificate. if you think you can keep using your OS forever... go outside and look for people who are still "daily driving" windows XP, on real hardware, as their only OS. you'll be looking for a long time, you won't find many people at all, and the few people you will find are either in an extremely unusual situation, or extremely desperate. and if you do find one of those people, ask them what difficulties they've had with using such an old OS. they will probably be able to go on for hours.

i would know. i was one of those people stuck on an old OS. and if you keep using windows 10/8/7 without a backup plan, you will become one too, and will slowly and often painfully learn why i recommend against it so strongly. you don't have to stay put, though.

what can i do about it?

that depends on your computer. the newer your computer is, the more options you have, and the easier it will be to get your computer fully supported and working again. if it's from 2017 and doesn't quite meet windows 11 requirements, you have a ton of options, many of which are fairly easy and painless. if it's from 2004 and still running windows XP, it'll be a LOT harder, but still very possible. the detailed coverage ends around the end of my personal experience, though, which is with pentium III era processors. there are also other large gaps in coverage - here's a quick disclaimer on all the situations where this guide will not work.

computers this won't work for (optional reading)

actually, it might work for some of these, but you'll have to figure out a lot more stuff on your own.

the sections below are divided by age and computer performance. it was originally going to be a much longer and more comprehensive section, but... i was working on that version for almost 2 months, i wasn't even halfway done, and i decided that it was getting so long and so repetitive that no one would ever want to read it. so, here is what i decided to keep:

how to keep an old computer running