I have an old ThinkPad T42 coming my way. I plan to use it alongside my daily driver mainly for reading, emacs, and retro gaming. I will be dual booting a lightweight flavour of Linux (TBD) and Windows 98 on it.
However, I am a bit concerned about its ability to handle today’s internet, with all of its heavy websites.
I would love to hear from those of you who are still using old ThinkPads (or other vintage laptops) in 2024. How do you make it work? Do you use lightweight browsers, specific configurations, or lightweight websites to get around the limitations of older hardware?
Are there any specific tips or tricks you can share for getting the most out of an old ThinkPad on the modern web?
Looking forward to hearing about your experiences!
I’ve got a Thinkpad 600X (Pentium III, 256MB RAM). I put Debian 12 on it, and the OS is not quite small enough. (NetBSD couldn’t drive my particular CardBus Wifi card, sadly, and 9front couldn’t drive the NeoMagic video properly.) Just Emacs on the console, no X, and eww for web browsing (to your question) and elpher for poking around Gemini. I’m not familiar enough with Thinkpads to know if that’s a useful data point for you.
Nobody’s mentioned https://www.haiku-os.org/ yet, so I will. I can’t remember what happened with it on my Thinkpad. There are several graphical browsers there, with a range of capabilities, as well as a port of Emacs.
I guess my real answer is: don’t handle today’s internet with all of its heavy websites? Use the web for documents, and use native applications rather than web apps for other purposes, such as chatting and email.
Thanks for sharing your experience.
Also, appreciate the intro to Haiku OS, I had not heard of it earlier. It is interesting to read their philosophy through their FAQs.
As others pointed out, finding Win98 drivers for that will be quite a challenge. The same probably applies to Windows 2K/Me. If for some reason you don’t like XP, a good alternative for T43 is OS/2 based OSs, starting from 0S/2 Warp 4.52. I tend to prefer supported and maintained software as long as the device is expected to surf the internet, so ArcaOS would be a better alternative.
Linux support for 32-bit x86 is shriking day by day; at this point you’d better install NetBSD on anything i486 onward (but this is just my opinion).
Thank you. The order of trials is 98 -> 2000 -> XP.
I will not be using Windows to connect to the internet; that function will be reserved for the Linux based OS, which I will be running in dual boot mode.
During my search for operating systems for older machines, I did come across NetBSD, but I am not sure if I am ready to give up my familiarity with Linux-based OSs.
Edit: Having said that, this seems like a good opportunity to try it out.
I’m using a 4gb ram Celeron accer C720 from like 2013. Linux. That’s all there is to it. SSD if you have SATA 3, max ram out on it, and Linux the fuck out of it. /thread
I’m still using a netbook from 2011 and with i3 and qutebrowser it’s doing alright :3
Use a lightweight browser like SeaMonkey, use a content/JS blocker like uBlock Origin plus uMatrix(eMatrix). Only enable required scripts and such
