I tried NetBSD as a desktop, and it felt like stepping into the '90s in a good way
39 points by jaypatelani
39 points by jaypatelani
I got interested in NetBSD due to the SDF.org pubnix as well as NetBSD's strong stance against the inclusion of LLM authored code since 2024.
I've been running NetBSD on a 10-year old ThinkCentre M700 Tiny that I got from Ebay for $120 mostly as a way to learn a bit more about UNIX and its history as well as how to use a slightly older system effectively. I compiled Emacs 30.2 with Lucid Toolkit and installed the uw-ttpy0 bitmap font. All my Emacs bells and whistles are enabled and the experience is in no way inferior to Emacs on my Mac Mini M4, I made a few NetBSD aesthetic tweaks and visually I find the NetBSD Emacs experience under ctwm/X11 more charming.
The latest browsers are of course a problem, things went massively downhill around 2017-2019. This is not nearly as big a showstopper as I originally thought - for most websites I don't want to see all the JS crap, so EWW in Emacs works quite well. The Pale Moon/New Moon browser launches instantly, and works great for websites that take accessibility and simple layouts seriously.
Slow, slow Firefox is reserved only for the JS-centric hot messes.
Although I do like the look of some of the older desktops (due almost entirely to nostalgia reasons), I have to say that the fact that OSes like the *BSDs, linux distros, etc. exist to revive new and quite functional life into old computers is such a blessing!
The latest browsers are of course a problem...The Pale Moon/New Moon browser launches instantly, and works great for websites that take accessibility and simple layouts seriously...
While I don't disagree with you that bloated browsers contribute to the slowness that web surfing brings, i wonder if maybe the crap state that is the "regular" web is more of the root cause for overall slowness? I wish big companies had a "lo-fi" button so that clicking it would allow use of a lighter weight website without JS, or without the bloat, etc. Sort of how NPR and CNN have text-only or "light" versions of their websites. And, even if we can run some really good OS on a very old machine, yeah, hopping on the conventional web reminds brings all the nostalgic niceness to such a slow, screeching halt.
Forgive me, I guess i got grumpy there near the end - when i thought about the current web. ;-)
I wish big companies had a "lo-fi" button so that clicking it would allow use of a lighter weight website without JS, or without the bloat, etc. Sort of how NPR and CNN have text-only or "light" versions of their websites.
Implementing proper progressive enhancement sounds less work than implementing two distinct websites.
I have little hope. The only approach I see is education, but most webdev education nowadays seems to be all about making SPAs. At least Next.js by default does SSR rendering, so maybe some Next.js websites work accidentally without JS.
When phones with Internet access came out, a lot of big websites provided alternative mobile sites because at that point, responsive features did not exist and making websites that worked both on a desktop computer and a phone was not really possible, IIRC. And sometimes the mobile website was worth using on a full computer!
I really wish I had a use for one of the BSDs, but all my desktop attempts so far ended in "after [a not terribly long, but still measurable time], I'm around 80% there what I'd get on a Linux distro post-install" and I don't really have any homelab needs. Maybe I'll think differently when I get a grey beard, for now I just roll with an atomic Fedora desktop which for all my intents is invisible.