Decentralized P2P for Legacy Hardware?
I want to bridge Gemini/Nex simplicity with P2P (IPFS/Freenet) for machines like Symbian or WinXP (<100MB RAM).
Philosophy: If hardware works, it should stay useful. Ecosystems shouldn't force upgrades.
My Idea: A Modular KISS System
Transport: Decoupled (P2P/Radio/BT).
Crypto: Optional local decryption.
Interface: Text-first (Nex-style).
Assets: MIDI/VLC triggered on-demand.
Nostr/SSB feel too heavy. Does a truly modular/light project exist? Title ideas to find collaborators?
Thanks!
Apr 16 · 3 weeks ago
4 Comments ↓
<100MB is tight even for WinXP. Might be a job for Win95 or FreeDOS.
👻 Macro35 [OP] · Apr 16 at 16:41:
for freedos, i would tell you that no, i'm not very sure, but i know that freedos works well in even less... anyway, be aware that i also think of other devices like old nokias with symbian or consoles that can be used as computers like ps2 or the wii, which has less than 100 mb
The problem with antique hardware like that is the power requirements more than anything else. It's way too little compute for the same kind of power consumption as you get from hardware even ten years more modern.
Leaving that aside... why WinXP? Pretty sure you can cut down a Linux system for this kind of machine with decent results, (I did! Back in 2008! It ran a Ruby on Rails (!) webapp in 256Mb ram on a Pentium 200 and didn't really use most of it.) as long as you don't mind compiling everything from scratch.
Which you will have to more or less anyway, since the antiques that had this kind of RAM limitations are i486/i586, while everything switched to requiring i686 by 2005 or so. When the architecture was a decade old.
👻 Macro35 [OP] · Apr 17 at 13:56:
First: I agree, but not all situations are the same. In my home country electricity is very cheap; where I live now it's 10-20x more expensive due to taxes and renewables (not bad, but often pricier). So sometimes keeping older gear is worth it. Also, in undeveloped non-producer countries, import costs are abusive, making even budget devices overpriced.
On the other point... I don't speak English, so unsure if the shared version kept my nuance. I mean time: I have an Acer Aspire One with Gentoo that runs great. Yet some prefer Windows XP over Linux because they find Linux too complicated (even people who used MS-DOS). But my Gentoo setup isn't simple, hahaha.