Comment by 💎 pista
Re: "I have a late-2010s ThinkPad running OpenBSD, but it's…"
@stack I think it’s only specifically off limits to glowies. You just run them over with your car: that’s what you do.
— https://youtu.be/PF8iPf2p_ow
2025-09-05 · 8 months ago
22 Later Comments ↓
☕️ dce [OP] · 2025-09-05 at 21:43:
@pista I think you may be in the wrong thread.
🚀 stack · 2025-09-05 at 21:47:
Is @pista in the wrong thread? Or in such a correct thread that your mind is doing wheelies?
💎 pista · 2025-09-05 at 22:19:
If this thread is about the absolute best operating systems for older computers I’m definitely in the right thread.
🚀 stack · 2025-09-05 at 22:38:
I have trouble accepting that a ThinkPad between 5 and 15 years old is 'an older computer'. Like I said, I write serious code on mine, and the only time it seems a bit slow is when I build FPGA CPUs and systems in Verilog (which is slow on pretty much anything)
💎 pista · 2025-09-05 at 23:13:
I’m using a Pentium III tower and my PowerBook G4 most days. People talk about that like it’s “retro computing”.
Still running Windows 98 and OSX 10.4.11
Not retro computing. I just didn’t upgrade.
🐙 norayr · 2025-09-06 at 00:15:
what do ou run on that laptop? what is slow? gnome? kde? web browsers?
i am sure some window manager like windowmaker, dwm, i3, bspwm, fvwm should work very fast. try to open a terminal. or even gimp.
the web is the problem. the spec is the real problem, the browsers just try to implement it.
modern gtk/qt toolkits are also heavy.
but try amfora, xterm, st, pidgin. even lagrange and netsurf work well. you can use some web to gemini gateway instead a web browser.
and your computer should be very fast.
look i even run windowmaker on pinephone, or on motorola droid4 with lapdock, and those are very fast. your laptop is more powerful.
still you can try native oberon or a2 (aos)
🐙 norayr · 2025-09-06 at 00:36:
wrote this on a motorola droid 4 running maemo-leste (devuan daedalus with hildon desktop) in latest larange. everything works very fast.
👻 darkghost · 2025-09-06 at 01:55:
Web is such a pig and the bare minimum sane usability for it is 4 GB of RAM in a full featured browser, in my opinion.
🚀 stack · 2025-09-06 at 02:34:
Xubuntu, xfce, Librefox. dwm for a while but was too much trouble. xilinx verilog tools and libre fpga tools slow but that's because of python which I avoid like the plague.
🐐 uyasga · 2025-09-06 at 02:52:
I run GhostBSD on a Compaq Presario CQ57-229wm - 15.6-inch AMD C-50 Processor 1Ghz 4GB 250GB DVDRW.
You need 8GB to install latest version. Only 4GB to install older and update.
Very usable.
🚀 stack · 2025-09-06 at 02:57:
You really need 16GB for web. my other 8GB machine slows to a crawl and locks up twice a day if I use the browser
💎 pista · 2025-09-06 at 03:00:
All of it goes to JavaScript and video.
It doesn’t take nearly that much horsepower to render some html elements with css styling.
☕️ dce [OP] · 2025-09-06 at 09:13:
@norayr I run bspwm with Links2 as my browser and Kermit as my terminal. I have 8GB of RAM and an SSD. I have Tiny10 installed on the 80GB HDD that came with the laptop, and compared to OpenBSD it flies.
As for what I want to do... well, anything I can. At a minimum, I want to be able to write part of my dissertation using it. In an ideal world, I'd also be able to play a smooth game of Minecraft (obviously using an older release, like 1.8.9, and with things like Optifine).
Really the issue isn't what I want to do, it's the performance of everything. Lagrange has never frozen on a single installation of mine until now, the terminal should open instantly, and I should not have to reboot in order to use the I/O ports after closing the lid for a second.
☕️ dce [OP] · 2025-09-06 at 09:20:
@pista I normally disable JS anyway, even on my main laptop (T480s, 24GB RAM, Intel i7).
💎 pista · 2025-09-06 at 09:29:
Getting harder and harder to find pages that don't completely break as soon as you turn on NoScript.
When Web devs decided to make AJAX everywhere and "lazy loading" the standard of the Web they destroyed the Web.
🐙 norayr · 2025-09-07 at 00:31:
so you are saying openbsd on ssd feels slower that tiny (tiny core linux?) on hdd?
and what prevents you to write papers on that machine? didn't people write papers on 16bit pdp machines?
🐙 norayr · 2025-09-07 at 00:35:
maybe you need to browse web and download other papers in order to write yur paper?
i never played that game but i think there was a free libre implementation called minetest, now renamed to something else because people were thinking it is a test version.
🚀 stack · 2025-09-07 at 00:39:
I wrote papers with a quill pen!
Apple ][ with a dot matrix printer.
☕️ dce [OP] · 2025-09-07 at 01:25:
@norayr Tiny10 is a stripped-down image of Windows 10. It's surprisingly fast, especially considering it's running on an old HDD. However, since Microsoft are evil and Windows has more holes than Swiss cheese, installing it as the laptop's main OS it's not an option.
As for writing papers, that was more of an example; although I could rephrase it as "I want to be able to write my dissertation without losing my work or defenestrating my laptop".
🚀 Phosphors-ghost · 2025-09-12 at 13:49:
I’m running openbsd on my VPS right now, probably trying FreeBSD again on the micro desktop when 15 gets released shortly (I was burned by their build system being broken last time I tried in the spring.) On my Thinkpad, I’m running alpine Linux. Yes! The setup-alpine and setup-desktops can build a system incredibly fast, it can run in various “from ram” modes, and is very BSD-like (no systemd), but benefits from the Linux hardware support. It’s a little weird, but the fastest think I’ve tried.
☕️ dce [OP] · 2025-09-12 at 15:24:
@Phosphors-ghost If my new Slackware installation fails for whatever reason, which isn't unlikely, I'll give it a shot!
🚀 stack · 2025-09-12 at 16:22:
As I pointed out before, I am running Ubuntu on an i5 t470 with 16GB, and it works like a charm -- I use it as my dev machine.
additional 8GB = $10-20. Well worth it.
Original Post
I have a late-2010s ThinkPad running OpenBSD, but it's about as fast as a snail carrying heavy shopping through molasses. I'd like to run something other than Linux, for variety, but the other members of the BSD family failed for various reasons. What OS do you guys think I should try? Note: The machine in question has 8GB of RAM and an SSD. UPDATE: I am now running Slackware with Window Maker. However, further suggestions are still appreciated.