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.
Out of curiosity, do you use that Pentium III machine to access Lemm.ee? I used a Pentium 4 up until 2017 and some websites (probably due to heavy JS) would make the browsing experience fairly miserable.
No, I have not tried that. But I might now. :)
If you do, please tell me because I’d be really interested to hear! One of these days I’ll buy a first-gen celeron 633mhz machine and do some of these tests myself :P
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
You correctly pointed out the seemingly only problem, which is indeed internet browsing. In some rare cases you might get away with something like Firefox with disabled javascript, supposing you max out the RAM. But you should look at other light browsers that will make it more viable.
My go-to browser on old machines is luakit, configured to render javascript on demand. When a website you want to visit doesn’t work without javascript, you enable it just for that website and cross your fingers it doesn’t crash. With js disabled, you can browser normally.
Also become friends with FOSS front-ends to popular corpo services. Forget youtube, use invidious (works without js), forget fandom, use breeze wiki, etc. (see https://farside.link for a list of front-ends)
One other thing you need is patience. A lot of it.
Yes. I plan on using a lightweight Linux based OS for daily operations and restrict Windows only to game. I also know Firefox would not cut it, and using an older build of FF is a security risk.
The intention behind making this post was to learn from the community what they do to browse the web on vintage machines, if they even do.
Thank you for pointing me to Luakit and https://farside.link. I already use alternative front ends like Piped and Nitter but it is nice to see there are many more options.
Frankly, I use links2 for most of my web browsing even on my daily driver (which would by many be considered vintage anyway) and use Firefox for websites that wouldn’t work otherwise, that I absolutely need.
It’s good practice to get used to light software from all walks of life, one might come to realize they don’t need the fancy stuff in their life to use computers.
Good luck.
PS: There’s the #oldcomputerchallenge channel on libera.chat you might want to visit. Many people there who live this lo-end lifestyle on a day-to-day basis, who’d be happy to help.
I have a thinkpad t42 and i use it for playing old games with windows xp.
For reading, writing, retro gaming (i even use epsxe on it) it’s ok. Forget anything else unless you’re a masochist.
and imho it’s too new for windows 98, it has been released a decade after that
if you want to browse internet, you’re forced to use modern hardware with modern operating systems. I don’t think that there’s a single website that still works with ie 5 + win98. Even malware won’t even work anymore.
and imho it’s too new for windows 98, it has been released a decade after that
This is going to be the biggest problem, drivers and hardware compatibility. It’d be a much better experience with XP instead.
I have a Thinkpad A31p from 2002. Even just that gap makes getting Windows 98 installed properly a chore.
