He uses a version of Emacs called MicroEmacs.

I recall seeing his MicroEmacs configuration a while back when I was exploring options to start using Emacs.

Something does seem fishy: the total number of votes this post has received (~450 at the time of writing this comment) is only about a third of the number of comments (~1.2k).

I guess people were really pent up about their pedantic tendencies.

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.

https://www.haiku-os.org/about/faq/

I am surprised that 0 A.D. is not mentioned.

Although initially unplayable, the game was fun in the mid-to-late 2000s.

I haven’t checked it out in a while, but it holds high nostalgic value for me.

Refurbished ThinkPads are available in countries where Framework, System76, and Pine64 do not ship.

Besides, ThinkPads are really well-built machines that perform well for everyday tasks at a fraction of their (or the aforementioned competition’s) original price.

I love my two machines, which are from before Lenovo took over completely. Their keyboards, port selection, and repairability are almost unparalleled compared to today’s competition.

I am having similar objectives as of now for the T42. I hope it goes well. Thanks for sharing your experience.

Thank you for your insights. I already have some of these items on my list such as trying out Antix, restricting Windows 98 to gaming, upgrading the hardware, lifting the T42 with both hands from both sides, etc.

When it comes to web browsing, I am starting to think as long as websites that offer long form reading content work, I should be okay. For every other website, I would rather use my daily driver. It would be nice if the boards and forums I frequent also work but I won’t lose sleep over it. Besides, I am using this opportunity to get back on IRC.

As for writing, my workflows are already based on plain text (org files) so I won’t be requiring any office suites. It is also an opportunity to test out my emacs configuration on a resource constricted machine.

If I may ask, how was your experience using the Celeron laptop you mentioned? Do you still use it?

I see. I was planning on using Antix or Bunsen Linux. I will check out Adelie Linux too. Thank you for the suggestion.

Though I will be maxing out the T42 (CPU, RAM, SSD), I am aware it is not going to be a smooth sailing after a cursory look at videos on YouTube.

Crossposted here to learn what fellow community members use in their org-mode configuration. :-)

Pardon me if I sounded dismissive. 1Blocker is good, and so is AdGuard.

I remember those being one of the first ones to do the job well, back when Apple launched content blockers. Wipr came much later, and I only recently switched to it (around late 2022).

Joplin’s storage model made me stop using it.

Managing plain text notes should not be this convoluted.

• Windows 95, 98, 2000, XP, 7 spanning a decade and a half.
• Ubuntu 10.04 going up to the release where Unity became the default DE (11.04, I think). Came back to 10.04, as it was an LTS release.
• Linux Mint Maya because of Cinnamon, and it was terrible.
• Fedora 16 to 25 or 26.
• Linux Mint 19

Been with Linux Mint ever since. It just works. LM19 was also around the time when I stepped into Apple’s walled garden with iOS and macOS.

On Safari for iOS and macOS, I prefer Wipr instead of 1Blocker.

It’s lighter, easier to use, cheaper, scores more on d3ward’s ad-block test (but that may fluctuate).

E: added specific browser.

I do not agree with @FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today’s take. LLMs as these are used today, at the very least, reduces the number of steps required to consume any previously documented information. So these are solving at least one problem, especially with today’s Internet where one has to navigate a cruft of irrelevant paragraphs and annoying pop ups to reach the actual nugget of information.

Having said that, since you have shared an anecdote, I would like to share a counter(?) anecdote.

Ever since our workplace allowed the use of LLM-based chatbots, I have never seen those actually help debug any undocumented error or non-traditional environments/configurations. It has always hallucinated incorrectly while I used it to debug such errors.

In fact, I am now so sceptical about the responses, that I just avoid these chatbots entirely, and debug errors using the “old school” way involving traditional search engines.

Similarly, while using it to learn new programming languages or technologies, I always got incorrect responses to indirect questions. I learn that it has incorrectly hallucinated only after verifying the response through implementation. This makes the entire purpose futile.

I do try out the latest launches and improvements as I know the responses will eventually become better. Most recently, I tried out GPT-4o when it got announced. But I still don’t find them useful for the mentioned purposes.

Hermen Hulst must not have heard of !patientgamers@sh.itjust.works

Thanks again! I already have shell scripts to take care of such characters for me, which operate on entire files. Having a function like this would help for certain regions of a file. :-)

However, it does bug me a bit that some vim motions do not work exactly as intended. Going in, I knew evil-mode would have some gaps. But I assumed those would be some esoteric operations, and not something that I use daily.

Thanks. This helped me highlight the characters. But it still doesn’t play well with vim motions on Emacs.

Here is a demonstration, and below are the keystrokes.

1. C-v to enable VISUAL-BLOCK mode.
2. 9j to select all 9 occurrences.
3. d to delete the selection.

The above vim-motion works on Neovim but not on Emacs with evil-mode.

If anyone wants to try out here is the text I am playing with:

hello ​ world
hello ​ world
hello ​ world
hello ​ world
hello ​ world
hello ​ world
hello ​ world
hello ​ world
hello ​ world
hello ​ world

That is a good idea! If all the alternatives fall short, this should be the best way forward.

I am fine with paying for the software as long as it provides the functionality.

It would be unfortunate if the only other option is sacrificing privacy.

Thankfully, some helpful comments have pointed out to software that are available to trial and seem to strike a balance between usability and privacy.