Modern web browsers for your old computer

What are the specs of your notebook?

My notebook is a Thinkpad T14 Gen 1 with a 10th-gen CPU. I got it cheap a few years ago. It has been really good overall. I just haven’t updated the OS in years. Like, the last time I logged out or rebooted it was in 2023. So I need to do two or three Debian stable updates next time I’m in the mood for that sort of thing.

But logging out is a pain. It means I have to finish and close the hundreds of things I left open, then spend a few hours updating software and fixing anything the updates broke, and then re-open the things I want to keep open. It takes most of a day. So I only do it once every few years.

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Wow, that’s impressive!
That’s one of the many perks of using Linux.
On my main PC, I have Windows 11, and I use a VPN with split tunneling.
I used to have an annoying memory leak based on Windows split tunneling, and I had to reboot my main PC every 2 or 3 days or else my system would become unstable.
Strangely, a recent Windows update seems to have significantly decreased the memory leak.
Windows 10/11 (and perhaps other versions of Windows) have had that serious memory leak for years. :open_mouth:

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My old SunOS/Solaris workstation I had back in the late '90s was running 24/7 for 2yrs and I only powered down when we were moving from one building to another. Only later did I find out I could’ve just hibernated it.

Ran another 3yrs uninterrupted until I split.

Every winsucks machine I ever had, I had to reboot at least weekly, the worst almost daily.

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Assuming it has an i5-10310U CPU then its not bad compared to the computer i sold.
That said i would also not want to spend a day rebooting any computer. I spent a couple days preparing the old computer for sale and much of it was waiting, that was enough for me.

So, you have never lost power for 3 years?
Crazy good if so.

I have very good power delivery here but still have quick outage when a car slams a pole or the storms are so heavy with lightning that it causes the breakers to trip at PPL.
Lost if for like 8 min couple weeks back due to to 60+ mph winds.
Anyway, congrats on that long of uptime.

No UPS?

What I’d love is a flywheel system at the house level…

A Thinkpad T14 is a laptop with a battery, so it can handle hours of power loss while operating and days or weeks while suspended without a full shutdown.

My own Thinkpad running Linux isn’t nearly as stable as TK’s. I even got to see the new kernel panic screen with the QR code and the background color of the classic Windows BSOD.

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Oh, there’s only one reboot involved. Maybe one per major OS update if I want to be more careful, but it’s optional. I’ve done as many as 3 updates in a row without a reboot, and had no problems. Debian releases a new stable version every 2 years, which in practice means I should try to update and reboot every couple years, but I tend to procrastinate long enough that I have to update it 2 or 3 times in a row. :innocent:

Power outages are indeed quite rare here, and I think it has been several years since the last one. But that’s moot, because this was a notebook. It has a battery.

Checking my router, plugged into a wall… it currently reports 1004 days of uptime. So I guess I last rebooted it on 2023-06-22 when I … checks notes … moved the server rack to a different room. It doesn’t have a battery power supply, so I had to turn it off to move it.

Should probably update the OS on that one too. I’ve just been dragging my feet because, when I set it up, Debian’s install image didn’t have one of the non-free drivers I needed, so I begrudgingly installed Ubuntu… and I’ve kinda regretted it ever since. Probably should have done the extra steps to get the driver manually, instead of using an OS I didn’t really want.

I mostly run stuff in LXC containers, one container per service, so things are isolated from each other and can be updated whenever I feel like it without interrupting anything else. And if I need to upgrade the underlying hardware, I can migrate the guest to a different host and keep it running during the original host’s maintenance.

But desktop systems are more of a hassle to update. Because I have hundreds of windows open and have to clean up that mess before I can log out. Gotta set aside a day for it.

OTOH, since I have a few, this means I usually have the latest release on one box, the previous release on another, the next-previous on another, and maybe even an older one. So I have lots of versions to use for testing. This makes it a lot easier to support old versions.

Sometimes not all features work on an old version, but most features still work. So I enable support at least for the things it can do.

Would be nice if the Discourse devs followed a similar philosophy, since many of the things which don’t work aren’t really important. Or at least just show a warning that some things might not work. But instead, if even a single feature requires a new version, they reject the browser entirely and return an error page. It’s all-or-nothing, which bothers me because an old browser will typically be like 98% compatible, and that’s usually enough. Especially when a particular forum may not even have the other 2% enabled… it’s silly to block browsers just because they don’t support a feature the site isn’t using.

I hope someday to buy a whole house backup battery system for cheap. A Tesla powerwall equivalent be more than adequate. I can also add some solar.

I figured this, installing Win 11 on the old computer only took an hour or so but everything else i did with it took the extra time, several full rewrites on the HDDs, finding the software to flash the SSDs, one was too old so added some wear with full rewrites on it, had a glitch where it installed dual boot even though there was only one boot drive so had to reinstall windows 11 again, and a few other small issues that came along. Overall it did take about 2 days though i was not staring at the screen the whole time but was slotting it in while doing regular stuff.

Had to reboot Win 11 last night, it installed some updates that required reboot. I also tend to just hibernate it because i don’t want to recreate things, Firefox has multiple profiles and needs to be redone in order, not a long task but an annoying one.

I actually have the same one, also obtained second-hand recently in almost perfect condition for under $200. Also running Debian Stable. I mainly use it for traveling. Best keyboard ever in a laptop, puts my main 15" laptop’s keyboard to shame. But unfortunately I had to get it as a replacement for a T490 that I also picked up cheap in perfect shape, which only lasted about a year before the motherboard went bad just out of the blue.

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I have a document scanner, and it needed a firmware update. The software for it only works in Windows. So I have a virtual machine with Windows, just for this one purpose. In Linux, the firmware update would be a simple “download this file, then run dfu-util with a couple parameters” and the entire process would be done in about 2 or 3 minutes. But in Windows… it took a large chunk of a day and required seven reboots, just to update the scanner software before it could even start on the firmware update. I’m glad it was a virtual machine so I didn’t have to do real reboots.

It’s wild that you have to reboot Windows even just to update an application. Particularly when the app needs several updates and each one requires a reboot. Also weird that it’s necessary to download gigabytes worth worth of a proprietary application and use even more gigabytes of disk space, just to install a firmware file which is like a megabyte.

I’m just a little spoiled by only needing reboots for kernel updates. Every other part of the system can be updated without shutting down. Just restart the specific component which got updated. Or in some cases, not even that. Like, I’m getting into the weeds here, but my window manager is written in Lisp… so instead of logging out and back in for updates and such, I can just live patch it on the fly and modify the code while it’s running. Super handy for a tinkerer like me.

Such different worlds.

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Egads. In my case i have never had that many reboots outside of a fresh windows install, that device of yours is an outlier. That said i do find the reboots after system updates annoying, surprisingly often i have done a reboot a day to two before for unrelated reasons after no reboots for a month or so then it wants a update reboot…

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Supposedly that’s one of the concrete improvements that they’re planning to implement for Win 11. It sounds like there has been enough grumbling from the Windows user community to finally make Microsoft take notice:

Reducing disruption from Windows Updates: Receiving updates should be predictable and easy to plan around, so we’re giving you more control. This includes the ability to skip updates during device setup to get to the desktop faster, restart or shut down without installing updates and pause updates for longer when needed, all while reducing update noise with fewer automatic restarts and notifications.

Very nice, i have tried to change registry settings many times so it would not reboot on its own but it never works properly in Win 11. I hate when i lose work because i stepped away from the computer on a night shift and it rebooted itself, or the computer boots itself in the middle of the night when i’m on days to do updates wasting the electricity of running idle all night for no reason.

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I use StopUpdates10.

Despite its name, it works for more than just Windows 10.
One can choose “Hard Block” or “Soft Block.”
Both work, but Hard Block sometimes makes it so that one cannot easily update Windows again, so I use Soft Block.
With StopUpdates10, my PCs update when I want them to–not when MicroSoft wants them to. :slightly_smiling_face:

Very interesting, i had not heard of this software before.
I don’t mind updates, i just don’t want reboots that i can’t control. If i know it needs rebooting then i can do it when i have downtime without losing any work.

Does this does prevent new updates or how does it handle them?

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Yes.
One can enable or disable updates.
I only enable updates when it’s convenient for me to reboot my system because most Windows updates require rebooting.
Once my PC is completely updated, I disable updates again. :upside_down_face:

Actually most updates do not require reboot, tends to be one or twice a month that they do. If you look at the update history, dozens upon dozens of updates have happened between reboots.