The Bort thread 🔦

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That’s a “Fitaly” layout I made. It’s designed for use with one finger (i.e. a stylus). I typed 30+ wpm on that back when I was using it regularly.

It can handle those, with varying results…

• Home Depot: Loads, but isn’t really usable.
• Slate: Works
• Vox: Works
• phpBB: Works
• Reddit: New.reddit only shows the top post of each thread, since the rest are loaded via javascript. Old.reddit works pretty well.

Page elements are likely to be rearranged compared to a mainstream browser, like on reddit it displays the sidebar above the main content instead of to the side, but it works pretty well for reading articles and threads and stuff. Given that it was originally intended for very small screens, it often tries to serialize things and maximize the width of each, instead of putting them side by side.

When a site has bad CSS that impacts viewing, I click the button to disable their CSS and replace it with my own… which makes almost any site suddenly quite readable, with a pretty consistent appearance. And if I want to look up something medical on wikipedia, I often click the “disable images” button first so I don’t have to see things I would want to unsee.

Well done!

How so?

The comment pages too?

I can see that, in the old days we were about content and not images or fancy style. And dial up internet. I spent many years using my trusty 14.4 modem. 56K was never reliable around here.
Its actually interesting (sarcasm) to see the same pages eating more ram today, when i got this computer i was on 8GB with virtual memory turned off, did great for years but Firefox started bashing off it, so had to turn on virtual memory (by then Windows was SSD aware), which worked for quite a while, but then had to upgrade to 16GB RAM which i’m now bouncing off of (16GB plus virtual). New computer has 32GB of RAM. I expect that will need upgrading in its lifetime to 64GB (thus i got two sticks of 16GB to leave 2 slots open).

We may have majorly slowed down Wirth’s Law but its still kicking us in the rear end.

What sites do you find do not work?
It would be interesting to see some screen shots of those.

I guess i am used to seeing the “crazy”.

is it a Sharp Zaurus?

I used it on a Compaq iPAQ H3600, then later on a Sharp Zaurus SL-5500. The Zaurus was much nicer.

I still have them in a box somewhere, but haven’t tried to boot one in ages. Neither one was particularly useful overall, due to the platform and software ecosystem not being very mature yet. I had a great time helping improve that for a while, but then the entire ecosystem got destroyed before it had a chance to really get past its childhood, because of two main factors:

• Trolltech. They forked the ecosystem and user base, which prevented either fork from being able to succeed. The original ecosystem used X11 and had a ton of great features… but Trolltech forked to use their own proprietary interface called Qtopia, which looked prettier and was a bit easier to learn, but lacked the technical capabilities or compatibility to allow any existing software to run on it. It was entirely QT-based, Trolltech’s own widget library, which locked out every other solution in order to gain a commercial advantage.

• Google. The introduction of Android, backed by one of the world’s most influential companies, basically destroyed every other mobile device platform. It still used a Linux kernel, but was essentially a whole new operating system which wasn’t compatible with any previous software. And instead of high-quality curated open-source software repositories, it had a commercial app store full of low-quality low-effort imitations of “real” programs. That didn’t stop it though, due to the overwhelming corporate powers behind it.

I used the X11 part of the ecosystem, of course. It had features that even modern phones still don’t do well (or at all). And it was a powerful, open, collaborative system which was extremely friendly to people who wanted to customize things at a deep level or even build their own stuff. But that open, Debian-like platform wasn’t very profitable for corporations, so companies quickly abandoned it in favor of platforms that gave them greater control.

In 2013, Canonical announced a plan to finally make a phone with that “desktop Linux, but on a phone” type of platform the old iPAQ had. This was something a lot of people had been wanting, so it quickly became the most-successful crowdfunding project in history, in terms of dollars pledged.

However, instead of delivering that, Canonical did precisely the opposite… and the project failed. They ignored all the campaign promises and build yet another custom proprietary platform which wasn’t compatible with any of the software people wanted to run, and was designed to give partner corporations more control over their users / customers.

So the best PDA I’ve ever had was even older, a Palm m500. It may have been proprietary, but it had a rich software ecosystem full of genuinely useful and robust programs, it fit into a wallet, and it could run for like a month per charge.

As much as I’d love a Linux phone which fills the gaping hole left by the death of the iPAQ / Zaurus ecosystem, I’ve pretty much given up on it ever happening. Several projects tried, and all have failed pretty hard, mostly for corporate reasons. Plus, I kind of hate trying to enter any meaningful amount of data into a phone. That 30-ish wpm I mentioned earlier is nothing compared to the ease of typing on a proper keyboard attached to a large screen.

So between the phone’s inherent limitations and the abhorrent software ecosystem, I pretty much only use my phone for things it’s uniquely suited for. Mostly just reading books / manga, because it’s actually pretty great as a book reader… but also sometimes calls, short texts, humming/recording rough song ideas, grocery list, and occasionally a map or a potato camera or a screen to show pictures to other people on the go. It sits unused virtually all day every day, while I use a desktop computer instead, and I wouldn’t have one at all if I didn’t need to make calls sometimes. It’s just a shame that the phone ecosystem prevents it from being more useful, because the hardware itself is pretty fantastic. It’s just held back by crappy software.

have you tried the PinePhone? it even comes with a clamshell keyboard though it’s not very nice, at least for my fingers used to a very light mechanical

I’ve checked on the project occasionally, but last time I looked, it was crashy and could only run for like 45 minutes per charge. I love what they’re doing, but it seemed like it still had a long way to go before it was anything more than a development kit.

I’ve daily driven mine for some time, under Mobian it’s not crashy, just… slow. The Pro version could take care of that issue.

PSA: Never trust userbenchmark. They are (very) heavily biased towards intel/nvidia, to the point of (silently) completely changing their rating metric or test suites whenever AMD is ahead to put them back behind intel/nvidia, and they write the weirdest ass texts explaining how AMD is hugely worse despite being faster and more energy effcient occasionally - Ryzen 6000 notebook chips have some of those crazy texts.

They basically are so heavily biased even the r/intel subreddit banned them as a source.

I personally love the computerbase GPU/CPU hierarchy tests (sadly german, but the numbers/diagrams are understandable):

• GPU: Grafikkarten-Rangliste 2023: GPUs im Vergleich - ComputerBase
• CPU gaming use: CPU-Benchmark: Prozessor-Vergleich - ComputerBase
• CPU workstation use: CPU-Benchmark: Prozessor-Vergleich - ComputerBase

Tomshardware also has big rankings - they include a lot more (older) hardware than computerbase, but computerbase retests the whole lineup with pretty much every new driver so it usually is more recent.

• GPU: GPU Benchmarks Hierarchy 2024 - Graphics Card Rankings | Tom's Hardware
• CPU: CPU Benchmarks and Hierarchy 2024: CPU Rankings | Tom's Hardware

If you prefer test videos, Gamersnexus and Hardwareunboxed are imo the best.
But for just a quick “oh yes, CPU A is faster than CPU B”, tomshardware list + ctrl-f is king imo.

Hmm…
I didn’t know that about userbenchmark.

Is the following site somewhat trustworthy?
(I’ve been using it for a while now.)

This is a good site but they are a bit screwy with things at the moment, usually new generation chips are clear improvements over their predecessor so their way of creating tiers worked great. In fact my current 4770K computer was almost exactly what they suggested at the time (minus the graphics card) for the Excellent tier (iirc) which i bought independently of the site (found out about it around the same time as i was already buying).

So their current Outstanding tier in Canada is a 13600K(F), i got 12700K for about $100 less and its about the same performance because the generational improvement is so small its not worth the extra cost.

By the way, I think you (Bort) first recommended logicalincrements to me.
Thanks for that!
The site isn’t perfect (no site is), but it seems to have pretty good advice.

That makes sense.

I was going to get the 13600K based on their recommendation until an enthusiast i know explained the current situation to me.

BTW i am still 2 minutes away from being able to like your post.

So is Bort back (on BLF) for good, or do you think you might not feel so great in the near future?

Bort comes and goes, yesterday’s and today’s posts are simple stuff.

Bort ran out of likes again.
Any chance we could mine Neptune or a few passing Asteroids and refill our supply of likes more quickly?

@sb56637

Sure, an asteroid just hit your account.

I remember months ago when TARTARA was complaining about running out of “thanks.”
I never thought that I’d run out (not that I’m asking for more “thanks.”)

I remember that too. That may have been in the Bort thread.
Now officially crowned (by Bort) as the most useful thread in the universe (and Beverly Hills)