K-Meleon

I'm always on the lookout for programs that run well on my old hardware.  My latest good find is the K-Meleon web browser, a Mozilla off-shoot.  Here's a snippet from the homepage:

K-Meleon - The Browser You Control

K-Meleon is an extremely fast, customizable, lightweight web browser based on the Gecko layout engine developed by Mozilla which is also used by Firefox. K-Meleon is Free, Open Source software released under the GNU General Public License and is designed specifically for Microsoft Windows (Win32) operating systems




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I have the browser running on my old Compaq laptop with a Pentium III and a gig of memory for Windows XP.  It loads as quiickly as Opera, and it runs quite a bit faster than Firefox.  The browser is fully compliant with modern standards, and the interface is familiar to anyone using any of the other currently popular browsers.  K-Meleon delivers particularly impressive performance in running youtube videos, showing no degradation of the video or audio streams.

Update:
I recently refurbished a Dell Inspiron 6400 with the dual core processor and 2 gigs of RAM.  It is fast enough to run the Chrome browser well, but is seemed worthwhile to try K-Meleon too.  I don't see much difference between the two in this case..  With both the Dell and the old Compaq, I am running the currently next-to-last version (75.) with Win XP on the Compaq and Windows Vista on the Dell.

Budget Networking

I downloaded the Apache web server and installed it on the $5 computer seen in the back row of the above picture.  I copied all of my photography web site files into Apache's htdocs folder and started the program as a service under Windows 2000.  Everything worked perfectly with no changes to the Apache configuration file.  I opened port 80 in my router, making the web site visible from anywhere on the web.  

The blue screen over on the left is my Dell Pecision 690; it is running Handylinux in a virtual machine under Windows XP.  Opening port 22 on my router lets me access Handylinux remotely through the secure shell program.  To test that arrangement I took the Compaq laptop on the right down to the Old Town Plaza where there is a free city internet connection.  I fired up Tiny Core Linux, opened a terminal window and typed in "ssh mike@(my router ip address) -Y" to establish the connection.  

That "-Y" at the end of the ssh command allowed me to run virtually any program on Handylinux in a window on the laptop, including the graphics.  In fact, it is even possible to run programs that cannot normally be run on the Compaq with its old Pentium III cpu because the heavy lifting is being done by Handylinux on the Dell desktop and the laptop just has to handle the display.  So, I can have Firefox, Chromium and any number of other gui heavyweights operating on the the old laptop screen.

I was particularly pleased to get the ssh connection going because I had previously been unsuccessful in doing so.  I had been able to easily make standard terminal connections with quite a few Linux and Windows systems, but I just couldn't get the X11 graphics enabled.  I finally hit on the idea of trying a connection to Handylinux, and that did the trick, along with the use of the "-Y" option in the ssh command line.  It seems that the out-of-the-box ssh configuration in Handylinux is up to the task while none of the others were.  So, my next task is to compare the Handylinux configuration file to some of the others.

The $5+ Computer

As related in a previous post, my efforts to salvage a 15-year-old laptop computer purchased for $5 at a thrift store were successful.  The Windows 2000 operating system is still quite functional, though a little slow for web browsing.  Still, the project has provided me with some real satisfaction, perhaps similar to that which one might get from putting an antique car back on the road.  For everyday practical use, however, both the jalopy and the computer need some souping up.

The Dell does Linux with a little help.

Another trip to the thrift store turned up a $3 optical mouse with a PS2 connector that frees up the one available USB port.  On ebay I found a floppy drive for 3.5-inch disks for $10 that connects to the computer via the parallel port and provides a way to boot up another operating system, getting around the fact that the old Dell doesn't know how to boot from the USB port.  I burned a copy of  the PLOP boot manager onto a floppy and am able to use that to coax the computer into booting to a linux live system contained on a usb flash drive.

Tiny Core Linux running inside a vbox virtual machine on my desktop

There are several linux live systems available which are compatible with the storage and memory capabilities of old computers.  SliTaz, Porteus and Puppy Linux all run well in small amounts of Random Access Memory (RAM).  However, the smallest -- and in many ways the best, I think -- is Tiny Core Linux which only occupies 10MB of space on a usb stick and unpacks into as little as 48MB of RAM.  The base system loads entirely into memory and is blazingly fast as a result.  The distribution is equipped with a spare, but functional FLWM GUI desktop and the basic linux utilities you need to get started, including ethernet capability.  A huge software repository is available on line and applications or extensions can be downloaded and installed with just a couple mouse clicks.  Saving settings, files and installed extensions, a feature referred to as persistence, is particularly trouble-free in Tiny Core provided you use the Core2usb installer which can be downloaded from the site.

Links 2.8 was tested first in the virtual machine before installing on the live usb system.

Configuring a basic, fully functional Tiny Core system can be accomplished by anyone with only the slightest familiarity with open source software.  Tailoring the system to meet your own requirements will take a little more effort and experience, and likely several fresh starts.  The choice of a web browser, for instance,  is crucial as it tends to occupy a relatively large amount of memory space.  Firefox runs just fine on my slightly newer Compac laptop with a gig of RAM, but the mozilla is kind of a clunky choice for the Dell with just 256MB.  My own choice for a small-footprint browser is Links 2.8, a text-based web viewer with pretty good graphics capabilities.  Links tends to iron out complicated web site designs and present them in single columns; and you aren't going to be viewing any youtube videos of dancing cats with it.  However, most sites will load in a fraction of a second, and it really doesn't take very long to get used to the trade-off.  Links also doesn't set any cookies and will ignore efforts to track you by advertisers.  In fact, I think one is losing very little in the way of useful information by using Links at the great majority of web sites.

$ $ $

My impression is that fully half of what is presented on line is either graphic frills or attempts to manipulate you into buying stuff.  The corollary to that is that half of the money you are spending on hardware and software is buying the privilege of being tracked and deceived.  That said, I should probably point out that I don't do social media of any kind, and I almost never feel the need to click on video links.  So, your mileage may vary from mine.