A return to the Small Web.

[BB_ROOK]

Back when I started going online back in the mid-90s, I remember going places what you guys call "The Small Web".

Geocities, webcrawler, America Online, and good ol'BBS and my favorite IRC channels on DALNET and how many shoutcast stations did I listen to during the wee hours of the night.

I remember the intimacy of chatting DCC. I lived on there, loved and even suffered great sorrow at some point.

Years went by and the rise of social media and influencers really put a dent in my "joie de vivre". Doomscrolling, flows of information giving me fits, and the rabbit holes that lead you to hours upon hours of people copying each other's neurosis.

A return to basics, was warranted and...well here I am. Not only returning to a simpler digital life, but doing it in style.

Now, the style? It has refined as well. Consider, the use of singleboard computers, variants upon variants of Linux Distros.

Right now? I am looking just how far I can take this, can I do this off an 8th gen kindle, with just the right localized webapps? Or just have a simple device, with just the basics for my daily digital consumption?

Well, I did manage to do a few things and the results, I might share here and there.

Now, tell me, what is the most basic hardware and software combo you use?

[littlelum]

Personally, I don't have any "basic" hardware or software. I use a laptop with Windows 10 and enough power to emulate Wii games. My phone is a Google Pixel 6A. Neither are "cutting edge" but neither are "basic". I personally don't have a reason to go to older/simpler hardware.

Now for gaming, however, I have some old consoles hooked up to a CRT. (Although by modern standards, that's much less basic than simply emulating the consoles).

[pepper]

My daily use hardware and software is admittedly on the larger/ more powerful side of things: I use a beefy gaming PC built last year and a pretty powerful laptop, the PC is running Windows 10 (for now - switching it to Mint is going to be a project) and the laptop is running Ubuntu. But I dig your desire to keep things simple!

You might be interested in the 250kb club or esoteric web protocols like gemini and nightfall.city (I have a little homestead on the shore of the latter).

I'm getting into radio communication just a little and recently ordered a LoRa radio, hoping to learn a bit about simple meshnet communication with it and set up a meshtastic node :3

[CosmicRot]

Hi and welcome!
Honestly, I don't really use low-tech anything forreal 😭 I miss and yearn for my old slide out keyboard phone, and my ipod.. I still have 3 out of 4 ipods I've owned in my life! but I just recently got an mp3 player so I can stop using my phone and pandora for music when I'm out and about. The only non-basic thing it has is bluetooth as my over the ear headphones are bluetooth only [a lot cheaper these days to get *comfortable* blue tooth only, than wired ones which stinks but such is life and maybe I'll be able to use the ipod with bluetooth to connect to my car which will be nice and remind me of the days of using a cassette player attachment to do that kind of thing]

I spend most of my time at home due to chronic pain so video games and art require a pretty decent computer, so likely the most basic thing I really own is my old DS and 3DS at this point. Don't really have a choice to go back to an older phone because of all the stuff I need it for, but maybe one day I can get a flip phone or something as my primary. I'll probably always have the high tech computers for the sake of game dev, art, editing, streaming, and things of that nature :p but I yearn for a CD player and slide and flip phones...

[BB_ROOK]

@pepper the 250kb club is fascinating! Than you for the link! Definitely might find something useful in this!

@littlelum I love a good emulator. Sometimes it’s not the hardware we need but the echo of a childhood memory!

@Cosmicrot I yearn for a phone with a physical keyboard too.  I had a feature phone that looked like a budget blackberry. Samsung I believe. Wish I still had it.

[soff moff]

As to daily driving... I've got 7th gen iPod classic I've modded a good bit. Also been playing through the sonic series on real hardware, on my family's old CRT TV, though I used a steamdeck for the game gear titles. The Sega Nomad is actually a real fun way to play Sonic 3D Blast, and it's nice having Chao Adventure on my VMU.

Less daily driving stuff, I do like to make old computers run things they were never made for. At one point had a Macintosh Classic II run NetBSD, and connect to the internet through a virtual modem on a Pi Zero W. Also controlled that machine through a serial terminal running on an Apple IIe. Sadly not at the same time, discovered one of the serial ports on the Classic II isn't working quite right and haven't gotten around to fixing it.

Also with old Macs, got Gentoo running on a Macintosh SE/30 and Macintosh IIci, the IIci being more functional with an actual ethernet card. Only really possible with another system cross compiling everything for it, which was done by a Power Macintosh G5 also running Gentoo.

Really need to get those machines running again.