A year or two ago, I dug out an old Compaq Presario 4508 with the task to get Ethernet working on it. After multiple failed attempts, I was successful. But my efforts were worthless, because I couldn’t find a decent browser for it.

Last week, I dug out the old Compaq Presario 4508 again to install Linux on it. I booted up the Slackware CD, and found that none of the kernels on the CD would work on the Presario. Rather than spending time debugging error messages or creating a custom kernel, I moved onto FreeBSD, which succesfully installed the first time around. Because of the very limited RAM that the Presario had, running xorg wasn’t, and still isn’t, an option. So I peacefully went to work trying to install Python and a terminal web browser.

Yesterday, when I successfully installed the web browser, the issue hit me. I sacrificed a somewhat ancient operating system with a working GUI for a more modern, stable, and secure operating system without a graphical user interface. Did I make the right choice? Most software that I care about is available or can be easily compiled on FreeBSD, but I cannot use anything that requires a GUI. With Windows 95, I had a graphical user interface, but a limited set of modern applications that still can be run on Windows 95.

So what choice would you make? Would you go with the old OS with a GUI or the modern, stable, secure, and graphics free OS?

Not counting this footnote, the blog post is exactly 248 words long.