I don't know that my (handed-down) Macbook Air from 2011 qualifies as a retro computer (most likely not for another 10 years). But I replaced the battery, and upgraded the hard drive, and with this teenaged laptop (it's 15 years old now) running Debian Linux I can do:
- Game programming (2D) in #godot
- Graphics editing (GIMP)
- Run #waterfox and browse most of the internet, explicitly excluding JS-heavy garbage like Instagram
- Do Python programming with Sublime Text
- Compile open-source software
- Play Zero AD (RTS game) with low graphics settings
- Play movies off my external DVD drive
- Follow up on my favorite blogs/sites with an RSS reader (liferea)
- Run BOINC, a distributed computing project
- Word processing with LibreOffice, and Scrivener (via Crossover)
- Make chiptune music with Furnace
- Video calls with Jitsi
- Emails with Claws Mail
- Sync files between computers with Syncthing
Since I don't use VSCode, LLMs, nor play any AAA games, spend time on CPU-heavy websites, or use Google Chrome, the relatively "meager" 4 GB of RAM is not being gouged by expensive applications, and most of the time, while running Debian, I don't hit max memory usage.
To keep my cpu usage down when browsing the web, I run an adblocker, NoScript (to automatically deactivate Javascript by default) and an image blocker extension to save on bandwidth. Unfortunately, running with a JS blocker and image blocker often gets me flagged as a bot.
The only technical/hardware issue is the wifi adapter. It is slow on 5ghz networks. I get faster network speeds tethering my laptop to my phone or another computer, via bluetooth, than I do via the laptop's wifi.
Let's see how long this lil thing can last!