# OCC - IRC, ICQ and Nostalgia

Yesterday I was able to chat a bit with Matto [0] on ICQ, and also
hopped onto the #oldcomputerchallenge IRC channel on libera.chat,
also via Pidgin [1].

Also a nod to linuxquestions.org, which looks and works as it always
has in my old Iceweasel browser, including allowing old TLS. I
really like forums in that style, we've lost so much with the
prevalence of walled gardens, unsearchable or inaccessible forums,
and algorithmically generated social media.

Someone on IRC asked if nostalgia was a factor in using old Linux -
I think partly, but as I mentioned previously [2], for me the
simplicity is a major draw. At least with Debian, the stable release
has always been a great desktop, and the older versions allow more
freedom as far as tinkering and making things work. And while I
can't use a 2009-era Linux as a daily driver, I can use it as a
"smallnet workstation". Gopher and IRC (and NNTP, although I'm not
using it) is builtin, and with a few tweaks I'm able to access
modern pubnixes via SSH, and most websites that don't rely on
javascript.

For me the biggest thing missing right now is access to my Posteo
email. Their web interface relies on javascript, and I would need to
compile IMAP and SMTP clients to get the modern TLS support
needed. I'm thinking I might be able to do that with offlineimap and
msmtp, and then use those with the 2009-era mail clients.

[0]: gopher://box.matto.nl
[1]: gopher://sdf.org/I/users/thinknix/images/occ-debian-lenny-gnome2-desktop.png
[2]: gopher://sdf.org/0/users/thinknix/glog/simplicity-debian-lenny.md