Does anyone miss the "old internet" all text?

[SpyderEdgeForever]

I remember the original internet with bulletin boards and where it was all text, such as on a 486 computer. You could still send and receive pictures, they were just special attachments. I feel too overloaded with websites that automatically load dozens of different images and videos. I want the old internet back. Is there any way, computer people here, that I can somehow tinker with my Windows to "downgrade" it to an all-text display, and only have pictures as special attachments?

[chuckd]

Some sites allow you to load only the HTML version of a page for people with low bandwidth so it is a more plain jane page.

[SpyderEdgeForever]

That is what I want to do, but with all my pages. Basically, I want it to look like the Spyderco Forum main menu, where there are only text lines and no autoloaded graphics and videos.

[Monocrom]

Don't miss it one bit.

Thanks to youtube, I can watch old movies that haven't been available for decades. In the old days, I'd go down to BlockBuster and check out the shelves for old movies. It was often pot-luck what was available. The new method is much better.

[IG-88]

Nope bro! I'm happy the days of the analogue modem are gone! BBS was big in the 80's and 20 minutes to download a movie clip of 4 MB is no longer practicle in this day and age :)

Mmmm, I like nice graphics instead of monochrome and command prompts :)

[SpyderEdgeForever]

Nope bro! I'm happy the days of the analogue modem are gone! BBS was big in the 80's and 20 minutes to download a movie clip of 4 MB is no longer practicle in this day and age :)

Mmmm, I like nice graphics instead of monochrome and command prompts :)

Well that is very true :) I have to agree! It seems that sometimes my connection becomes slow when I open a news page and they have auto-loading videos and stuff.

[Water Bug]

Well that is very true :) I have to agree! It seems that sometimes my connection becomes slow when I open a news page and they have auto-loading videos and stuff.

So, is it more that you don't like the advertisement and crap that shows up on your main page, your E-mail site, or the pages you may surf to that you don't like? If so, seems some computer programs allow you to block that stuff out, thus preventing the slowing down of what you're trying to do.

If you mean you'd rather all those images of :spyder:s that members here post on their threads don't show up on your screen, I'm not sure what you'd have to do.

In some cases, to "downgrade" what you currently have means you're incompatible with what's new, thus you end up with nothing at all. An example is my current laptop... I bought it in 2008, and the upgrades for it stopped LONG ago, thus I'm finding that some things that have adapted newer programming either won't work or work as well on it... this isn't a big deal, yet, but I bet I'll be needing a new laptop or desktop sometime down the line. I can't get a virus scan system that'll work with it operating system since it's considered obsolete... last such available virus program was five months ago... and, yes, it is a MacBook and, yes, Macs can get infected!

[phillipsted]

The only thing I miss from that era is the ASCII Art:

[Clip]

No.

[Evil D]

Not a chance.

My internet life goes back to the mid 90s when there was no Google (actually I don't quite remember if their search engine was around or not) but I remember frequenting a website called 37.com because it had 37 search engines, and to find something you often had to use all of them. Communication is just much easier and smoother now, even if it does mean you sometimes have to deal with jackasses.

[Cliff Stamp]

Use Lynx which is a text based web browser and one of the oldest if not the oldest currently in use and in active development.

[Donut]

I was reading on Slashdot about a company developing a text web browser for android, for the purpose of useability during a disaster, when the cell phone networks have unusually high traffic.

I'm interested and will get it when it is available.

Story here:

http://mobile-beta.slashdot.org/story/1 ... mergencies" target="_blank

*edit* Oh, it uses SMS messaging, which seems kind of odd.

[Divo]

How do I disable images in my web browser?

here is an example of what you can do in certain browsers >>
https://kb.iu.edu/d/acpv" target="_blank

But have in mind that these days images contain vital information for your browsing experience.

You also can first start with free adblock plugin. It doesnt disable all pics but at least the most annoying ads.
https://adblockplus.org/" target="_blank

(sometimes you need to disable the plugin to beable to watch youtube movies via webpages, etc.
So when experiencing strange problems you temporary disable it, simply by clicking the icon on the bottom of the page)

[Sequimite]

When I refer to listserves I used to belong to I'm not sure if anyone knows what I'm talking about. Don't miss the old net per se.

[The Deacon]

I don't miss it, because I never really experienced it. Although I've been using PC's since the mid 80's, my first internet access was in 1998, and virtually all of that was graphical.

[shunsui]

I liked the old newsgroups. Didn't have to log into 20 different forums to post.
A lot of ISP's dropped the feeds and web forums started picking up all the old users.
Oh yeah and Google made it hard to google newsgroups.

[coolthingy300]

I got Manjaro Linux with Lynx as my terminal browser. So If I wanted an all text browser experience every now and then. I can.

But I use Palemoon and Seamonkey for normal use.

[SpyderEdgeForever]

How difficult is Linux for the average modern computer user to master compared to Windows?

[Donut]

How difficult is Linux for the average modern computer user to master compared to Windows?

It depends on which flavor you pick.

Some are much easier than others. I "like" Slackware, but it has a steep learning curve. I've seen some distributions that install and run a lot like Windows, and you can scratch at the stuff underneath as you feel comfortable. I think Redhat has a pretty user friendly installer and "package system".

Now, master... depending on what you mean by that, any flavor will be tough if you're planning on rewriting parts of it. The open source license will allow you to rewrite parts of windows or the core operating system if you wanted to. That's something you're likely to never be able to do on windows.