====== Low Hardware Requirements of the Small Web ======

===== The Contrast =====

Loading a modern React web app requires downloading a JavaScript bundle, parsing and executing it, rendering a virtual DOM, reconciling it with the real DOM, and repeating on every state change. A modern Chromium browser uses ~2 GB of RAM in normal operation.

A [[protocols:gemini:start|Gemini]] capsule in [[protocols:smallweb:clients|Bombadillo]] requires: a terminal emulator, a network connection, and a TLS library. The entire browser is a few megabytes. **This runs on a machine from 2005.**

===== Why It Matters =====

  * NASA's Gemini Guidance Computer had 20 KB of memory
  * A laptop from 2008 that cannot run Chrome can run Bombadillo
  * Six million documents in Gopherspace, thousands of Gemini capsules — accessible on obsolete hardware
  * Lower energy to manufacture and run
  * Electronic waste: hardware that can't run modern browsers can still participate in the small web

===== The Access Question =====

Who gets to participate in an Internet that requires increasingly expensive, frequently-replaced devices? These protocols meet you where you are.

===== See Also =====

  * [[protocols:smallweb:clients|Clients]]
  * [[protocols:smallweb:solarpunk|Solarpunk and the Small Web]]
  * [[protocols:start|Return to protocols]]