Start me up wrote on Today, 03:48:

Здравствуйте ATauenis,
as you probably know, most people who use old browsers are using old operating systems. Using an old browser is - in most cases - no benefit compared to using a newer version. We just use it, because the new versions don't run on old operating systems. So your main audience are people using old operating systems.

Yes, WebOne is intended to provide Internet access via old browsers from old operating systems and, probably, old hardware.

Most of people who want this, are also using a some other modern PC and a local network router (WiFi or wired, not matter, in most cases that device contains both function). So it is not a problem to connect an old PC and an modern PC to same network, and map Internet traffic from old PC to modern PC. And even if there are no modern PC or if it is more nice to have it turned off when using old PC, WebOne can run on $35 microcomputers like Raspberry Pi (a better choice) or even Android smartphone (an used 2-3 years old phone may cost $0 in some cases, but Android is a bit difficult OS than plain Linux).

I can't imagine any environment where there is only old PC and nothing newer presents nearby.

LSS10999 wrote on Today, 04:53:

Don't know if self-contained releases can be made work with Win7/2008 R2, however.

They are starting on Win7, but the main process is eating 99% of system RAM and crashes due to out-of-memory error in few minutes. This is a bug of .NET 7 and up. Microsoft knows this since .NET 7 beta test, but they're don't want to fix.

LSS10999 wrote on Today, 04:53:

In fact, even .NET 6.0 normally required some ESU stuffs to work properly with Win7/2008 R2

Hmm, I have tested .NET6-based WebOne (v0.12 and up) on Win7 since start of development, and found no problems on ESU-less systems. The required updates are released near ~2015, and other are released few years before 2020 (updates need to start the app are even included in 2013 ISO image of Windows 7 SP1, which I also used some time, but it lacks modern TLS support).

Also I have used Visual Studio 2019 with some tweak to support .NET6 SDK, and experienced no problems at all (until some last its update, so frozen updates on 6.0.133). Sadly, but the tweak does not work with .NET8 SDK, and I cannot continue use VS 2019 (even however SDK CLI is working, its MSBuild v17 is not supported by VS 2019, and it still using own MSBuild v16, which is banned by SDK code, so the tweak works only on a half).

Theoretically it is possible to continue publish NET6-based releases, compatible with Win7, as before, but this will need a bit difficulty build scripts. As the procedure looks as change "webone.csproj", then build via NET6 SDK, then change it back to original state.

LSS10999 wrote on Today, 10:26:

I don't think it's easy to target older OSes directly so as to, like you said, be able to run WebOne on the same machine that would be browsing the web with it.

Also modern HTTPS processing, image files converting, takes a lot of CPU and RAM resources. It is very minor on modern multicore systems starting from Sockets 775/AM3+, but enough fat on older. Even Pi 1B requires a CPU overclock to get a near-reasonable performance.