Real players know you us the coarsest mipmap level the whole time, so every texture is something like 4 pixels. And 320x200 and directmouse. It's the smooth movement, high fps and direct control that provides the sense of "being there". Not the graphical fidelity.
Is there a video somewhere (or easy download/install on linux) so I can see/play what this looks like
I think you've almost exactly described my Counter-Strike setup 25 years ago.
Friends at LAN parties complained how ugly it was and my rebuttal was usually: "I'm afraid it stays unless you can buy me a better video card." The fact that the CRT slowly drifted to a yellow tinge on everything didn't help the asethetics--especially on de_dust. The GPU at the time might have been a Riva 128 ZX.