Find me on
Sites of Interest
Site License
The content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license, although certain works referenced herein may be separately licensed. Desktop screenshots are not licensed as they contain images that I did not create.
Attribution / Crediting:
You must attribute the content you have used by providing a link back to the specific content page on this site.
Aging computers shouldn't go to waste
How many of you out there hate to see aging computers go to waste?
I guess you could say that I have a bit of available soft spot for them because I have a habit of acquiring these machines from people and fixing them up when necessary so they can be put right back into service.
I personally have two older machines that I use on a constant basis.
A 400MHz Arch Linux powered system with a 160GB hard drive serves as the file and streaming audio server for my house.
My other machine is a 500MHz Compaq Presario 1200 laptop that runs Slackware. I run Openbox on it combined with my favorite text-based applications and things couldn't be better.
Unfortunately, many people have a tendency to automatically deem them as completely worthless even though they are still useful machines. I have never understood why people throw away perfectly good computers just because they are out-dated compared to the latest available hardware on the market.
There really is no reason why someone can't find a use for these aging machines because a light-weight GNU/Linux distribution does wonders when it comes to breathing new life into a computer which would happily continue to serve people for many years provided that it is properly maintained.
Comments
bob (not verified)
Fri, 11/23/2007 - 2:53am
Permalink
I agree
I hate that too. I absolutely love how GNU/Linux or one of the BSD's can turn just about any old PC in a useful server or desktop.
BrettRS (not verified)
Sat, 11/24/2007 - 1:04am
Permalink
Personally..
Personally I take any computer that I know of that is being thrown away. I don't run any servers on my home network because I'm the only one that can diagnose them, and I'm not home enough to do so. (I'm 17 and living with my parents whilst still in highschool with a part time job and a some-what active social life for a *nix geek). I do however serve music with MPD over it from my main computer and have showed my parents how to do it, and load their playlists etc.
Anyway, do you know of any tutorials for a slackware installation, or could you possibily post an overview of it? I've wanted to try it but have been shaky over it due to hearing how it's a complicated install.
Moparx
Mon, 11/26/2007 - 7:54am
Permalink
Slackware
I personally feel that Slackware is actually pretty easy to set up.
It is all a matter of opinion of course ;)
Here is a decent looking tutorial for you:
http://www.howtoforge.com/the_perfect_desktop_slackware12
Laen (not verified)
Sat, 11/24/2007 - 5:00pm
Permalink
I did do that for quite a
I did do that for quite a while. But my room was filling up way too fast lately with incoming hardware, and gave away loads to my neighbour who has the same problem as us.
Recently gave away 9 pentium 3 laptops, Duron 1200 machine with a Geforce 4 TI4200 card, some wireless PCMCIA cards, and so on and so on. Now, i still have 3 HP nc6120 laptops "donated" as "broken" from my boss (usb quirks i can live with or so far don't result in problems when running Linux on the thing), AMD Thunderbird 1400 becoming a server with an inner-raid solution having 2 donated 80GB disks and 2 200GB disks..
..yeah, people throw away way too much good stuff, prolly cause their windows runs slow. But i can't keep it all, so keeping the latest and giving away what friends can use :)
Dave Foster (not verified)
Mon, 11/26/2007 - 1:55pm
Permalink
More to this!
I agree, being the nerd that everyone knows, I've always collected everyone's "junk" computers and have enough parts to make about 4-5 full fledged, still useful pcs. Having a bunch of other computers doing small tasks like serving music/files etc is great and a good use of spare machines, but there are other factors involved in this as well.
I'm 25, and am out on my own in an apartment. When i was at my parents, I didn't care about things like power usage, but now it directly affects me. It's not that I can't afford it, I make plenty of money but in honesty, I don't need to have a server that sits on and barely does any work raising my energy bill and adding a footprint to our depleting world. I'm trying to downsize my footprint.
I wrote a long time ago in my blag about a Linksys NSLU2 and how I was going to use that for something. I have been stress testing it with a custom debian install for a few weeks and it is powerful enough (a 266mhz arm processor, 32mb ram) to take over for an old CAD machine my Dad got me from his work (400mhz p2) that sits in the corner and runs... irc, and a few other non vital services. I fully expect my power bill to go down a big chunk by turning this server off.
BTW, if anyone lives near RI and wants a few still serviceable machines, let me know, I'll be happy to donate some. You guys can pay for the power use :)
Add new comment