Do Not Toss That Old Laptop
This is kind of an overused topic, but it finally hit me how useful an old laptop can be if you do a little research.
I have this old Compaq Armada, AMD-K6 433 MHz, 64Mb of RAM, PCMCIA LAN card. I looked it up on eBay, and I’d get $60, maybe $70 for it. However, because 1) it looks brand new since it came out of a classroom, and 2) it has such a beautiful, bright screen, I decided not to sell it, but reincarnate it as a Linux machine.
Linux is a free operating system. Proponents and analysts attribute its success to its security, reliability, and low cost. It’s installed on anything that needs to be reliable – cellphones, TV sets, Sony Playstation 3′s.
So what would I do with a Linux machine? Surf the Internet, at least. I threw mine in a corner, turned it on, and it’s been sitting there for days, running as stable as the day I booted it up.
I tried two flavors of Linux – DSL (Damn Small Linux), and Ubuntu. Ubuntu pissed me off by not working and being gigantic. DSL pretty much blew me away.
All I had to do was download a 50 Mb *.iso image, burn it on a CD, stick it into the old laptop, and reboot. DSL did the rest – installed all programs, devices, drivers, etc. It comes with … yay! … Firefox, so you can continue adding those RSS feeds and such. Among other programs you’ll find a Paintbrush-like app, a word processor, a spreadsheet, some games, file utilities … basically everything you’ll need to make use for a perfectly good, but outdated, laptop or a workstation.
hmm. might do the same myself. got a crappy HP K6-3 450mhz w/ a crappy old lan card. it even has BNC connector on it!
the screen’s slowly dying though. so even as a web machine, it’s kinda crappy. just feel like such a waste.. I can’t recall how much money I made my sister blew on the additional SODIMM.
memory was such a rip back then. actually even worse farther back. but nvm. im rambling.
Comment by Cap — August 19, 2006 @ 6:56 pm
Ever tried ‘LINDOWS’?
I’ve heard it’s great.
Comment by Lawrence — August 21, 2006 @ 1:35 am
Try SLAX linux. You boot it from a CD. It’s small and GREAT!!!
Comment by Jim — August 21, 2006 @ 6:39 pm
Are you able to run that machine on the wireless network??
Comment by AGB — August 29, 2006 @ 11:21 am
Ubuntu works wonderfully, I don’t know what was wrong with your installation. I’ve used Fedora, SuSE, DSL, Mandriva, Freespire, OpenSuSE, MEPIS, Symphony OS, Xandros, and Ubuntu. Of all of these, ubuntu worked the best right out of the box, especially with WiFi and system updates and installs. You want to talk about gigantic – try SuSE 5CDs! Ubuntu 6.06 is by default a LiveCD so you don’t have to install anything, but there is an install icon on the desktop so that you can put it on the hard disk. If you like the windows feel you could download Kubuntu instead, which uses the KDE desktop environment, instead of Gnome.
Also, if you like DSL so much you should try Xubuntu that uses the light-weight XFce desktop environment and is optimized for lower-end machines.
Comment by Jason — September 7, 2006 @ 6:12 am
yckhayze…
yckhayze…
Trackback by yckhayze — December 12, 2008 @ 7:33 pm