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Breathing Life Into Older Computers
Aron writes "ASE Labs has written an article on using a light distribution of Linux, Damn Small Linux, to power an older computer. With Linux, older computers can be useful once again for many people. From the article: "The oldest computer I have is a Pentium 266 MMX laptop with 64MB of RAM. Most people would just consider this to be garbage and junk it, and if you brought this in for service where I work, I would agree with you. While this laptop might seem old and out-of-date now, it is small and light. I needed something I could easily carry around, so I figured I would see what I could salvage out of this dinosaur. Windows would have a hard time running on this low-spec laptop, but there are many distributions of Linux that will work exceptionally well.""
Not really news per se...most of us have known for a while now that Linux is a good strategy for reviving old systems that the latest M$ bloatware won't run on.
I like the PUPPY myself...give it a shot. ^_^
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
I have an old pentium laptop running damnsmalllinux at home with a cheap wireless card I picked up off of ebay. Now I can sit on the couch and connect into my main machine and run whatever I want (firefox, gimp, whatever) and display it back to my laptop. Luckily damnsmalllinux can install with a boot floppy (since the laptop couldn't boot off of CD). Another nice distro is monkey linux. If you have to install via floppy on a really really old machine, this one is worth looking at. If you are going to buy an old laptop, try to get one with a bootable CD, or at the very least a floppy and CD, since installing via any other method on old hardware is torture (though slackware with a zip/ls120 drive isn't too bad).
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
I run NetBSD on a 368DX40 with 16 MB of RAM. It runs fine -- a bit slow, of course, but quite serviceable for a server.
Talking about light Linux distributions: there is a list of so-called tiny Linux distributions in the Open Directory Project web site (aka DMOZ).
The list is available at:
Open Directory - Computers: Software: Operating Systems: Linux: Distributions: Tinye ms/Linux/Distributions/Tiny/
http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Operating_Syst
Site seems to be down - or at least running slow. Here is the Coral Cache link:
http://www.aselabs.com.nyud.net:8090/
Matthew Grint Midnight Artists
http://www.vectorlinux.com/
Minimum Requirements: 125 MB Hard Drive, 16 MB RAM.
Windows 98 will run just as well on a 266mmx today as it did when it came out.
For awhile I had a lot of machines running various flavours of *BSD and *NIX, however I realized I was throwing a lot of money away keeping them on for any length of time. This isn't as much of an issue with a 486 system as it is with the early pentiums, but it's something to think about.
I keep my boxes around for routers. Toss smoothwall or openbsd on, put in some network cards, and away you go. Compactflash-IDE adapters solve the hard drive problem nicely. The linksys boxes are nice, but they don't have the flexibility, and running snort in all it's wonder is pretty cool.
With mini ITX boards down in the sub-$100 territory, requiring only RAM with everything else onboard.. and power consumption way down there.. it's much more economical and environmentally friendly to use one of those.
YMMV, of course.
..don't panic
Of course not; trying to make older computers perform as well as modern ones at tasks suited to the modern ones is ridiculous. The point, as I understand it, is to recognize which tasks older machines can perform well and avoid wasting resources by letting them handle those tasks.
A laptop that's intended to be used solely for non-graphical word-processing (obviously for a fancy document you'll want more resources) doesn't need blazing specs to be able to run vi or nano. A machine intended to be a home fileserver doesn't have to run a desktop.
LTSP is the way to go here.
Check out the latest ubuntu, or K12LTSP
Just spend 1K on a decent server and use the junk machines as terminals. You could use old hard drives to boot from or buy 20 dollar bootable nics from here
I've got a school running 50 terminals and the minimal maintenance on the terminals is really nice.
"If they have both, tell them we use Linux. And if they have that, tell them the computers are down." -Dave Chapelle
I reccommend the Linux Terminal Server Project. You can hook up two dozen machines fit only for the trash to one competent machine and get a solid setup for little cash. Not much local disk access, but if you're just looking for an internet/email lab, it works great, and you can add in Samba to give each box a "harddrive", and printing capablity if that's needed.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
WindowMaker also runs very well on slower machines. And you are right, unless you have very small (under 300MB) harddisk and under 32MB of RAM there is no need to use special Linux distros, eg. Debian Linux runs nicely on old 166MHz pentium, though I must admit that Firefox takes awhile to start up.
Older machines can be used with Windows also. For example Windows 98 on 233MHz pentium with 64MB of RAM is rather nice and allows you to play all those old classic games like Master of Magic/Orion, Ultima Underword etc (if you happen to have original Sounb Blaster 16 or Gravis Ultrasound).
- Raynet --> .
I run a Dell Optiplex P2-300MHz with 512MB RAM (SDRAM PC133 x 256MB x 2) and a 10GB Hard drive.
Guess what OS I run?
WINDOWS XP PRO!
Oh my gawd?! Like, is that possible -- for sure?
yes, virginia - you can run Windows on older hardware. Don't be scared, you'll be fine.
My kids use it and love it. No problems, no pain no strain. Of course, I've upped the RAM to max (512MB) from stock (128MB) and the hard drive (from 4GB to 10GB) and popped in a nice RAGE 64MB PCI video card [alas, no AGP slots].
GUESS WHAT? It's VERY runnable. Yes, I have to defrag and I'm religious about tuning the system, but hey -- it's very very useable and I would honestly say you could put 50 of these in a computer lab in a school and get away with it.
People are just freakin used to assuming Windows requires the best of the best to run. No, folks -- it doesn't.
I have 3 older boxes on 98SE. One thing I have noticed; for average apps, in most non-video intense useage (games), Wi98 running on a Pentium, Pentium 2, or even a lowly K6-2 consistently out performs a XP running box at twice their speed. The operaitng system overhead seems to take up most of the extra horsepower.
I know I know.. heresey. and XP is a far more more secure operating system then 98; no where NEAR as prone to viruses, worms, Zombiefication, or poorly written code causing crashes --the Microsoft rep who told me that didn't even buy lunch but he did seem sincere.
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
I run Linux on old hardware all the time. And every damn time I bang my head and say never again. Here's the most common problems I've run into and it makes it almost not worth the time.
CD roms that won't read burned Cds are the worst. Well, they sorta will. Just enough to frustrate the hell out of you. Getting half way through the install and then getting i/o errors. Pulling your hair as to why it won't install right. You realize it's the CD-rom. You switch to floppies. Floppies have a horrible shelf life. Don't even waste your time finding old AOL floppies to boot from. You'll pull your hair out even more than the CD roms. In reality, new floppies aren't the sort of thing sitting on every desk like 10 years ago. Some people have new ones sitting around. However, even if you do have new ones, a lot new machines don't even come with floppy drives anymore. Good luck creating your bootdisk.
Then the fun beings... the hard drive. Bad sectors hiding everywhere. They don't pop up until you've installed it and a week later wonder why postfix keeps crashing. Bad ram. An old machine is probably going to be using SD-ram. Have you seen SD-ram prices lately? It's freakin expensive. It's way more than DDR. We have some old RD-ram boxes we were going to use and those prices were more than a new computer alone. That covers moving parts. Then there's power supplies in form factors that aren't used anymore. CPU's and motherboards that haven't been produced in years. PCI video cards. Drivers. Don't even get me started...
I've had so many issues trying to work with old hardware I've just stopped trying. It's really not worth the frustration you'll go through. Old PC's with an AGP slot and popular hardware (P2 or P3 w/ Asus mobo and Voodoo card) aren't so bad. You'll generally have about 80% success rate with those which is worth a try. Weird chipsets on an old dell machine... don't even waste your time. Old laptops? Don't waste your time. Any old machine that needs more than 2 parts replaced, don't waste your time.
I'm not one just to throw money out to the wind, but I'll buy a 250 dollar new PC before wasting a week trying to get a POS to work. I've come to love mini itx machines. You can get a system as cheap as 150 bucks with new hardware fully linux compatable, a fraction the size, quiet, and super low power.
Yes, linux can run on extremely slow hardware. But does that mean we should pull every POS machine out of the garbage and try to get linux on it?
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
For under 100mhz, try something like blueflops. I have it running pretty nippily on a 33mhz laptop.
How to use coral cache: http://slashdot.org.nyud.net:8090/~oscartheduck