Share your older computer revival success stories here!

[sports fan Matt]

I thought it would be an interesting idea to see what kinds of old computers that we all had would be able to run Linux. Mine is a HP DV 4000 from 2005.

[stalkingwolf]

define older. all mine are p4's

[sports fan Matt]

Could be any old computer including P4's...was thinking of ones from old computer stores or ones gotten from friends, trash piles, etc..(I didn't want to limit anything)

[LastDino]

I've had P4 3.0Ghz HT enabled from what seems to be forever, that cheap chip was also the sole survivor of the entire original config which ran its life little by little and part by part.

Nonetheless, it ran all the Ubuntu versions quite decently (Other than Ubuntu, it also ran manjaroOB and fedora XFCE), would've had more luck with it if I had dedicated graphic card, but oh well, I eventually upgraded the chip for couple of bucks to 3.0Ghz c2d and its running even better.

[MoebusNet]

Still running Xubuntu 12.04.4 32-bit on my old 2002 Dell D800 Latitude notebook with 1.4 GHz Pentium-M (low-power Pentium 3) with GeForce Go FX 5200 64M video card. Will upgrade to Lubuntu 14.04.1 32-bit thanks to forcepae boot option now available.

EDIT: Successfully running Lubuntu 14.04.1 32-bit now. I needed a space between "--" and "forcepae" in boot options to get it to boot.

-- forcepae

[tgalati4]

Pentium, 188 MHz (overclocked from 166 MHz), 256 MB RAM (maximum for the board), running freenas 7.2 with a ZFS RAID pool (http://www.nas4free.org) --1997 vintage. I also have Damn Small Linux on an HP Omnibook laptop (bricktop) with 64 MB RAM, 166 MHz, Pentium, also 1997 vintage. Nice keyboard, connects to the network with an ethernet pcmcia card. I also have a 95 vintage psion 3a palm computer that I'm trying to shoehorn linux--that's a challenge because the LCD screen is failing.

My wife says I have too many computers. Thankfully RaspberryPi's don't take up too much room and are easy to hide. I am now starting to dump anything below a Pentium III.

[januschung]

Installed xubunu 12.04 64bit on HP Pavilion s7210n which was sitting on the corner of the server room for a while. It ran without any problem as a headless server. I loaded 2GB of DDR ram on it and upgrade the network card to a gigabit one. It ran pretty stable as a fileserver and the longest time I kept it on was around 4 months. It has built in wireless card if one would like to hook it up to the network without wire. The front panel also come with multi memory card slots which comes in handy to transfer digital photo from my camera. I also attached the box with external 4TB harddrive as extra storage and the harddrive was recognized and functioned without any problem. An other function I added to the box was to pair the banshee music player with an android remote app that I can use the box as a music jukebox. Gotta thanks the community for providing every great app and tutorial for free.

[Old_Grey_Wolf]

I have a Dell Inspiron 5100 laptop from 2003. Pentium 4, upgraded to 1GB RAM and 60GB HDD. Runs Lubuntu OK. The Wifi adapter card has to be reseated every once in a while.

Edit: About the only thing it is good for is a foot warmer during the winter. :)

254743

[redbikemaster]

My Lubuntu runs on an Asus S96J. It's a great little laptop. I love it dearly.

[mattlach]

Well, It's not super old, but it has the power of an older computer.

I recently successfully installed MythBuntu on an 18w AMD E-350 as a front end. It's performance is essentially equivalent to an Athlon x2 1.5Ghz. Surprisingly it is more than sufficient to play back 1080p mpeg2 streams.

[mastablasta]

because that GPU on that chip is descent. eventhough the later E version were a lot better.

[edeneen]

I have an old HP Compaq P4 with 3gb ram, built like a tank and runs like crazy on 14.04.
Also have a really cool old Shuttle mini with an AMD Sempron and 1gb (some distros did not get along with the graohics on this weird box) but it run great on Lubuntu.

[jerrylamos]

I have an IBM Netvista 2 gHz P4 running XP. I tried Unity but the screen response is horribly slow. Something about "3D" video.

Lubuntu runs nice and sharp. I put the bottom panel on the left, adjusted sizes, and it's vaguely like the unity layout only sharp, crisp, clean and quick.

The Unity style includes fuzzy edges, gradually opening windows, etc. fine for those who are more interested in desktop appearance - I"m interested in my mostly full screen applications so the unity fancy effects just get in the way.

I do use Unity unstable development on netbook, laptop, and desktop looking for bugs. Right now the 20140719 install .iso won't even boot to desktop on my Lenovo desktop 3 gHz Intel Core 2 Duo.

If I was just using ubuntu I'd likely use Lubuntu with firefox, google chrome, Libre Office, Picasa, Skype, ...

[david253]

Oldest we have in house is wifes hp laptop with vista. Very slow! Did not try with Ubuntu yet!!

[raistlin_kell]

Last week a friend asked me about best ways forward to replace their failed laptop. After taking a look at the old laptop, i realized there was nothing wrong with the hardware.. Windows 7 had simply run its 3 month lifespan over a 5 year period. I told then about Ubuntu, explaining how it functions, and why they'd never heard of in Australia, because no IT resellers make money from something that doesn't break, and they said "lets give it a crack".

3 days later I'd returned their old laptop, with all their old photos and documents running the sexy Unity desktop (which I love by the way), showed them how to use email, the internet, installed Minecraft for their kid and it just worked... What impressed me was I simply connected their HP MFP via USB and "viola", it was there and spat out a test page.

To say they're chuffed a) the speed of the Ubuntu compared to M$, b) not having to spend any money quite possibly for several years to come c) still having all their files unharmed and d) no need to update an antivirus system 10 times a day would be an understatement.

[edeneen]

my main deaktop is an old HP Compaq P4, 3gb, built like a tank- I got it for free, runniing 14.04 and luvin' it.

my backup is a really neat old Shuttle mini, it is about the size of a toaster, a odd machine- some distros did not get along with the graphics, runs fine on Mint, it has an AMD Sempron processor and 1gb (a really funky little computer, I got it off ebay complete and running for $50