Will this old junk work to just play with server?

[squakie]

I have an OLD, TINY laptop I set in in Ubuntu a few years ago for my elderly parents to move them away from Windows. They would never update or run anti-virus and anti-malware in Windows, so I was always having to work on their PC from 2000 miles away, and was just tired of it. Installed Ubuntu and had it just go straight to the browser. Served its purpose for a while, then I got them a couple of much better laptops to use - with Linux of course. At any rate, it's an OLD Gateway 200STS or some such thing - the screen is just about shot, it has a 40gig drive, 1ghz Pentium 4 processor, 512mb ram and a CD-ROM. Rather than just throw it out, I was thinking of setting up the server version on it just to play - not to actually USE as a server. Will the server software tolerate such a lousy setup? Does the server software still fit on a CD instead of a DVD? I thought it might be a good idea to learn more than just the basics of file sharing, etc., perhaps going so far as to learn (gulp) PHP, and doing a "web" interface to a database so I know how to do that as well. I've done the web - database thing before, just not in Linux. I know I'd need to install LAMP to get most of the functionality - and does the server version come with Samba?

[mikewhatever]

Ubuntu Server System Requirements.

Both 12.04 and 12.10 server edition ISOs are about 690MB.

In case you get a PAE related error, when booting from CD, use the Minimal ISO to install it.

[Frogs Hair]

12.04 server is still under 700 Mb.

[tgalati4]

You can run Linux Mint 14 Mate 32-bit and have a half-decent laptop, unless the screen is too dim to read.

[squakie]

It's currently running an old modified install of 10.10 just fine, but the screen is getting really lousy. I think I'll go ahead and install the server and start gradually playing with it.

Thanks everyone.

[squakie]

Just needed to junk it.

[Zill]

I run CrunchBang Waldorf on a system with a similar spec and, while it struggles with multimedia, performance is adequate for most purposes. My primary use is as a backup server but I guess it will also run the entire LAMP stack if you wish. The CrunchBang forum is very helpful.

[TNFrank]

Not a server platform but you could install WattOS on it or a number of other "lite" versions of Linux. It would be nice if you could bump the RAM up to 1GB but I'm sure there's a few versions of Linux that'd run happily with 512MB. That's one of the great things about LInux, you can make older equipment run pretty well if you get the right version installed. Kind of breaths new life back into em'.