My basement is like a mortuary with the remains of computers all lying in state, waiting and hoping for a new lease on life. But what is there to do with the K6s, the Celerons, and Pentiums of the past. It seems nothing short of a miracle would bring these ghosts back to life.
I thought of providing computers for, shall we say, the economically disadvantaged. These would be plain-Jane, vanilla boxes, simple to use and easy to maintain, with sufficient power for surfing, email reading, authoring documents and spreadsheets, and listening to the occasional tune. The expected thing to do would be to rebuild the old junkers and reload Windows 98 with some free software from the Internet. But where would I find quantities of old Windows disks and is it even legal to do so? (I wouldn’t want my new-found philanthropic foundation based on pirated software.) Can you still update this legacy OS? I shudder at the thought of hunting down missing drivers — no one keeps the disks. Some newer programs will only run on Win 2000+. And to top it off, Windows users must run a firewall, virus and spyware scanners just to survive on the internet. This is simply too much overhead for a box of this vintage and the reason why so many of them end their lives in my basement. Even the unwashed masses deserve better than Redmond’s worst, and Linux can provide it. But how would a modern, light-weight desktop environment perform on such an ancient machine and, more importantly, would it be an acceptable alternative?
One evening I scoured through that pile of broken dreams for suitable candidate, one I felt would serve as a proper demonstator. I unearthed a hefty case, one from an era when steel was cheap and performance was measured in size, blew out the dust, and discovered an Asus P2B-F, a classic Intel 440BX motherboard still sporting a 400MHz slot 1 Celeron processor. Further scrounging produced an old CD-ROM, a floppy drive, and a 4.3GB hard drive. Perfect. I mated this combo with a good network card, a C-Media sound card, an ATI Rage IIC AGP video card, and a new 300w ATX power supply. TCI: $18.00.I installed a single 64MB stick of SD-RAM, which I feel would be average for a machine of this era.
After assembly, I booted the box, corrected settings in the BIOS, and tried some live-cd’s. To my disappointment, nothing worked accept a copy of Slax-popcorn, which features Xfce 4.2. I liked it and it showed potential. But lacking a swap file, Slax ran slow … really slow, like molasses in snow.
I then decided to go pure Debian, which began by booting a Sarge net-install disk and entering “linux26” at the first prompt. (If you haven’t installed Debian lately, I think you’d be quite amazed at the progress of the new Debian-installer. One 100MB net-install CD burned from an ISO file and a broadband connection is all you need.)
I breezed through the install, bowing to the guided partitioner and Debian’s logical defaults, and after approximately 20 minutes, I was in full command of a base system with 2.6.8 linux kernel. Discover detected all hardware and installed appropriate modules — it’s truly that good and a relief not to have to search for drivers. I refused all further help and was left at a command prompt to manually install packages.
However, for the latest version of Xfce, I would need to install binaries from an os-cillation repository. (One can also install Xfce on top of Redhat/Fedora, SUSE, Mandrake, Gentoo, and a slew of other distros. There is also a stand-alone installer that will, like Garnome, compile and install it on any distro, though this procedure may require some technical prowess.) One of the many reasons I use Debian is for easy package management, and I needed only add these lines to /etc/apt/source.list file in order to access the appropriate repository:
deb http://www.os-works.com/debian testing main
deb-src http://www.os-works.com/debian testing main
To avoid conflicts with Sarge’s older version of Xfce, I had to pin APT by creating and adding these lines to /etc/apt/preferences file:
Package: *
Pin: origin www.os-works.com
Pin-Priority: 999
At this point, I was free to install the full Xfce xfld-desktop with these simple commands:
apt-get update
apt-get install -t testing xfld-desktop
Once that was complete, I needed to install X-windows:
apt-get install x-windows-system
After answering all questions, I was left once more at the command prompt. I exited, logged in as user, and typed “startx”.
In less than 10 seconds, Xfce loaded. Wow! I stared at the pretty desktop while the processor idled at a mere 2%. This wasn’t the only time Xfce would impress me.
The first few minutes were eye-opening and filled with disbelief that a computer with such a meagre processor and minuscule amount of RAM could perform so well.
The first app I installed was Synaptic for graphical package management. New version .56 looks and works great.
Firefox was the star of the show. It did take 10 seconds to launch, but once open surfing was quite a pleasant experience. Pages opened quickly and looked fabulous, this of course on a broadband connection. I successfully installed Flash player and a few extensions, but, sadly, I could not easily find a media plug-in in Sarge so some embedded content remains inaccessible. Another troubling aspect of using Firefox on this platform is that when one encounters an unknown file type, you’re given a choice to either download the content or open it with an elusive binary you must hunt for, which in Debian are mostly located in /usr/bin. It would be desirable to have a simple choice of applications like on the start menu.
I installed Thunderbird for email, which looked and worked equally well and featured an integrated RSS reader.
These two aforementioned programs alone put Xfce far ahead of Windows 98.
For sound, I had to activate ALSA by installing alsa-base and alsa-utils, and running the command “alsaconf” as root user. A few clicks later, the C-media card showed up in the Xfce sound mixer. Media playback is handled by Xfmedia, a no-nonsense yet capable player that’s so dead simple to use, it’s brilliant. Out of the box it supported at least CD, mp3 and XviD. CD play consumed a minuscule 2% of the processor while XviD gobbled near 80% but remained fluid. I tried Realplayer, but for what it offers I feel it’s not really worth the bother. Quicktime and Windows media support come by installing w32codecs for Xine. However, this is a legal grey area. (Add the line below to /etc/apt/sources file if you wish.)
deb ftp://ftp.nerim.net/debian-marillat/ testing main
Xfce file manager (xffm) is a love it or hate it kind of app. I found it very approachable and easy to navigate. But it gets a little unruly with larger folders and, again, file association can be a head shaker for new users — you must know the exact name or location of program you wish to invoke. The intergrated SMB browser is slick and all I had to do was install smb-client to make it work. Fstab menu is meaningless to a new user until one expands and discovers drives located there. I suppose Nautilus would be a more friendly file browser, but I found the more I used xffm the more I liked it due to its veiled functionality.
For office work, I installed Abiword and Gnumeric for documents and spreadsheets respectively. Both apps worked surprisingly well on this machine and featured MS compatibility. However, complex content really got the hard drive churning. And I installed ImageMagick, a fantastic little photo viewer/editor that worked great.
Here is a brief summary of things I added to flesh out the operating system above what was provided by Xfce and Debian. The list in no way represents a complete or the best selection of apps, but all worked well on this test machine:
Synaptic for package management; Gaim for messaging; Abiword and Gnumeric of office work; ImageMagick for photos; Thunderbird for email; smb-client for networking, alsa-base/utils for sound, file-roller for compression/archiving; gtkdiskfree to monitor disk space; Flash and Realplayer for internet media; gpdf for PDF files; Firestarter firewall utility; gtkam for cameras; cupssys and gnome-cups-manager for printing; gnome-games and Frozen Bubble for nonsensical amusement.
Now for the bad points …
Sometimes the lack of physical memory reared its ugly head — opening more than one app at a time sent the hard drive thrashing. This is to be expected with only 64MB. I doubled up to 128MB and the OS came alive. I could open three or four apps without a hint of strain. If you intend to do lots of office work or graphics, more memory seems to be the ticket as the machine never once felt like a 400MHz castaway.
I couldn’t easily allow users to halt or reboot the machine especially with the default XDM login manager. Installing GDM gave more control to the user and allowed a nifty timed login.
The Xfce menu is a lifeline for a ex-Windows user, but some apps I installed via Synaptic did not find there way there. This isn’t by any means a problem limited to Xfce. But the menu editor is crude and unintuitive. Frankly, I hadn’t the patience to learn it.
While completely free, as in beer, the downloads for Xfld advanced desktop and Debian are rather huge and time consuming; no problem for broadband but mostly prohibitive for dial-up users. And sometimes you just want to pop in a CD and have a complete, functional desktop without all the fuss. In other words, I would like to see Ubuntu release an Xfce version on a pressed CD. Xubuntu, anyone?
The total install with all the fluff I added consumed 2.5GB of hard drive space. Bear this in mind if you have limited space.
Xfce needs more intergrated apps, like CD burning, if it wants to be a full fledged environment. And that shouldn’t automatically spell bloat. I feel I had to add too much bulk to get features I would consider necessary for a modern graphical operating system.
Printer set-up is less-than complete, graphically, as I had to install extras to work CUPS itself — definitely not as polished as other desktops.
The lack of desktop icons is jarring but not debilitating. I could access the Xfce menu anywhere with a right click. Actually, there are a lot of thoughtful touches throughout the UI for you to discover.
Summary:
Xfce is here in a big way. With the added memory, the computer was very pleasant to use, and I would be happy with it as a spare for the rec room or what not. It has a great look and feel with speed belying the hardware beneath. I found myself intensely liking the environment the more I used it. It’s clean without appearing austere and configurable without suffering feature creep. Some features and usability issues need to be worked on in the way they’ve designed the entire desktop, simple and intuitive, but it does offer a decent base for a roll-your-own desktop. It too appears as stable as other popular desktops, and I hope they continue development with an eye for the many computers that might labour under full Gnome or KDE desktops.
So does Xfce 4.2 it pass the test? Absolutely. I think my clients will be pleased.
About the author
Admittedly, I am a computer addict and have been for several years. Linux merely fuels this vice. When I’m not working, eating or sleeping, I can be found building or repairing computers for friends and family. I like rhubarb and green tea, and have several aunts still alive. I’ve been known to reside on Canada’s east coast.
If you would like to see your thoughts or experiences with technology published, please consider writing an article for OSNews.
I`ve managed a similar ressurection with the SUSE 9.1
personal edition on a similar platform, but with
200 megs of ram. Ram is always the key here in the
computer boneyard.
For really old systems I would reccomend DeLi Linux:
http://www.delilinux.de/
Not kidding!!!!
Through all that out were it would be resycled, by professionals. There is no need to keep old hardware alive, sell it or recycle it, if U dont have the drivers for win98.
Technology is evolving faster and faster.
If it was an old platform like Amiga or c64, i could understand that it would be nice to keep the hardware.
This is pc-stuff… So why keep old hardware alive???
I’ve got a Pentium 233 which has been running as a firewall box and fileserver using Debian since 1999. It has been upgraded from Slink to Potato to Woody with very few hassles, and has been simply done its job without fail.
The machine is still being used occasonally for quick web browsing, and I have to repeat what the others have said about RAM: the more the better with X11. The machine originally had 32MB and thrashed quite a bit, then with 48MB it was pretty good. Now that it has 128MB, it runs great (with IceWM and Opera).
In fact, it’s amazing how little difference there is between the Pentium 233 and my Athlon 2400+ for basic tasks such as web browsing, MP3 playing and reading email.
Why throw it out if you’re not in need of better hardware. A 1.000¤ computer don’t do wordprocessing any better than, let’s say a 400MHz Celeron, that’s just throwing the money away.
I’m sticking to my old P2 computer with BeOS/Zeta.
256MB RAm seems to be a better estimate of the Celeron 400Mhz period. At least, that’s what i had.
I’m using Debian/sid on my notebook with 128mb, can’t expande more, of ram and a celeron 400 and with KDE3.3*
The only little problem is OpenOffice but I think that using xfce I won’t gain too much.
So, imho, a celeron 400 is not that bad to run a debian desktop.
The only issue is memory that I cannot expand.
So imho today’s apps don’t suffer of speed processor but they suffer of memory.
I have here a Pentium III 500MHz. that I stacked to its max with RAM (holding 768MB now) and a 250MB hard drive. Out of pure academic interest I installed Debian with Xen on it just a few days ago. I now have a complete virtual network with lots of services running on dedicated “machines”. It does DNS, LDAP authentication, mail, web serving with the Typo3 CMS, MySQL and FTP all in separate virtual machines. And wouldn’t you know: it’s still FAST!! The added benefit is simple management. No longer do I have to manage a whole load of services on a single OS instance. It’s also very secure. Once someone breaks into Bind or Apache, they can just sit and stare at my bare web server while my files and MySQL databases are relatively safely stored elsewhere even though they’re on the same physical machine.
The virtual machines can also be migrated off this hardware quite easily if they need more performance. I’m really impressed with the capabilities of Xen, even on relatively ancient hardware!
Indeed I agree with the previous posters that RAM is key in using old hardware. Luckily it’s none too expensive to stuff a PIII with PC100/PC133 RAM.
Exactly what old hardware is useable with Linux. I kept my older Pentium going like that. Informing people to just junk the hardware is stupid and creates a society who cares not a toss about what happens to the so-called “junk” that it dumps every year.
Mind you on another subject old cars that have exceeded 100,000 kilometres, find their knackered way to East Europe where they continue to provide transport……..
So why must we always junk everything??????????????
Of course if we junk everything we are encouraged to go buy new…….
It’s the same with the sick Megapixel camera race. What does one do with the 3.75MP camera when a 4MP comes out? Dump it?
Give me an older machine any day and let the “born every minute” brigade continually change.
Quote Brostenen : So why keep old hardware alive??? //
I guess you didn’t read properly ?
Quote Article : I thought of providing computers for, shall we say, the economically disadvantaged. These would be plain-Jane, vanilla boxes, simple to use and easy to maintain, with sufficient power for surfing, email reading, authoring documents and spreadsheets, and listening to the occasional tune. //
I like to use old hardware as firewalls too – I have an ancient 166 with 16meg of ram that happily runs smoothwall.
There is no reason why smart people can’t run next to free computers systems, hardware and software, for as long as Linux is around. I rather prefer PC-100 RAM to the newest RAM out there because the joke is on the people who spend thousands of dollars on brand new systems. On the other hand, if there wasn’t those big spenders out there, than I’m not sure that we would be able to get away with this…free computers deal.
awesome article… go LINUX go!
in other words his basement is a toxic waste dump for old computers that are obsolete…
Unless he’s keeping the computers in a pool of water which he then pumps into the drinking supply, it’s not a toxic waste dump.
Old computers have their places in devices like the Linux Car GPS system, Car mp3 players, mp3 jukeboxes, home-made arcades, stand alone devices such as CNC or vynl cutting machines, Electronics workstations & microcontroller programmers, headless internet terminals, hometheater PCs (higher spec ones), Backup computers attached to printers in case the main one goes down and you need to print a thesis on why you should junk old computers, home automation, home made WWW-viewable security systems.
If you’re buying a new computer to use a web browser and MS Office, that’s pretty silly.
I resurrected a couple of old PCs (mostly PentiumPro – PentiumII stuff), and if I can, I choose VectorLinux. It is a Slackware-based distro that builds up a wonderfully customized, easy to install, easy to use IceWM-based desktop. It is up to date but faster and lighter than Debian Sarge in my experience and it already comes with all main desktop/networking apps (Firefox,Gaim,Abiword etc.) preinstalled and ready to work. Moreover with the newer versions it includes submount, that eliminates the mount/umount hassle for a newbie. Adding packages is easy, the only hassle is the dependency hell a newbie must handle with a Slack foundation in hands (perhaps they should include swaret or slapt-get… IMHO neither performs nearly as well as emerge of apt-get, but it is always better than nothing).
Plain slackware is another great choice IMHO, but of course requires a bit more tweakings (not much more than a Debian, anyway). I feel Slack has better performance than Debian on old machines (expecially with memory consumption).
I have an old PII clone (it’s a Cyrix chip) and I was told that you can no longer buy RAM for it. I’m stuck at 98mb RAM. Enough to tease me with the potential of GUI Linux, but not enough to match the ease with which I used to zip around in Win98 (why the hell does X Windows require more ram to operate smoothly than Win98?! My one big quibble with Linux. Very frustrating). Where can one buy old ram?
BTW, I have found Feather, with its use of lighter faster XVesa (instead of XF86) + Fluxbox to be the least resource hungry of distros. Featherweight Linux, a derivative of Feather might be worth a shot as well.
Seriously,
These old machines can be the very first computer of a poor kid. Here where I live, Rio de Janeiro/Brasil, there are communities centers that provide computers and internet access to the people. For this kind of thing OpenSource is really nice, if you think that today the software represents the greatest cost when buying a computer… and when it can run on older and cheaper hardware.
More important than that, there are volunteers there to theach people how to use the computers. In Sâo Paulo, the municipal governament is mantaining the “Infocentros” running Linux machines. In this way OpenSource is even better than closed-source, since the knowledge to use it can be as free, thus more people can learn it and benefect from it!
Think about it.
RE:If you’re buying a new computer to use a web browser and MS Office, that’s pretty silly.>>
no, i do not buy OEM, i rather build/assemble myself and install Linux & OpenOffice…
avoids the MSFT/OEM tax that way, plus have a better product than the OEMs lowest common denominator of hardware bought from the lowest bidder…
I sit here typing on the console of my p133 w/32mb ram and a 2gb drive, running debian with a 2.6 kernel, which is acting as a gateway for my network to my adsl, running firewall/QoS/ftp. It cost me $5 from a guy who had it sitting around. I added a network card, and put the hdd in a computer with a cd drive (the p133 motherboard doesn’t support cd drives!), installing deb, made a nice small kernel with everything i needed, stuck the drive back into the p133 and never looked back. Old hardware is still really useful.
Most people need a reality check and realize the newest 1337 computers do not magically allow people to do more, as much as marketers want to make them believe so. If one is not into the latest games or does not require the performance for computationally intensive tasks, 10 year old computers can be adequate desktop computers. For video watching, 450-500 Mhz P II computers will do DivX movies just nicely.
I second VectorLinux. Will have to try Feather and see.
I have an old laptop (with 32 Mb RAM) which I use as an X-terminal (powered by NetBSD). Works nicely.
Works great on anything from a 486 on up. You can usually buy an old copy online for $10 – $20. It has a much faster and more complete gui than you will get on linux running on similiar hardware. Doesn’t take that much RAM either. Office-97 will run just fine.
Here is my experience resurrecting an old PII-266 laptop with no CD-ROM drive using Debian. Floppy-based ftp-installs are becoming rare in the Linux world these days.
http://www.smallvue.com/Armada7400.html
i do the same thing all the time. i am a packrat, and always have plenty of junkers (i moved recently, and counted 18 cases. more amazingly, i moved them with me).
as many have said, RAM is the most important issue. i recently set up a minimal Mandrake on a P2-450/256 meg of ram. KDE is a slug, but fluxbox is great. i fix these up and give them away.
a very important thing to remember, for those that won’t have broadband? on dialup the accursed Winmodem problem *is* getting better, but it is still a hassle. a much better solution is to look on Ebay, there are literally hundreds of brand-new external 56k modems that work perfectly and very easily on Linux. i got one new, recently for $5. just run KPPP and fill in the blanks.
As my parents’ box. They only use it for email (hotmail) and the web (firefox). It’s behind my network router/firewall and runs XP, never had a single security problem with it, and it doesn’t run the firewall (I need access to it now and again through various services, so it’s open behind my router).
Firefox+Router=Security.
And this is in the hands of my parents.
I ran XP on my main box for about 2 years with just my router/firewall and never had a single problem. Security just isn’t an issue.
I could have ran Linux for their box (they’ve run both Slackware and Debian machines in the past, just provided a ‘Internet’ icon on the desktop and they don’t see the difference) but Gnome is far heavier than XP and it’s only 450mhz, 192mb ram. Plus they have some whack printer which only has Windows drivers.
I run Windows 2000, Office 2000, anti-virus and free firefall software on a ~500mhz computer at home. Without any problems. Note that I have Firefox running efficiently, and I don’t need Thunderbird with gmail (who needs email software? I don’t understand). The only problem my computer has is with ESPN.com (for obvious reasons, I have all the multimedia browsing stuff) and sometimes Picasa. I’ll switch to Linux soon because Win2k isn’t getting any newer. Re-installing Windows was a 3-hour pain (with all the updates, saying okay to my free firewall software, rebooting, etc.), and a dangerous one (should have unplugged my ethernet, duh!)- I don’t intend to do that again. I’m glad this ‘guide’ was posted, because I’ve been trying to figure out a way to install a minimal Linux setup on my old machine- but the initial learning curve for package management is steep and bewildering. My old RH9 disc isn’t helping, I’ll tell you that. Finally, simple instructions to follow.
Seems like people here, do not run with computers over 1 gigaherz….
I read the article in a way, that i thought that the writer would have numerous mainboards and so, in his home.
From my perspective, and were i come from (denmark).
An computer with a sempron 2200, 256mb ram and 40 gigabyte harddrive, is being sold for 2000 danish kroners (that is 357 dollar).
So for me, the only reason to keep computers, that are older than 1200mhz is to run it as an firewall…
That is why i say that we have to junk old hardware, if there is more than 2 complete systems in the home…
I will rather buy a new system, than keep the old.
I will junk or give away, my old hardware…
And by the way….
Why have systems that are so old, that u can’t even run windows XP smoothly????
Dude, I feel you.
I know what you mean.I have a thing about using older tech as well.I love it.I get a bigger thrill using older hardware.A challenge and knowing the landfill not polluted with perfectly working stuff.
Peace
If you didn’t need the anti-virus your computer would be running a lot faster.
I develop on a 400MHz PII…..
My sound/file/web/ftp server is a 350MHz PII. They make awesome servers, often only one part has a fan!
The secret to building an old box is RAM. Even a Classic P75 comes to life when it has 512MB of RAM behind it. I have tons of the older junk in my crawl space can/t bring myself to throw it out..PPro’s, Celerons,P-II’s, P-III’s, classic pentiums I could slap it all together and have like 10-15 old boxes heating up my house.
I use old computers for Linux distro’s such as IPCop, smoothewall,Censornet,Clarkconnect. Old computers are great for firewalls, Content filtering, routers, and wireless access points. My newest project will center around K12LTSP a thin client approach using some old P2’s with 64 megs of ram and no hard drives. I also have a old AMD K6-2 gateway computer with 128 megs of ram that runs Debian sarge with gdesklets, and a GNOME 2.8 desktop. It’s never given me any problem. Nice article BTW
is there a one-stop-shop website for info on resurrecting/using old PCs? I’m googling but only finding individual articles spread out all over the place.
These two aforementioned programs alone put Xfce far ahead of Windows 98.
WTF??
win98, hasn’t been patched in a very long time. Using it with any internet appliance related devices would be unwise. A fast-boot up mp3 player maybe.
Half of the people resurrecting old pc’s are using them just for firewalls or ftp servers.
You can get a cheap rounter (dlink, linksys, netgear…etc) that does the same thing but takes up less space, is quieter, and uses less electricty.
Heck my USR secure stor router(got off ebay) serves up ftp services for many usb/firewall flash drives or hard drives that are chained off the back of it.
My old stuff is not around because I don’t feel like looking at those big honking things.
i believe it is a mental disorder when people collect old junk and hord it as of it was some sort of treasure, “obsessive/compulsive disorder” is the name i think, like that other poster said = a Linksys router is much more practicle for a router/firewall – takes up less space, quieter uses much less electricity…
they are usually easy to recognise by having a dozen lawnmowers in their garage or several televisions that do not work, lots of misc. junk etc…etc…
I’ve got 25 golden oldie Pentium-I’s at 120 MHz with 16-40 MBytes of RAM, 1 MByte Cirrus VGA and a harddisk of 683 MByte.
Who knows a distro that looks good (no ICEWM please) that can work on any of these nice Compaq Prolinea 5120e machines?
It takes about as much energy to make a computer
as a small automobile, in other words throwing things
out could be considered wastefull.
Some of us just like to tinker with older computers,
for personal satisfaction.
And hey, its kinda fun to find a dual processor setup
that used to be a high end workstation and see just
what you can do with it for a few dollars.
A D-link system is not the same as having a dedicated
firewall running.
Debian Sarge
– X11
– FluxBox
– DFM(for desktop icons)
– XFE(windows explorer looking file manager)
– Mozilla Firefox
– Abiword
– Gnumeric
Idles at 24MB after boot, installation is under 600MB on HD.
Firefox is a bit slow to start up, but moves at a functional pace.
Older systems perform most of the essential functions for many. The majority of users just use a computer for the basic functions of web browsing, email, playing mp3s and using an office suite (spreadsheet, word document, etc). You don’t need the latest system out there to use these apps. All of these apps will run well on a P2 computer (& fine on a Pentium 1 system). These are not cpu, hard drive, video or sound intensive. But you do need a good amount of RAM for them to run well.
Some may also add watching xvid/divx movies to the list & then you will need a min. of P3 500Mhz (though slightly faster would be better). Probably need a faster hard drive too.
The most important thing for computers is memory. The more you have (upto a point), the better the system will run (less hard drive swapping = better performance). A good rule is to have a minumum of 128MB of RAM to run good, though 256MB or more is ideal with today’s applications to run great. A fast 7200rpm or newer 5400rpm drive also helps speed things up (loading programs, saving files), but isn’t required if you can bare slightly longer wait times for starting apps, the OS, etc. RAM is essential though.
Most people think they need the latest hardware. This holds true only for 3D gaming or 3D design/drawing programs, or (3D sound, or 3D whatever). It also helps speed up movie & music conversions (ie: from mpeg1 to xvid; wav to mp3 or ogg or, etc.. My friend had a P3 800Mhz computer & would take him something like 5-6 hours to do divx to mpeg1 whereas my AthlonXP 2.1Ghz did it in around 2-2.5 hours). Conversions still work, just at a much slower speed because they are computationally intensive. For any 3D stuff you’ll want one of the faster systems out there.
95% of the time (like many others) I’ll use my system for the basic functions I listed above (1st paragraph) + watching xvid/divx movies. Once in awhile I play a 3D game to relax. So, this Athlon XP 2600+, 512MB DDR400, 80GB 7200RPM, ATI 8500, system feels somewhat like overkill. I too got caught up in having the latest and greatest because of hype, but realized I have no real use for it lately (in the past I used to 3D game quite a bit and did many movie conversions). As of today I could make due with a P3 700Mhz, 256-512MB of PC133, 40-80GB 5400/7200rpm. This older system would be very functional, but it sure feels good having & using a newer system.
Does anybody know if there’s a site for giving away old computers, like http://www.freeboxen.com from a few years back?
I would like to post some old pcs that I don’t use anymore.
Use Puppy Linux for these comps as a backup or rescue sys and perhaps the best is to donate the result to a high school for Linux learners.
I have a p75/64mb machine with a 3gb hdd and a 500mb hdd running windows xp smoothly
with a bit of registery tweaking, disabling almost every service and tweaking some other stuff plus having the swap on the second hdd its actually running quite well. I did this to see what I could get running the best on this machine. Beos runs quite well, win98 is “ok”, 95 runs great, os/2 runs great.. I havent tested out any linux distros yet. I’m going to install dsl and puppy and see how well they run.
anyways, I can’t believe xp is running usably fast on this machine.
helf, rather than installing GNU/Linux, try using the DamnSmallLinux liveCD.
Great article BTW. Thanks.
Incidentally, I’ve been using IceWM, but after reading this article, I think it’s time to try out Xfce.
Also, for those considering resurrecting older PC’s, note that if you want to update the motherboard’s BIOS, you’ll probably need an old Windows98 installation to either create a Win98 boot disk, or else to run the BIOS diskette setup program.
You don’t usually *need* to update the BIOS, but it might help when plugging in newish HD’s and larger amounts of memory into the old mobos.
Also keep in-mind, if it’s old enough to use a non-ATX power supply (like the older original Pentiums), those power-suppies are very hard to come by these days. If the p/s goes, the whole thing is usually a bust.
Oh yeah, and finally: don’t put too much faith in hard disks older than 7 years or so. Just my experience anyhow.
A 400MHz Celeron is hardly “old” and very usable in a Linux system. I have a P2-Dually 450MHz cranking Folding@Home 24/7 using Knoppix and a persistent /home on a small 2gig hdd. BUT it has 256MB of Memory and a cheap Nvidia FX5200 video card in it. RAM and enough room on the HDD for a /swap is the key.
Quote Article : I thought of providing computers for, shall we say, the economically disadvantaged. These would be plain-Jane, vanilla boxes, simple to use and easy to maintain, with sufficient power for surfing, email reading, authoring documents and spreadsheets, and listening to the occasional tune.
While I applaud the spirit behind this, I wonder if the intended user base will have the technical know how to update/maintain these boxes.
Or will the included setup be so complete as to make the end user’s software needs minimal?
—
I’m in the process of being about to give a PIII 750/512 to some friends of mine, and though *very* tempted throw something like Lindows of Xandros on it, in the end I voted for W98se (they’ll get my old disks) because they’re not that computer savvy, know how W95 works, and if I can put a older firewall, Firefox/Opera, and SpyBot, it should keep some of the headaches minimised.
I have several old computers like this that I need to get rid of. Rather than simply throwing them out to fill up a landfill, I’m going to follow these directions and give them away to whatever worthy causes I can find.
I gathered these systems after updgrades to newer mobos or processors from either my systems or friends and family. They didn’t want to keep the old carcass, so I took them in the idea that I might do something with them. I never buy new systems, only incrementally upgrade them to the latest and greatest. My current Win2000 machine is an socket 754 Ahtlon 3000 with 1 Gig of Ram and 120 Gigs of HD space. This was upgraded countless times from a 386/33.
Agreed, if a computer is used primarily as a router or firewall without much other work done on it, that is silly because of the much greater noise and electricity expenses — unless, of course, one doesn’t have the money for the specialized device.
Yes, XP runs just fine with 64 MB RAM, and Microsoft Office XP on it is fairly usable.
I’ll second that. I’ve had good experience with NT 4 Workstation on old machines. I set up an essentially “useless” Cyrix 160MHz/64MB RAM PC (IIRC) with NT and Office 2000 for someone and it ran really well.
I have with the help of AKLUG now passed out more than a dozen computers to families with children that cannot afford a computer (aiming for 50+ in 2005). All of our computers came form businesses that were upgrading to new equipment – so nearly all of these machines came without software. We accept only computers with 400mzh or faster (though we has stripped slower machines for parts). The finished computers have 256mb ram, and 6gb hd or a 4gb and 2gb hd 17” monitor and Suse 9.2. We install KDE, Windowmaker, FMVW and encourage the uses of the smaller lighter windows managers some people use KDE and put up with the slight slowness. Our biggest problems is not the software but hardware – we cannot find enough printers or modems. In fact the only reason we have not already hit 50 computers given away this year is lack of modems – nearly all commercial computers we are getting now have no modems and our clients usually cannot afford DSL. We have been reduced to using Winmodems with free Linux drivers available.
Linux in the end makes this posible – one quick install and we have a fully usable computer. It works well on these old machines – it comes with a good spread of usable software and nearly all the devices work right out of the box – in fact the only rub so far is the modems – about half of the winmodems we get are not usable by us.
Now a shameless plug – request for aid – donations – if you have any hardware modems – isa or pci 33.6kb or better – we would love to get them. [email protected]
“I rather prefer PC-100 RAM to the newest RAM out there because the joke is on the people who spend thousands of dollars on brand new systems.”
Old RAM (and old CPUs) actually cost more than new kit now, because they’re not manufactured any more so they have a moderate ‘rarity’ value. Go to any supplier who sells SDRAM and DDR and compare the prices. As I said, same goes for CPUs; P3s cost a lot more than P4s. Upgrading your old systems would probably cost *more* than sticking an extra half a gigabyte in your new monster Athlon 64. No-one except gamers spends thousands of dollars on brand new systems any more. I just built one for myself that cost CAN$700, would’ve been less without an expensive Shuttle case and a nice soundcard.
that’s why you go to ebay.
In our church we are using several old PCs (ranging from 75 Mhz to 200-300 Mhz) as diskless terminals, which boot from their PXE network cards. They run quite well. You need only one server, which a little bit stronger. Our P-III 800 Mhz server with 256 Mb of RAM can serve three diskless desktops and itself very well.
Tasks include OpenOffice, KDE/GNOME games and other terminal window stuff.
Just a *bit* paranoid, are we? For some reason, I picture your hand on the phone w/ BSA on speed-dial. Are they still giving away free lawn chairs?
I’ve had about eight PC’s in the last few years, and could probably only produce the original install media for 2-3 of them. If you don’t need it very often (well, maybe you might for windows
), it slowly migrates away from your computer.
I recently built a cocktail table style arcade machine with an old PII-300 and 128MB RAM and it runs amazingly. Dual monitors, homebrew GUI written in ncurses. And before this machine was an arcade machine, it was a dial-up router/firewall that anyone in the house could control from their own PC.
>>Does anybody know if there’s a site for giving away old computers, like http://www.freeboxen.com from a few years back? <<
Craigslist has section for people giving away free stuff.
I really like the idea of a web-site of low end PC restorers.
yes, I know xp will run fine on 64mb.. its part of the minimum requirements.. But I stated I’m running it on a 75mhz pentium cpu.. which is waaaay below the minimum requirements and after a lot of tweaking its running very nicely
WOW what a beautiful desktop. The font quality alone is superior to anything I have ever used! All of the KDE and GNOME apps work fine. It even used Firefox 10.1 as the default browser.
I like it. More articles please.
Thanks for the article! I’m in the middle of resurrecting an old PC and was having a lot of trouble with Vector and KDE. A few questions:
– I’ve got XFCE running, but the login screen is really ugly. Any way to make it nicer?
– There’s no way to restart from within the GUI. How can I set that up?
– Considering the last two questions, would it make more sense to start with the “desktop” collection of packages, and then add XFCE (instead of just going with a base install)?
– If my target user doesn’t like XFCE, am I correct in thinking KDE will also be quicker than it was under SUSE?
…And one correction: The X windows package is “x-window-system” not “x-windows-system”.
Thanks!
Dave,
Thanks for the compliment.
1. – The default XDM login manager is indeed ugly and I installed GDM instead, which has a much nicer interface. (Just apt-get install GDM and dpkg will ask you which manager you wish to use. If you intend to install KDE, use KDM.)
2 – I don’t know. Perhaps with sudo. But GDM allows the user to invoke shutdown or reboot with root password.
3 – Depends on how much hard drive space you have and how fast your computer is. It is very easy to let dselect install the desktop environment for you but that would have made for a boring article.
4 – I’ve tried SUSE and found only YAST to be slow. YMMV.
> And one correction: The X windows package is “x-window-system” not “x-windows-system”.
Right you are, my friend.
Cheers.
Is it really “cheaper” to have this old hardware performing simple tasks such as firewalling?
My router w/ built in firewall uses much less power than any PC I could build to do the same thing. My router won’t serve web pages and has the processing power of an egg, but I like that it does its thing with low electrical power requirements.
I also like that I don’t have to wait for my radio to “boot up” after I turn it on. So why would I want an MP3 player jukebox that does?
I don’t believe that older computers are worthless, but I also don’t believe they should be transformed into every device that requires a computation.
My every-day computer only runs @ 533 MHz. I use this computer to do everything from browse the web to creating webpages and photoshoping professional photography. I also have a “pc graveyard” of sorts that I often wonder what I’m going to do with it all. I don’t want to throw it out, but I also don’t want to pay to run it as a firewall.
Note: This comment typed on a 533 MHz, 128 MB computer running win98. My primary (and fastest) unit.
Good for you
On my estimate XP should run nicely on a P 75 
. From memory, my former 486 DX5/160 with PCI slots is about the same speed, so I guess it should. Not that I ever ran XP on it, but OS/2 I did and the machine has muscle.
I’d just like to mention that sylpheed-gtk2 is a better choice for email on older machines running XFCE, IMHO. It is easy to use and signifcantly lighter than Thunderbird. It doesn’t include any RSS functionality, but in all fairness I believe that’s fairly niche and there are other options available for that. Give sylpheed-gtk2 a try, I believe it’s in the Debian repositories.
Good article.
I have a PIII550/512 box for 5 years now, and run Fedora Core 3 with XFCE. The real magic behind it is that you can have 2005 software on 2000 hardware: Win2000 just couldn’t do for me, and I never tried WinXP (I already became a linux guy at the time).
I am now thinking to switch to a AMD64 system, but in the end I don’t need it: to read osnews in the morning this is more than enough.
As for the junk syndrome: I like too crawling those fairs of old hardware, but the fact is (and eBay is following) that the prices are going too high. When I see a 370 or Slot1 motherboard for 50$, I just think there’s something wrong. For that money you can get a fully integrated Sempron MoBo: another 30$ for the CPU and you’re all set.
If you have all the parts to build a spare system then it is a way to go, but spending more money on these things is just not wise enough, for me.
As for resurrecting PCs: I have installed Debian on a PI200/64 and it runs just fine with IceWM+Opera.
check my site
<a href=”http://donley.tk“>
I got a few links there for computer recyclers, now you can either submit your old computers or pick some up.
I got an old amd k6-300 with 64MB ram and a 16MB graphics card, I put in a 40GB hard disk ….the machince cost me £20, oooh, so I stuck Connectiva 9.0 on it, with the full GNOME desktop, well it is 1.4, and it is sweet, runs nice enough for an email server and proxy server
A 400Mhz Celeron with 128Mb can run XP pretty happily. So Linux working is nothing to celerbrate. How about an article on making real old hardware useful with Linux ect. not hardware that people who keep up with the jones precive as old.
> 3 – Depends on how much hard drive space you have and how fast your computer is.
> It is very easy to let dselect install the desktop environment for you
> but that would have made for a boring article.
Fair enough
. Let me be more specific with my question: It seems like it might make things easier down the road if I install the Desktop package collection. There’s hard drive space for it, but I am trying to keep the system fast on a slower machine. Will installing the Desktop packages (and then using XFCE) simply take up disk space, or will it result in more processes running that aren’t strictly necessary?
> 4 – I’ve tried SUSE and found only YAST to be slow. YMMV.
So you haven’t found Debian as a whole to be faster than SUSE? I had seen somewhere that it was. ‘Course I also don’t know how to install the latest XFCE on SUSE, whereas I have your handy instructions for Debian now :-).
running linux on P2-400 with 128MB is called “resurrecting old hardware” ?! Damn, at work we have more than 10 such michines, happily running NT4 for last 7-8 years
How about running Win98 on 486DX4-100 with 32MB RAM , 500MB HDD ?
Show me the linux distro that will have same functionality and speed on SUCH hardware in GUI, then talk
And at home I use a reallly old 486SX-33 with 32MB for firewall/router, happilly running IPCOP. CPU sits ay 50% load but it does the job. THAT is ressurrection
I am working with a non profit in ST Louis, MO. We have just installed Debian sarge with IceWM on some old laptops. 120M – 233M I dumped half of the games out of sarge on them and setup the desktop and gdm to look like OSX. We are giving them to sick kids with terminal diseases. This month the first batch should go out.
I found some tools to edit the menus and other stuff with icewm. Debian includes a few and a newer version of icepref from the project website makes a really nice config program.
They dont run great but its ok for playing the older games.
How about running IBM OS/2 Warp 3 on a 386DX/40 with 4 MB RAM, 105 MB HDD, 1 MB Trident ISA video card? I mean, fully blown with the graphical Presentation Manager, full memory protection, preemptive multitasking, HPFS file system with long file name support and everything else by default. This is exactly what I did 11 years ago, and used it quite acceptably for 32-bit programming (C and REXX), DOS games and painting with PhotoStyler under the included WinOS/2. The boot process was slow, but once it was up and running, it was usable. Now THAT is resurrection and you can’t even boot your Windows NT 4 (even version 3.5) on that configuration
.
I sincerely hope that at least one kid gets cured by one of those computers
.
I don’t run the abovementioned configuration now, but I would if I still had it around so everything I said holds
.
The more expensive slot 1 and socket 370 motherboards can run Pentium III processors up to 1.4Ghz, which perform as well as an Athlon 1600+. That’s why some of them cost so much. If you look for the ones which can only run PIIs or low end PIIIs the price is rock bottom.
yeah, now tell me it worked like charm… even with 8MB it was slow
what about 286, 1Mb and Deskview ?
aide da ne se vryshtame po-nazad…. do prozorci 1.0
For me and for alot of others as i see it, it’s like stamps from 1890 for collectors, or dinosaur bones for paleontologists(don’t mind the spelling). It got alot of value for that person. Why throw away something that one day will be a part of history? Alright, maybe commodore pc40 or such will make it better in museums, but heck. And most ‘junk’ are fully usable.
I myself got a pentium mmx 266MHz running apache(with php), ftp-server, some eggdrops and an irssi in a screen, 24/7 without noticeable lag in the performance. Other than that i also use it for everyday stuff over ssh, like textediting, bittorrent and so on. It’s even stable as a rock, with 160 days uptime today. Oh, and it runs fbsd 5.2.1-release.
So don’t come here and say that old hardware ain’t good for nutin’ more than firewalls and whatchamightcall it. I’d take a 2 ton dinosaur rather than a tiny linksys fancy smany routerthingy anyday.
— Im terrible at formatting what i write, using an/a the right way, remembering to use I instead of i, and so on. So no whining necessary to make me alert of it. (tsk tsk im really just lazy and don’t bother to check over what i’ve written. *snickers*)
Buy old RAM off *eBay*? Now there’s things I buy off eBay, and things I don’t. Things more than two years old where you can’t possibly tell whether they work or not from a photo are definitely on the list of things I don’t. If I want to throw my money away, I’ll find a drain, thanks, it’s quicker.
“How about running Win98 on 486DX4-100 with 32MB RAM , 500MB HDD ?
Show me the linux distro that will have same functionality and speed on SUCH hardware in GUI, then talk ”
Damn Small Linux.
chavv wrote:
“yeah, now tell me it worked like charm… even with 8MB it was slow
what about 286, 1Mb and Deskview ?
Yes, you are right. But was far from unusable
. Hehe, have used DeskQView on 286, yes (for simple stuff, dialing modem while playing Sierra KQ2), but as you know it’s incomparable with OS/2 Warp 3 *heaven* that has stood the test of time and is quite good as a desktop even today (I run it under Virtual PC). (Please don’t flame me, I know I’m talking strange 
).
“aide da ne se vryshtame po-nazad…. do prozorci 1.0
”
Pechelish! Polzval sam malko samo 2.0
Pozdravi, Vesko.
> I have a p75/64mb machine with a 3gb hdd and a 500mb hdd running windows xp smoothly
well, but that was not an option for the author of the article as he did
– NOT want to use pirated software
– NOT want to spend hundreds of dollars for the software.
> I have a p75/64mb machine with a 3gb hdd and a 500mb hdd running windows xp smoothly
yeah right , so why was it running so slow on my pIII 750mhz lappy with 128mb. it was ok, using just one app at the time or so, but soon it was all diskswapping slow screen re-drawing.
maybe nt3.5-4.5 or win9x, but not xp or 2k.
I installed win2k on a p75/64mb with 800mb hd and I tell you it was not fast, even after using 2000lite to cut it down.
slow ,but, stable
i did install DamnSmallLinux on a p120 with 16mb and it was not fast.
Well, Dillo was fast, but firefox unuseable and opera6.? slooow.
Well, got some old ram for free the other day and now it runs quite nicely on 32mb for most everyday tasks.
stable too…
for realy old stuff I would try out DeLi Linux.
the website says a new version is coming soon.
i hope for a nicer installer…
Again an article with XFCE “ressurecting” old hardware. Although I think 400mhz is quite fast.. I use a p1 166mhz 64mb ram happily for all I want to do.
XFCE is too slow and bloated for older computers. I like fluxbox + useful slit apps, it’s really great. Just have a look at how it works in Damn Small Linux.
Though I prefer to use pure debian testing. I wrote a little page on how to install and use debian on an old pc: http://users.skynet.be/six/gpure/tech/linux/debian.html
if you are there on my page you could look at the ecology page as well.
A nice advantage in linux (over windows) is that it’s easy to back up the user’s settings and documents. Just backup the folder /home. I remember it was way more difficult (or nearly impossible) in windows to get all crucial stuff backed up and then restored.
That’s quite important on old almost worn out hard drives..
Great article here on OSNews, and intresting article by you, guni.
Brenen wrote: “That is why i say that we have to junk old hardware, if there is more than 2 complete systems in the home… ”
Absolutely not! If you have one or more old systems and want to make them work like new, install one hot new system and connect the old ones as X-terminals. K12LTSP is a distro for schools that does this neatly. The old machines do not even need a hard drive, if they have a boot ROM on a NIC or a boot floppy to point them to the new server. I use this in my classroom and students who used the old clunkers last year cannot believe the power. The secret is each user only needs a few percent of the power of a new PC. The old system will run until the fans stop. Dust occasionally and they will run 10 years. In my school one $1100 PC satisfies the needs of 9 desktop users at once and provides services like database, firewall, web server, web cache, DNS, proxy filter, search engine of local files, and an on-line encyclopaedia. see http://www.skyweb.ca/~alicia/report.pdf for the lab I ran last year. 25 old clients off one machine. With RAM and hard drives so cheap and fast, this is the way to go. It is much better to have one new machine loaded than several new machines idling.