Linux

When quarantines hit and everyone was communicating via zoom, I offered to recycle people's computers and destroy their old hard drives for free. I'd remove and drill multiple holes through the hard drives, vacuum/dust the computer, install a small, inexpensive HDD, and install Ubuntu.

Then I'd install zoom and chrome (sorry) and then pair each computer with a wired mouse, keyboard, and webcam that I had laying around in bulk. Then I'd drop these computers off at shelters, elder communities, and religious institutions. Essentially, anywhere you'd find someone who didn't have the means to contact family, attend an interview, or whatever.

Recycling/upcycling old computers isn't just good for the environment and your investment, it's good for your community!

"Ewww, Ubuntu? Honey, don't touch it. We're an Arch family."

-No one ever

Idk what year that pic was taken, but 2GB of ram is useless no matter what operating system you put on it.

Except ofc for a home nas, but as a desktop, the user is going to open Firefox, try to open a website, it will take minutes to load and the user just wasted $20

2 gigs of ram is going to be incredibly rough in 2025. Linux is better on old hardware but those specs are pretty optimistic.

I was able to get Windows 11 to run on a 10 year old laptop through Proxmox. With 3 other Linux OSs running at the same time. With almost no issues. The Win11 system requirements are made up. It’s a way to sell more computers, that’s it. Line go up is all it is.

This is exactly how I got into Linux .

Had some... Life troubles.

Started over.

Needed computer.

Local community employment/outreach/social support place had a volunteer run computer place in the basement (they also had a bike place, and a cafe or two, and some apartments, and they were the best community org ever..).

100$

I bought 2 over a couple years.

I'm pretty sure they had xubuntu.

Over 10 years later I still have both. And I just put mint 23xfce on one and use it as my living room media player - dvi to HDMI projector.

I have no need for a lot of stuff. I make work what I can. And I keep it working as long as I can however I can.

$20 is one hell of a price, considering how much time must have gone into this machine!

Love the “Installed and tested by Tim G.”

Hey bro you got Tim G. PC too?

Thanks Tim!

make use of old eMachines

eMachines was a brand of economical personal computers. In 2004, it was acquired by Gateway, Inc., which was in turn acquired by Acer Inc. in 2007. The eMachines brand was discontinued in 2013.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMachines

That's probably okay if all you want to do is browse the web.

But with an Intel celeron you're not going to get very far even if you do have a more efficient operating system.

My husband says eMachines have a pretty common capacitor problem. It's an easy fix to remove and replace for people who know how.

Before selling, the capacitors should be visually checked, at minimum, because they can leak and that's no good.

The year of the Linux eDishwasher!

I know it’s an old photo but it’s funny to me how they describe the machine itself in very simple terms in a way that any person could probably understand with minimal technical knowledge (here’s the programs it has it works ok), and then there’s so much internet lingo and borderline tech speak for the reasons to opt for Linux instead of Windows lol. Could have started with “it’s faster!”

This may as well be porn to me.

This is useless. It's not even high enough spec to run your Electron calculator in a sandboxed container.

/s

I'm troubled that my older hardware is way less power efficient doing the same tasks.

runs great on older less powerful hardware

better hardware support, not having to hunt down drivers

I remember installing Linux on my old laptop. It took me half a day to find working drivers for my WiFi card. It's probably better now but whenever I read stuff like this I call bullshit.

i guess the eMachines truly were never obsolete

Heroes don't all wear capes!

I had an exact machine like this, with these specs, just with an internal Nvidia GPU and 4 extra video cards added. Using USB splitters and USB audio cards, we made that computer work for 5 users simultaneously.

Built software for initial setup (what USB mouse and KB goes with what monitor?) and it worked like a charm.

There was even enough ram available to run a single virtual box instance with Windows XP (I believe) for one single user.

The Linux desktop was skinned to look like Windows XP too and for class rooms we used... I forgot the name, some open source classroom management system where the teacher could guide students remotely

Linux is awesome

What has kept me from trying Linux is my fear of not understanding what I'm doing all over again, and difficulty running all of my games. I've used Windows since the mid-90s and I'm very good/familiar with it. Diving headfirst into a new OS and feeling like an idiot again is not something I want, so I've been too afraid to make that jump. I also don't know whether or not the difficulty running games thing is overblown.