this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2025
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libre

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Welcome to libre

A comm dedicated to the fight for free software with an anti-capitalist perspective.

The struggle for libre computing cannot be disentangled from other forms of socialist reform. One must be willing to reject proprietary software as fiercely as they would reject capitalism. Luckily, we are not alone.

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Old Computer Ideas (hexbear.net)
submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by RedRook1917@hexbear.net to c/libre@hexbear.net
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I have been gifted a few ancient laptops from the stone age (2005-2014). Any ideas on what I can do with them? Are there any modern Linux distros that would run on old hardware like this? I'll take any suggestions this wonderful community has to offer.

Edit: The laptops are:

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[–] daniyeg@hexbear.net 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I have been gifted a few ancient laptops from the stone age

oh so laptops from 1990s? cool i love to have one actually

(2005-2014).

excuse me? what? 2014 is ancient? fr? am i this out of touch?

(im not old, new technology pricing is just too much for me. im still stuck in 2016 hardware wise).

[–] echolalia@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 weeks ago

Right? These laptops dont even have floppy drives.

[–] FuckBigTech347@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 1 week ago

You don't necessarily need a specific distro. What I always do is just use the distro I'm most comfortable with and do a minimal install that just boots to a TTY. From there I just try stuff out and see what works and what doesn't. The HP 2133 will require a dedicated distro though since it's a 32-Bit Machine. Consider something like https://archlinux32.org/

Right now I have a Toshiba Satellite C850D and an HP 635 and both are running relatively up-to-date Artix. I made sure both of them have an Atheros Wireless Card since those are well supported by Linux. I use them mostly to watch videos (720p works just fine especially with VAAPI) and Firefox works fine (although it's kind of slow, but modern browsers are massively bloated tbf.). If you can you probably want to swap out all the spinning rust with SSDs.

Besides the obvious casual use, you can always turn them into file servers or maybe even a Wireless to Ethernet Network bridge.

[–] ceiron@europe.pub 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

I have a 2007 Acer laptop with OpenSUSE Tumbleweed with LXQt which I use for torrenting. Works great.

You could also install batocera and run retro games and console emulators. I’ve done this with an old Raspberry Pi 1 from 2012 and my kid loves to play Sonic and Super Mario with it.