Reviving Old PCs with Linux Mint MATE

I see a lot of "older" computers. Some of them have crossed my bench of my PC support business, White Horse Computing, Ltd. Others are owned by a private school that I teach at. I am constantly amazed at how well aging PCs can be given a new lease on life just by changing the operating system.

Backstory: An Example

A colleague of mine recently gave me a laptop which fit this description: an HP/Compaq nc6220. We actually had a couple of these at the school some time ago, but they long since gave up the ghost. It has a 1.7GHz Pentium M processor, 1 GB of a maximum of 2GB of RAM, and a 40GB hard drive. Taking its age into account, I wasn't exactly in the market to upgrade it much, if at all. It came with Windows XP Home on it, and despite doing some tuning-up, it still ran at a snail's pace. The solution? Linux Mint 13 MATE Edition.

The choice for Mint is based on a number of reasons. First, Linux Mint 13 is based on the most recent Long Term Support (LTS) edition of Ubuntu, 12.04 Precise Pangolin, so it receives updates for quite some time. Second, the MATE version of Mint is generally more responsive than Unity on the same hardware, so Mint was chosen over mainline Ubuntu. With such old hardware, I want to squeeze every ounce of performance out of it that I can while still being easy to use -- the Lubuntu and Xubuntu have an out-of-the-box experience that requires more tweaking. Third, most users that I work with often ask first and forget things like right-click context menus. They're not dumb, just inexperienced and a little gunshy. MATE provides an experience similar enough to Windows that the adjustment is less problematic.

Going to Linux on a machine like this actually improves performance. My daughter became the recipient of this machine and she LOVES it. Her very own laptop. It's probably not fast enough to play Minecraft, but Flash games aren't a problem. It is more than enough to do academic work and e-mail. For all intents and purposes, it's a good slightly-worn lightweight computing machine which is great for a student.

What can You Do with It?

With Linux's incredible flexibility, the possible uses for an old laptop or desktop are many. Let's start with some of the different kinds of programs that you can use with an older PC.

Office Work - This one's pretty obvious. E-mail, web browsing, word processing, flowcharts, and other stuff don't necessarily have to have the speediest machine available. Example programs: LibreOffice, AbiWord, Dia

Art - with programs like Inkscape, the GIMP, and MyPaint, you can make some really sweet digital artwork.

Writing - whether it's a blog or your next novel in Writer, you can definitely write books on an older machine. Depending on your needs, you may find LibreOffice, LyX, Storybook, or Writer's Cafe to be right up your alley.

Reading - Reading e-books are a pleasant experience on the taller non-widescreen LCD screens and Calibre makes managing them a simple task. If it's just PDF documents you're using, the bundled PDF viewer should more than suit your needs.

Torrents - Older machines make great torrent servers if you plug in some USB or network-attached storage. Programs like Vuze, Transmission, or Deluge fit the bill here.

Lightweight Gaming - Flash games are often the first thought, but emulated gaming with ZSNES and its ilk are certainly within the hardware's confines.

Electronics Hacking - any Arduino fans out there? Yes, you could do this, too.

Music - Why not use the machine as a music player? Streaming music may or may not be an option, but playing local stuff isn't a problem. There are a lot of great music players out there, from Exaile to Banshee to Clementine. Heck, with a little hackery, you could add a remote using LIRC, too!

Education - As a teacher, I can easily say that the possibilities are endless in a school context: library public access machines, stations for educational games for preschoolers, learning Python, Prezi presentations... I could go on and on.

File server - In a networked environment, it could be used for storing local copies of files, for local backup, or if you have a number of Linux machines, you could mirror updates with apt-mirror and make updating a breeze. These are a little more advanced projects, but definitely worth the effort put into them.

Salt server - Experiment with configuration management by using it for a SaltStack configuration server. While it does take some time and fiddling to understand, it has many benefits for a system administrator.

Guitar amp - In combination with the JACK audio system, programs like Guitarix and Rakarrack turn a PC into a guitar effects processing station.

Digital Photo Frame - Most distributions come with a Photos screensaver. Do a little hacking, upload a bunch of photos, and let the screensaver run for a collection of wonderful memories powered by older hardware.

I'm sure that there are many other possible ideas for old hardware. If you see one missing, mention it in the comments!