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Ask HN: What to do with a spare laptop?

7 points by vdibart ↗ HN
I'm sure this has been asked a million times but I can only scroll back so far : )

I have a 2 or 3 year old IBM Thinkpad with Windows on it that I don't really use because I have both a desktop and a work-issued laptop, both with Windows. I was thinking of installing Linux on it, but don't have a ton of time to waste down the rabbit hole of drivers, etc. Any suggestions for what I should do with it? Install Linux? If so, which distro? Do something else with it? Your suggestions are greatly appreciated.

10 comments

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yan
If you already have a workable computer, give it to a relative who needs one, or sell it. No need to stock up on hardware other people can find useful.

You can also keep it as a spare, but that's wasteful. Computers are a commodity.

ErrantX
War driving and wireless sniffing - even decrypt some networks (with permission). And more..

A security distro like Backtrack will give you hours of random fun playing with all the tools.

Something a bit different anyway.

javanix
Put linux on it. The "rabbit hole of drivers" doesn't really exist any longer, and a passing familiarity with linux can really be a useful skill to have.
ja27
You could grab the latest Ubuntu CD image (the new 9.10 ships on Thursday) and give it a try in live cd mode. That will give you a good idea of how much will work without chasing down drivers.
vdibart
Great suggestion! Thanks for the heads up on this.
vdibart
That's good to hear. Linux doesn't scare me at all. It's Linux on a laptop that scares me. I'm a command line kind of guy, but not a hardware kind of guy. I just want to spend time being productive, not chasing down info in forums. Last time I had Linux on a laptop (a long time ago) it took literally a PhD to help me get it done.
CyberFonic
If you want command line, then you can edit the /etc/rc* files to startup into a full-screen terminal if you like. There's nothing that says you must run Gnome/KDE/etc.

Karmic Koala Beta runs on virtually everything I've tried it on with no driver problems, even wierd built-in webcams on notebooks.

If you want to go really minimal, then you could run Debian (upon which Ubuntu is based). I have a Compaq Armada running Debian without problems.

sshconnection
I just finished installing Karmic Koala on an old D610. A while ago, I went ahead and slapped 2 gigs of ram in it, up from the like 512 it came with, and under Karmic this thing runs like a champ. Give it a try, it breathed new life into my old clunker.
fsniper
I'm using my old celeron 1.5GHz laptop as a linux server for my company. It runs dhcpd, bind for the network, apache, mysql, postgresql, tomcat for development purposes, zoneminder for a camera (not in use anymore), in all their respective openvz containers. And it's doing pretty well with a cooler. Before the cooler it was hot as hell. Just only once, I put my lucene indexer in ab infinite loop that i had not figured out before it shut self down with it's acpi cpu protection rules :). So if you're in need of a simple server try it.
tug61granpa
I'm a neewbie to computing, old[63], on minimum wage , and not tech-savvy at all. However I've managed to install Mint Linux on 2 elderly pc's and Ubuntu on an early Asus eee. All can be downloaded for free quite quickly and easily. An installation disc for Mint costs £3.99 in the UK. After XP Linux is a joy to use, go on, have a go.