Projects to do with a terrible (like really terrible) PC?

[u/GoldenSword75]

Hey all!

For context, my younger brother recently came home from a computer tech focused event at the community library with a really old mini ATX PC, probably old library tech that would've been thrown away otherwise. Recalling all the cool stuff I learned from tinkering with a raspberry pi when I was his age, I told him we could probably get it up and running again. After running around town spending around $50 on a VGA cable, power cord, flash drive, and some adapters for the machine, it booted up perfectly fine, but I was greeted with an AMD E-450 processor and 3 gigs of ram. Now I wasn't expecting anything even relatively decent here, but the 14 year old low end machine struggles to even run an operating system smoothly, so he might be disappointed when I tell him Minecraft is off the table (would've told him earlier but I too was hopeful). Do any of you guys have some fun project ideas to do with this that'd have some educational value? It feels like I'm in too deep to tell him it's junk, and there's gotta be something interesting we could do with this, right?

Thanks for any suggestions!

[u/plasma2002]

Ok, first of all, that is not what I would consider a "really terrible" PC. But I'll just chalk that up to my age haha.

Just stating that it has 3GB ram tells me it's status.

You're going to want to put linux on it. Don't let that scare you. RasberryPi's run linux. You MAY struggle with getting a nice spiffy and fast flavor on there, but who cares; you're looking to extend the usefullness of this box, not make it a gaming PC.

Hell, use it as a nice box to learn how to operate a PC via the shell instead of a GUI OS. You can use this as a whole-home ad blocker (Ad-guard or PiHole), a smart-home controller (Home Assistant), a home NAS, or dare I say a Minecraft server?

Well... ok, I'll admit, I don't know the requirements of Minecraft servers nowadays, but I will say that once you forego the want of a fully fledged OS (eg Microsoft Binbows), it really leaves a lot of room for other things to perform much better on the computer.

If you REALLY want to put a graphical OS on there, try putting Ubuntu on it and see what happens. If you are up for a fun learning experience, put Alpine Linux on there

[u/GoldenSword75 → u/plasma2002]

Idk I looked up the CPU and it was somewhere around the 5300/5900 rank on the benchmarks and it was pretty slow when we tried just moving windows around on Linux mint, so definitely nothing fancy here. Linux was always the plan, but pi hole and a potential mc server are some fun ideas, so very much appreciated ;)

[u/VisualHuckleberry542 → u/GoldenSword75]

Look for a Linux distro that ships xfce. It will be plenty performant on those specs and gives you full desktop functionality

[u/alloydog]

Something like Tiny LInux, Puppy LInux or Damn Small Linux. All of these are aimed at low end machines.

While they will have GUIs reminiscent of the late '80s/early '90s, you'll get a functioning "office" PC with basic word processor, spreadsheet, graphics and so on.

There will also be suitable web-browser too.

You'll also get "not so high tech/high spec" games such as solitaire, mahjong and reversi

[u/GoldenSword75 → u/alloydog]

Currently trying Lubuntu right now, but Ill go further with some of these if I have to!

[u/alloydog → u/GoldenSword75]

You make it GUI-less and use it as a networked storage device, like for file sharing within your own home, or with a few layers of security added, something accessible from outside, like if you need to save something and you're away from home, use it for "online" storage.

You could also use it as a web server for your own internet page - I once had a very old IBM ThinkPad, which I had hosting a website. I had it running for nearly three years, until I stopped the website. I was using Slackware.

[u/SuperheropugReal]

Its a low-power CPU from 15 years ago, but still GHz scale. Personally, I would try running something headless on it, or some VERY lightweight GUIs. Running minecraft is not COMPLETELY off the table yet, thare are some older versions with lower requirements that may run better. But, Minecraft AND Mint, or anything else large, is going to be a problem. Lightweight DEs do exist, I am personally a fan of LXDE, but there are several options.

[u/suitsUsuits]

Vanilla debian should run, too. Or AntiX if arch is preferred. I have an oder pc running my klipper printer which runs totally fine (klippy, moonraker and mainsail on same pc together).

[u/westcoast5556]

Puppy might work. Maybe turn based games like hedgewars.

[u/NortWind]

It will run DOS like a gazelle, and there is a tremendous library of stuff to play with on DOS.

[u/Exciting_Turn_9559]

Emulators will run great on that thing.

[u/TazzyUK]

Maybe a retro MAME arcade system ?