hello im back again…
so i recently upgraded a 11 year old laptop i use to use from 2gb of ram to 8, it made a big diffrent. also thanks to the linux community i decided on linux mint mate and its a pretty basic laptop.
i was going to use the laptop to make gaming videos with but it cant really game too well or record while gaming. it has another issue that is the battery is bad so it it to be plugged into a wall at all times, i guess its not very portable.
I litterly have no idea what to do now with it and i dont want to sell it sense i just upgraded the ram, like woudl it be better to try somethign else, any ideas by chance or things to share?
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Check out the ‘selfhosting’ communities.
Retro gaming is an another option, Arcade Punks have a lot for resources for this. I don’t retro game that often and storage speed is not an issue when I do so I have a few old drives with gaming systems on them I can just connect via usb & boot into when I’m in the mood.
On YouTube Network Chuck, Jeff Geerling and Explaining Computers have a lot of easy to access tutorials on setting up server stuff but most of it you can just copy & paste from tutorial sites or github.
Connect a few TB’s of storage via usb, hdd dock is great but use whatever you can get. You could even run the OS from a USB stick and use the internal drive just for media storage, I done this for years with a 2008 pc server running Alpine Linux…as you have loads of ram you could even run the entire OS in ram from usb for an even faster system than ssd will provide with Alpine’s diskless or disk data options.
Tailscale was a big one for me. Makes it simple to install on my server, laptop, desktop & phone so they can all talk to each other when out and about instead of worrying too much about firewalls and open ports at home…I am looking into this for hosting my own Lemmy instance at the moment.
If you have a personal music collection Navidrome + Symfonium, or other client, is amazing imo. Spotify killer. I also have slskd docker daemon running for soulseek so I can download flac music to my server when out and about and instantly stream it as mp3/ogg to my android device or laptop. Jellyfin and a torrent deamon does a similar job for video. As other have mentioned Pihole is cool and stuff like NextCloud too.
thanks for all this info!
Pretty much anything people have been running on raspberry PIs should work. Pinhole for ad blocking,home assistant for smart home, plex/media host, or a NAS.
If it only works plugged into the wall turn it into a NAS.
why did i not think of that, do you recommend an os for a nas also what can i put ona nas if it dosent thave a dvd player? ive been wanting to try ai things and engine sof sorts but idk if that will even run.
also i guess im currently using the laptop to learn linux.
Checkout TrueNAS or OpenMediaVault… these are my usual goto OS for NAS setup. You could look into setting it up as a Plex server, but training AI models might be too much for an 11year old laptop
You’re gonna tear your hair out trying to run AI on a laptop that old.
Definitely either a NAS or a media server would be the best.
If you’re into the learning side, like you said a Linux box you don’t have to worry of breaking would be good, or something to do with networking. Maybe some home automation, dashboard, etc…
You could make this device into a adblock machine or install proxmox/xcp-ng on it and play around with different services!
So i baclicly turn it into a nas? also what things might i install on it along side an adblocker?
Proxmox and xcp-ng are hypervisors that allow you to create VMs/containers to run multiple services (NAS, adblocker, etc) within a single machine.
I’m new to Lemmy, what’s with all the misspellings, is it intentional or am I over analyzing?
im dxylexic and autistic
You could run your own media server with Plex
what about jellyfin?
Sure whatever you’re comfortable with. I’ve messed around with Emby, Kodi, OpenElec but settled with Plex because it suited me. An old laptop like yours is perfect for an under cabinet media player/server.
Was in the same situation as you a couple years back and turned my laptop into a Nextcloud server. Stuck a terabyte hard drive in there and now I have a terabyte of cloud storage for my phone, laptop, and desktop for the cost of a domain name. Nowadays, they might cost around $8/yr if you don’t care that it’s a string of numbers .ovh or .xyz or some other obscure domain name. Here’s a couple videos on how to get a Nextcloud server started with Ubuntu’s snap package which will work on Linux Mint:
Lots of good ideas in the comments already. I’d add maybe changing to an SSD instead if it still has a HDD - depending on use case will give a nice speed boost.
You could make it a server and use it for anything ranging from a Minecraft(or any other game) server to setting up your own streaming platform you can evenn set up your own instance here
by streaming service do you mean something like jellyfin or something like netflix?
I meant exactly jellyfin
Plex is an option, too
It’s the perfect router-on-a-stick https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Router_on_a_stick Running opnSense or similar.
A general server is a great option. If you get a new battery it’s got built in UPS.
Everyone here has grand ideas, but maybe you don’t need any of that stuff. My old laptops are retired as couch laptops; they just live on the couch, so I can do pointless stuff, like leave this comment.
Currently on a laptop that was purchased in 2007; it was running Windows Vista on a 2GHz Pentium Dual Core, with 4GB RAM. As you can imagine, it did a poor job, even when new. For the past decade+, it has been running Linux Mint with (fast and light) XFCE desktop, and it’s faster than a new Windows laptop (of similar shit-tier).
So, there you have my suggestion. Throw Linux on your old laptop (so it runs properly), and then park it on the couch.
Yeet proxmox or freenas on the old boy
Install, try and play with Haiku-os!!
Smart mirror is an option if you want to cannibalize the screen
+1 for the ‘selfhosting’ communities.
If the battery is so shot it’s basically tethered, you could use it like a server. My gateway drug into that world was spinning up some Docker containers to do some of the neat things others have suggested (media server - Plex/Jellyfin; DNS adblocking - Pihole; home automation - Homeassistant).
