Run Ubuntu! Run!
A while ago, bored with the laggy connections my retail router was offering I decided to go hardcore. A small delve into eBay resulted in the purchase of an Intel PII 333mhz rig, with a mammoth 128mb of RAM and 3gb hard drive. While this setup was above and beyond my needs for merely running Smoothwall (google it if you're unsure), I was fairly certain that becoming a router was the last thing this machine would ever manage.
This thought was backed up while playing with the commendably slow XP-Home installation that it arrived with.
A year or so later, I no longer had a need for this router, but, far from my intentions to have a working* computer lying around I pondered what it could be used for. Seeing as it ran XP with such "enthusiasm" (and having a hard drive smaller than a lemming) I wrote off the notion of making it a media centre. The lack of hard drive space was the major problem with all my ideas but then I remembered my Ubuntu dual booting nightmare (see here).
I had quite comfortably made a spoon out of myself trying to dual boot the badger, but... now I have a spare rig. But would Ubuntu actually run on a machine older than time itself?
To define run, I refer to running "comfortably". XP "ran" on it but I would have died of old age before anything advanced could be achieved.
True enough, Ubuntu installed (while I repressed the memories of my previous exploits). True enough, Ubuntu ran.
Bracing myself for a boot sequence slower than a machine with a fubared hard drive, Ubuntu fired up surprisingly swiftly, with minor lag to begin with but settling down to a nigh-comfortable OS experience. I was rather impressed by this - even more so after seeing how MS's finest faired on this dusty relic.
So, while I refuse to use this machine because it's epically outdated and entirely insufficient for my needs, I am impressed by the durability of Ubuntu - how it manages to breathe life into a machine I expected to use as a router for the rest of it's life.
So, well done to this always exciting distro for proving that you don't need an up to date PC to enjoy life. It does help though - after all, the size of the HD is less than an installation of FEAR.
Enjoy this article? Why not subscribe to the full RSS feed?
