I had installed Debian on an Acer Aspire One Laptop. It has a 32-bit Intel Atom CPU with just 1GB of RAM. I obviously can’t run it like a usual desktop anymore, it’s way too slow.
I tried it to connect it to my TV with HDMI to create some sort of “Smart TV” setup, but that didn’t work out because I can’t even play 1080p videos on VLC with it smoothly.
So… What now? Can I only use it for headless stuff like pihole, nextcloud, etc. now?
Is there any hope left for my unsuccessful “Smart TV” contraption?
- muhyb ( @muhyb@programming.dev ) 22•2 months ago
I’m using my old netbook as Pi-hole and some home server stuff. Does its job.
- Teppichbrand ( @Teppichbrand@feddit.org ) 9•2 months ago
You can get an old Raspberry Pi very cheap, i have a 2b but you can go even lower. It’s probably a better idea to spend a few bucks and install DietPi with Pihole on it. It uses only 5 watts, your laptop takes probably ten times more.
- Telorand ( @Telorand@reddthat.com ) 4•2 months ago
This is a very good point, and it’s one of the reasons I don’t use my old laptop as an always-on server.
- muhyb ( @muhyb@programming.dev ) 4•2 months ago
While this is true for my another older netbook (40 W), my netbook’s power consumption for running Pi-hole is ~15 W. I think it’s acceptable for such operation. 5 W is tempting though.
- anon5621 ( @anon5621@lemmy.ml ) 9•2 months ago
Btw videos not working well because of absense of hardware decoding codecs, and it is make software decoding.
- GnuLinuxDude ( @GnuLinuxDude@lemmy.ml ) 5•2 months ago
Since it’s an old acer netbook with an Intel atom cpu it is highly unlikely it has any hardware decoding built in.
- Possibly linux ( @possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ) English4•2 months ago
It should as that’s a basic feature. It probably is just for mpeg2 at lower resolutions
- Foster Hangdaan ( @foster@lemmy.fosterhangdaan.com ) 6•2 months ago
- Possibly linux ( @possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ) English2•2 months ago
That probably won’t work well
- Foster Hangdaan ( @foster@lemmy.fosterhangdaan.com ) 5•2 months ago
Probably or probably not. The only way to find out is to try. I’ve installed RetroPie on a number of old laptops; the oldest one being a 2002 Toshiba laptop. I got to play GBA games just fine with it.
- bloodfart ( @bloodfart@lemmy.ml ) 6•2 months ago
There’s lots of uses for it.
An overlay network like nebula uses “lighthouse” nodes as ways to reverse proxy to all the other hosts in the overlay. I’ve used og eeepcs as nebula lighthouses before.
“Dumb” 3d printers honestly don’t need much to bring their feature set in line with expensive ones. I still use an old netbook to control two. The screen and keyboard are great when I want to check files. Slicers and whatnot can easily run in low resource settings on those computers.
Vents allowing (and many netbooks do!), you can slide the computer into a shelf and use ssh to perform tasks on it. There’s a bunch of stuff that an always on computer with a built in battery backup can be used for at times, especially if it’s on a wired connection and you can use the wireless interface.
People will say you should be afraid of the batteries exploding or venting. I’m honestly not too concerned, but be sure to check them maybe once or twice a year.
- ReversalHatchery ( @ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org ) English1•2 months ago
People will say you should be afraid of the batteries exploding or venting. I’m honestly not too concerned, but be sure to check them maybe once or twice a year.
I’m more concerned with the power supply. Laptop power supplies often heat up a lot.
- bloodfart ( @bloodfart@lemmy.ml ) 1•2 months ago
I’ve never seen a smps catch fire. Is that a failure state for them?
- ExtremeDullard ( @ExtremeDullard@lemmy.sdf.org ) 6•2 months ago
Funny you should ask: I installed Debian 32-bit on an old Asus Eee PC netbook yesterday to breathe new life into that old machine and turn it into a controller for a piece of test equipment we have at work. My company keeps old stuff like that around until space is needed in case someone needs something.
Just in case I had to modify something in the tester’s control software, I figured I’d install i3wm and Vim. It didn’t take long and I was surprised by how usable the machine ended up being. Honestly I wouldn’t have minded using it as a bone fide laptop for light-duty work on the go.
So basically keep your expectations low and install super-lightweight software, and your old Aspire could live a few extra productive years instead of going to the landfill.
- syaochan ( @syaochan@feddit.it ) 6•2 months ago
You can try with libreelec https://forum.libreelec.tv/thread/13250-testing-8-9-004-x86-acer-aspire-one/
- kent_eh ( @kent_eh@lemmy.ca ) English5•2 months ago
I’ve used old laptops as battery backed up NAS boxes.
Obviously assumes that you can install a reasonably large drive and that the battery still has some life left in it.
- data1701d (He/Him) ( @data1701d@startrek.website ) English5•2 months ago
In addition to the good suggestions for others in this thread (like setting it up as a portable gaming device or a server of sorts), it could also be set up as a low-distraction productivity machine. I don’t know how well something like LibreOffice would run on it, but I imagine you could probably use a simpler word processor or even a plain text editor.
Worst comes to worst, I wonder what hardware support for this thing is in something like ReactOS or FreeDOS.
- krolden ( @krolden@lemmy.ml ) 4•2 months ago
Print server, music box, copper scrap
- Possibly linux ( @possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ) English4•2 months ago
Anything that requires GPU decoding will be choppy as it doesn’t support modern codex. However, assuming graphics acceleration working you should be able to browse the internet. Just make sure you have a SSD and some swap.
I tried setting up luks on one of these devices and it did work but the IO performance was slow due to the lack of CPU acceleration for modern cryptography. (That’s the theme of older devices)
- bloodfart ( @bloodfart@lemmy.ml ) 3•2 months ago
Some more things I’ve used old netbooks for:
Portable pxe boot server
Audio source for mixing (think using a mixing board to do audio collage work with tape, record and digital sources)
Midi sequencer- the cheap usb to midi breakout cable works good here and you really don’t need much horsepower to sequence midi.
Tracker playback and editing
Display driver/art/digital photo collage/digital signage/whatever.
E: People will tell you that you’re better off with a sbc because it’ll save you money on power. Do your own research on this. A kill-a-watt is cheap and the power savings quickly gets murky.
- dingdongitsabear ( @dingdongitsabear@lemmy.ml ) 3•2 months ago
I’m trying to utilize a couple of core 2 duo macbooks for the same purpose and it’s not going great. I have twice the cores and RAM but they’re stuck at 800 MHz, because of no batteries.
anyhow, very slow and issues with a lot of codecs I throw at them. try mpv without a DE/WM.
- bloodfart ( @bloodfart@lemmy.ml ) 2•2 months ago
The c2d MacBooks ought to have relatively cheap and available batteries. Why not put one in?
- Sina ( @Sina@beehaw.org ) 3•2 months ago
I don’t think it would be great for a pie hole on a gigabit connection. (if you have s slow connection then it’s good ofc)However there are use cases it’s good for. Print server, smb server, kitchen radio with Pyradio, retro gaming etc
- Eugenia ( @eugenia@lemmy.ml ) English3•2 months ago
You can install Haiku, the BeOS clone. That one runs well on less than 1 GB of RAM, and it had a new beta recently. Linux requires a minimum of 2 GB RAM these days to load 1 tab on a browser of a middle-complexity website, before it starts swapping. To really use Linux more comfortably, you’d need 4 GB, I’d say. And if you want to do 1080p video editing as well, then 8 GB. So, try Haiku.
- vortexal ( @vortexal@lemmy.ml ) 2•2 months ago
Something that I considered doing with a similar laptop, was to use it as a low-end portable gaming system. I’d take a lightweight Linux distro, like the 32-bit version of Q4OS if it’s system requirements are lower than your current setup, and get it loaded with a bunch of games with low system requirements and retro emulators. Obviously, it wont be anywhere near as powerful as your main computer (if you have one) but because it’s portable, there could be some value in having a portable gaming pc (unless you have something like the Steam Deck).