Do you have an old computer in a closet or tucked away in storage? Is that machine a Pentium class or better with a 10 gig or larger hard disk? If you answered yes to these questions, then there’s no need to let the thing sit around and collect dust. Turn it into something useful like a VPN-capable network router, remote terminal, web server, network backup machine or media/file server.
The open-source community makes this possible for all but the most antiquated hardware. In fact, if your old PC was built in this millennium and is still in working order, then there’s some flavor of Linux or BSD that will make the old dog fetch again. While doing something like this used to require someone with a pocket protector and bridge-taped glasses, today’s open-source operating system distributions are installable by anyone willing to read a few simple instructions on-line.
I have a Pentium D class machine with a gig of ram and an 80 gig disk that I put in a closet 5 years ago. It’s a Dell Optiplex in a mini-tower chassis. About a year ago I got tired of tripping over it and decided to see if I could put it to use. I’d been regularly visiting my favorite Linux-centric site, itsfoss.com (itsfoss is a convoluted acronym for It’s Free Open Source Software) and their posts filled my head with a ton of cool and useful things to do with a Linux machine. After stubbing my toe on the old mini-tower one night I decided it was time to either use it or lose it. I plugged in a monitor, mouse and keyboard and pushed the power button to see if the thing would still boot. The old girl put a smile on my face when the Windows XP logo appeared. It did feel like an eternity before the machine presented me with a login screen (Thankfully I remembered the password.) and then another eternity before the desktop finally appeared. That’s when I remembered why I had retired the box. Slowness aside, it appeared everything was working and that brought another smile. I could work with this.
From my iMac, I went to Ubuntu.com and downloaded the latest LTS version, 14.04. LTS stands for Long Term Support. It means exactly what it says. An LTS Linux version is like an island in a roiling open-source ocean. You can count on it to be stable, secure and supported for as long as anything in the Linux community, usually measured in years. The key adjective here is “supported”. This means much more than support for the operating system. It also means hardware drivers and third-party apps are tested and proven to work. I learned my lesson about non-LTS versions the hard way. In my obsession to have the “latest-n-greatest”, a couple of months ago I upgraded Ubuntu to version 15. BIG MISTAKE. Half of the tasks I was asking the machine to do quit working. I had problems with the network and audio cards and the AMD video card reverted to VGA mode (640 X 480). I eventually got everything working (mostly) by downloading a couple of beta drivers and doing some other tricks, but I never got the Time Machine volume to work and the DLNA media server crashed more than it ran. After a couple of weeks of fighting it, I surrendered. Luckily I had a complete, recent disk image of my boot disk with 14.04 LTS on it. Within an hour I had nuked the version 15 disk and re-paved it with the 14.04 image. The machine rebooted with things back the way they were before I scratched my “latest-n-greatest” itch and everything worked perfectly again. Two lessons here: 1.) Backup regularly and completely (saving bootable disk images is the best method) and 2.) Don’t try to be on the “bleeding edge” of the Linux world when you need (or rely on) your machine to work reliably. Over the years (I first started playing around with Ubuntu version 10) I’ve learned that in the Linux world there’s nothing “new and shiny” enough to justify the inevitable headaches associated with up-to-the-minute releases. They’re great if all you want to do is explore and play with the newest stuff, just don’t try anything resembling production with them.
OK. Enough with the lecture, right? Right. Well then, let’s get back to my old Optiplex. I spent about $250 on the machine for some mostly unnecessary but much-wanted upgrades. I wanted/needed the machine to be as fast as I could make it, plus I needed the disk space to accommodate Time Machine backups and file/media serving. So first, I spent $95 for a 128 GB SSD with mounting hardware to serve as the boot disk and another $150 for a 5 ¼”, 4 TB hard disk for bulk storage. With this hardware installed, I laid down Ubuntu 14.04 LTS on the SSD and rebooted the machine…
WOW! This thing was fast! While the old Windows XP boot time was best measured in minutes (bordering on fractions of an hour), this new Linux setup only takes 22 seconds from power button to running desktop! Six of those seconds are used by the BIOS! Now before you say it, yes, I know the SSD accounts for much of this speed, but not all. How do I know this? Well, remember my semi-annoying lecture about backing up? My first backup of this new Linux setup (I cloned the boot SSD using Clonezilla) was done to the old 80 gig (5400 RPM) drive that came with the machine. To test my backup*, I plugged it into a spare SATA port and booted from it in 47 seconds. Slower than the SSD to be sure, but still many (and I mean MANY) times faster than Windows XP. And Ubuntu can’t even be remotely considered “lean” relative to the myriad Linux distributions available. That’s one of the many beauties of Linux. For virtually any given hardware there’s sure to be a suitable OS version and it just boots and runs faster than anything Microsoft has to offer. That fact is what makes this whole repurposing thing work in the first place. That, plus the open source community provides software to perform most any task you need. File server, check. Web server, check. DLNA media server, check. Time Machine backup disk, check. You get the point. If you configure a machine with an LTS version of Linux, it will perform the tasks you ask of it consistently and reliably and oh, by the way, IT’S ALL FREE!
One of the factors that make things especially easy for us Mac users is the similarity of the Linux command line interface. If you’ve ever used Terminal on your Mac, the Linux terminal will make you feel right at home. Linux and OS X’s Darwin kernel are both UNIX derivatives and share approximately 90% of their CLI (Command Line Interface). If, however, you are uncomfortable using Terminal then Linux just ain’t your cup o’ tea. There are some very user-friendly Linux distributions that require little or no terminal use, but configuring a machine to perform any of the above-mentioned tasks will more than likely require at least a little geekery. But true MacTexans ain’t scared of that, are we? Ubuntu and Elementary top this friendly list. For us Mac users, Elementary provides the easiest transition. One look at their home page and you’ll know why. A cursory glance gives you the impression you’re looking at a MacBook Pro, not a Linux distro…
The folks at Elementary seem to have gone the extra mile to make their Linux distribution look and feel as much like OS X as possible. The result is a very competent OS, replete with everything the average user needs to surf, get email, enjoy media and work with office documents with almost no learning curve at all. The only downside is Elementary’s relatively tiny user community. While it is a derivative of Ubuntu and uses the same software repository, there are enough differences to make it incompatible with a significant percentage of Ubuntu apps. As you will soon learn should you undertake a repurposing project like this, Linux’s power is in its open-source user base. By its nature, the number and quality of applications available for any open-source operating system is proportional to the size of its community. In that respect, Ubuntu is definitely king o’ the hill. While it is sometimes possible to “cross pollinate” Linux apps and operating systems, it’s certainly not something you should count on and I generally advise against it, especially if you’re a noob. In fact, it’s the reason I don’t run Elementary on my machine now. The Samba and remote desktop apps I count on just don’t work quite right in Elementary. It’s a bit disappointing. I really like Elementary’s GUI, but truth be told, I hardly ever look at this machine and when I do it’s usually via a remote desktop or SSH. Although I chose not to install Ubuntu Server, this machine primarily performs server roles. Currently, I’m using it as a file server, media server, web server and a Time Capsule disk to backup three Macs. If I needed the space, I could probably tuck the box into a corner somewhere and run the machine “headless”, but I also like to monkey around with Ubuntu’s GUI. In fact, the Ubuntu community provides more GUI themes and tweaks than any other platform I’ve used. I wish I had a nickel for every hour I’ve spent (some would say wasted) playing around with different looks and feels. You can make an Ubuntu desktop look like any Mac, your favorite Windows version or something completely custom and unique. Be careful though. On occasion I’ve managed to move controls (buttons, checkboxes sliders, etc.) around and changed their look so much I had difficulty operating the machine. This sort of fits with the whole open source philosophy and something noobs should be cautious of. Infinitely configurable also means infinitely destroyable.
So, the bottom line: I’ve spent a total of less than $300 and resurrected an old Pentium-class machine that I now rely on daily to perform some vital tasks. That’s less than a good desktop USB drive costs. The machine is fast and its GUI is very responsive. Plus, I’ve learned a lot about Linux and had a ton of fun doing it. The roles I’ve configured for this box barely scratch the surface of what’s available. My next project will be building a NAS out of an old Pentium III machine using a Linux distribution called FreeNAS. It’s a “lean-n-mean” distro designed for multi file system support that will turn an older PC into a very capable, headless NAS appliance. It has a wonderful web interface that’s extremely well-designed with simplicity in mind. Do I need a NAS? Na. It just looks like a fun project and building my Ubuntu machine was such a positive experience I’m kinda sad its all done. I bought the P3 box from a neighbor for $10 when he had a garage sale. I bought it “as is” with no monitor, a really crappy keyboard and a mouse with a ball in it. Remember those? Well, it wouldn’t boot from the internal disk, but it fired up and ran from an Ubuntu CD just fine. That’s all I need to get started.
You can do this too, even if you’ve never touched any Linux version. Just Google what it is you want to do. The search results will stagger you. I guarantee, the hardest part of the project will be deciding which Linux distribution you want to use. After that, just tinker and learn...
…and have fun!
* I always test backups (occasionally but regularly). Remember, no IT manager ever got fired for not backing up files, but they’re regularly axed for not being able to restore them.