My aunt's got an old slightly broken laptop. She's got a new one. No one has any need for this old one anymore. It has no selling value. Etc etc etc.

I know I can put an SSD in it and run it on Linux to make it run smoothly as a laptop for emails and word processing etc, but I already have a crap old laptop for exactly that.

What sort of fun things can you do with an old laptop? I'm talking like, using it as a whole new device. Maybe using it as a 'TV Box' of sorts - getting some radio apps, and hacked streaming apps... Or loading up a bunch of PS2 games on it... or having it as the jankiest personal assistant, with timers, and calendars, and all that.

You know what I mean.

I love pointless gadgetry.

  • MaoTheLawn [any, any]
    hexagon
    ·
    3 days ago

    Is this all on Linux? What distro are you using?

    Very interesting.

    • Gorb [they/them]
      ·
      edit-2
      3 days ago

      Yeah for my server I use ubuntu LTS cos its well supported and documented. For my TV one I use fedora cos fedora is neato as well as my other machines. Debian is another good choice for a server OS. I tend to run all my services in docker with docker compose as its simple to use with a few native services and some of my own built services as well all routed through nginx proxy to give them convenient domain names using pihole as the DNS.

      Another tip i don't port foward and expose any of my server stuff to the public internet the risk of opening up my shodily made home server for everything to see is too high. For hosting things on the interwebs i spin up ephemeral vps machines for each thing only for as long as i need it