My daughter handed me an old Compaq nc6000 laptop that a friend had given to her. This machine (which a web search revealed to be about 8 years old) had been running Windows XP, but it would no longer boot up. In its time, it was a pretty smoking little machine. With a Pentium M processor at 1.7 GHz, and 1.25 GB RAM (it was originally shipped with 500 MB, so I guess someone upgraded it). Rather than fight with reinstalling Windows, along with a suitable antivirus, and finding software, I decided to have a shot at setting it up with Linux.
My first inclination was to install Ubuntu, since it is one of the most popular and widely supported Linux distributions. But I have had problems in the past getting video to work on some machines under Ubuntu, and I definitely wanted to use the machine for video. So I settled on Linux Mint, which is based on Ubuntu, but includes all of the non GNU (but still free) software needed to run video. Linux Mint comes in a variety of flavours, and I chose the LXDE (light X desktop environment), since it is the lightest of the options, and I didn't want to bog down this older computer.
I downloaded the ISO file from the Linux Mint website, and burned it to a CD. As a test, I booted the computer into live mode. It appeared to work fine. One small problem, the computer did not have a built in network card. I happened to have a Asus N10 USB WiFi adapter in my tech box. The adaptor is nice and small, so I could easily use it and leave it installed. After firing it up, it connected to my network on the first try.
Next, I ran the installer program, and did a full install to the computer's hard drive. It was surprisingly fast, and the complete install was done in about 20 minutes. I put it through its paces. Video was fine. WiFi worked. I loaded a few MP3s, and the sound worked fine. The built in speakers were nice and loud. I went to YouTube, and confirmed that streaming video worked great. Finally, I popped in a movie DVD, and it too worked just fine.
Linux Mint by default installs a host of software. I started Firefox, and installed one of my favourite plugins, X-Marks. X-Marks synchronizes bookmarks between browsers on different machines. Once installed and configured, all of my bookmarks were available. Thunderbird is the default email program. It took just a few seconds to install and synchronize all of my email accounts. I was also pleasantly surprised to discover that Dropbox was installed by default. I was able to configure and sync my account in a few minutes.
I have two other key needs for my spare computer, an office suite, and a stand in for iTunes. These needs were ably met with included software. LibreOffice is the default office suite included with Mint. It has a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation software, and a database. I found the word processor to be very capable and full featured. The spreadsheet and presentation software, while not quite as fully featured as Microsoft Excel and Powerpoint, were quite useable.
Rhythmbox is the included iTunes stand in. It performed most of the functions that I demand of iTunes, including organizing music, ripping CDs, and playing MP3s. It proved much more limited when asked to sync with my iPod. I could transfer music to the iPod, but there was no way to sync apps, contacts, and photos. But since I only intended this machine as a spare computer, I can live with this limitation.
In conclusion, I was able to use Linux to set up an eight year old computer, to give me most of the functionality of a new netbook. It can serve as a useful spare computer, at no cost. I have been using this computer for a couple of months, and it has been totally up to the task.
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