I found an old notebook PC lying around and I’m wondering if it could be enough to run a few services like the arr suite, qbittorrent and pi-hole.

Here’s a few specs: Cpu : Intel Celeron 1011 1.6ghz Ram : 1Gig Ethernet port

If you think it’s not a total waste of time, what distro would you install?

  • StrawberryPigtails@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    It’s doable but you should treat it more as a learning opportunity than a production system. Honestly, that’s old enough that a RPi might be able to run circle around it.

    The Celeron 1011 is a 32bit processor, so Debian or Gentoo may be the only distributions that still support it and you will probably have to compile from source anything you want to run. A gig of ram was good for its time.

    The Linux Unplugged crew from Jupiter Broadcasting are currently doing a 32bit challenge to see if such systems are still usable for day to day usage. It’s going to be interesting.

  • Moonrise2473@feddit.itEnglish
    0·
    11 months ago

    I tried with a Celeron 1 GHz. It was slower than a rpi and it sucked 65 watts at idle 🙈

    But at least can give some experience, I prefer playing the sysadmin with real hardware than a VM

      • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        01·
        11 months ago

        It is 100% a great idea to see how you feel about the concept of self-hosting with an old machine. If it’s really old (and I’m talking like anything from before about 2008-2010), perhaps consider snagging an old “tiny”/1L-class box from eBay for cheap. Dell, HP, and Lenovo units can be found for WAY under $100 all the time, and slightly more modern units can still be had at a reasonable price, depending on the model. They’re great platforms to play around with. Just shove a cheap SSD in there and play with it.

        Source: an old m920q with an i5-8500T is running pfSense for my home network