Hands on: Revive an old PC with Linux

A few months ago we looked at running Linux on older machines and how this can make a computer that has been confined to the bottom of a cupboard for a few years useful again.

The recent introduction of low hardware specification ultra-small laptops (or ‘netbooks’, as they’re coming to be known), such as the Asus Eee PC and the MSI Wind, has resulted in a bump in the growth of desktop Linux use.

As it is considerably more efficient than Windows Vista and generally performs better than Windows XP on equivalent hardware, Linux has found a niche area and thrives on these devices.

However, the ‘low’ specification of these systems is only low compared with the average modern computer.

These machines, typically having 512MB to 1GB of memory and a reasonably fast CPU, are certainly good enough for web browsing, playing DVDs, watching Youtube and so on, and are more than capable of running a modern Linux distribution without problems.

So what about computers more than just a few years old? Reader Graham Steel wrote to ask about his computer. He said: “I have an old IBM Thinkpad installed with Windows 98 and incapable of running newer versions of Windows, with just 96MB of Ram and a Pentium II CPU.

"I investigated live editions of Linux and decided on Damn Small Linux. I was very pleased it recognised the PCMCIA network card and everything was up and running straight away.”

That sounded all very promising. Unfortunately, though, Mr Steel found he was unable to run Real Player, which he needs to listen to BBC Radio programmes, and wondered if there was any way to get around that.

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