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Hello Δ. I got my dad's old laptop (pic related) and I thought maybe you guys know what can or should I do with it. I thought about installing Linux on it and maybe making it a small server for my webpage. That's all what came into my mind. It's almost a decade old laptop with a busted battery, which means that it has to be plugged in 24/7. The specs are: Pentium T3200 2GB DDR2 RAM clocked at 332 mHz An 256 gb SSD Also sorry for the lighting in the picture.

>>4137 Install emulators nes-psx and then play the original kotor is what I'd do.

>>4137 Also keep winxp on it for such games, or win7. Get a new battery. My netbook is 11 years old and less specs but it's battery lasts 2-6 hours. 1.6 ghz 2 gig ddr3 80 hd. I play all the old emulators. Right now The Legacy of Kain is laggin'. Some psx it just can't handle :( But yeah op, don't use linux. The wifi driver won't work most likely. Just keep xp or win7 so says I. And get a new battery.

>>4139 >And get a new battery. I'll try. It's not a name brand laptop, so I guess it'll be harder to get one. And I'll keep the win 7 on it then.

>>4140 Is it 64 bit? If it is, you could try running lakka on it for those emulators I suggest, but not kotor. Then dual boot another OS like lubuntu lxde or something (light weight destkop environment). Because I use low end older laptops I plan to use those two operating systems. Though linux pisses me off. To even get the PSX bios you must use a network to transfer. Makes me rage. It'd need 64 bit because the n64 does not emulate on 32 bit lakka, but can on 32bit windows project 64 in contrast. So project 64 beats mupen64 it seems, if you ask me. I have lakka 64 bit version and lubuntu 64 bit version waiting for me to use them for the day my hard drive fails on one of my cheap computers. Or, I end up with a pi 4 or three, same thing as an option. Arm lubuntu and arm lakka. Because I'm a bum (neet as the brits would say it) this is just how I see things. Don't bother with lakka if it's not 64 bit. Also, lakka needs bin/cue for psx rather than iso/img, of which makes me super mad.

>>4141 it's 32 bit :/

Mine's 32 bit as well. Have to keep the windows. The newer epsxe allows cpu throttling as an option if the old windows can run it, mine can. Also messing with the frame skip option will help games of PSX be more playable. But you know GBA games are of the same tier of gameplay anyway so you can play the soykaf out of them instead of playing all those 3d games on the PSX and or those jrpgs everyone likes that are on the PSX. Actually, RPGs are okay because lagging won't kill your ability to play the game and they're probably emulated better than 'hidden gems' anyway. Windows being able to handle project 64 is nice that 32 bit can do it. I'm still shocked by that, though I'd not expect much to emulate very well, I'm just saying that it does work. Legend of Zeldas and the Mario game ought to be playable. Maybe Megaman 64, Resident Evil 2, would also be playable. I remember Star Fox 64 failing and Shadowgate lagging hard too and Perfect Dark lagging kinda bad. Banjo bear game thingy will not work, everyone knows that. Most of the 500ish games you could download won't likely work for it, but still, project 64 can work on a 32 bit windows. paper mario and kirby were awful attempts also. Maybe I need to try a different version of project 64 actually. It's pretty bad. Or they really never did learn to emulate things properly, of which I heard was an issue with the 64 carts, yet now people claim actual flash carts run the games fine for actual N64s. Hard to believe. But those carts are like 200 usd sometimes. My meandering post aside, keep to windows and don't expect the N64 games to work much nor the PSX to be fast though they will actually work more often than the N64 will. Lakka needs bin/cue for PSX, and a 32 bit can't even run mupen64 on it. So windows is superior for gaming. You should also download other stuff of course. Like qbittorrent. It's fast and opensource. I have that downloaded, AdiIRC, an older version of firefox runs okay on it (ver 66.03) to the point of watching p*tl0cker clones. I did alter it to run only one process though, of which it at first refused untili I went into about:config and changed dom.ipc.processCount to force it to only use 1. Some clones were lagging before that. Maybe it made no difference, but such older tech cannot in the midst of such gratuitous javascript in browsers run HD videos and 480 was giving me issues on a site for that reason, though just barely when saved mkv files of 1280 etc were playable and didn't give me too much issue. I used media player classic, of course, of which is something else you should download. Calibre I used for books. It's free. You can use it to convert books too. Another thing I have is adobe projector so I can play swf games if I want that I save, as well as have adobe flash installed to firefox, I use common sense when sensing danger and have no antiviral software and the first thing I did was turn my updates off to avoid further bloatware installing as a matter of fact. Also, OP, set it to classic mode because it's nostalgic, almost. XP version looks more retro, but still I like it okay.

Me again OP. Resident Evil 2 emulates pretty bad for N64, unless it's the version I had to use that worked for this win7 32 myself. Megaman 64 looks alright though. Both games could be played easier on the PSX but iso/img/bin(cue) they take up so much more space ya know? With how lakka is if I ever get forced on it it'd be wise to use psx, but bin/cue. I know of a site with both img/iso and bin/cue. Or rather one for each scenario. Of course epsxe can do either. Before you play FF7 on a epsxe beware the glitches. City of The Ancients glitch is prevalent. I have psxeven installed and two version of FF7 just in case. Also I own that one on disc myself, so....but main stuff like FF7 should be playable even on outdated emulators (to clarify older windows won't necessarily be able to use the newest least buggy emulators) and even on soykafty hardware. Mario is going to work, zelda, the most famous RPGs will work, but then sometimes you get fuarrrked. For instance, the gba emulation on Zelda, TMC, in Vatti's castle it will randomly reset the game I've seen. In android emulators it was WORSE, but on an old XP visualboyadvance as long as I hurried I beat the game. Maybe it was luck. I wonder what it is that YOU wanted to do with your old laptop OP? Final fantsy 2 for the nes I still can't get to work oddly. I wonder why that is? You'd figure nestopia could do anything OP. Are you there OP? I'm so alone. Oh, Cave Story will run on it fine as it is from 2004 and a freeware pc game. You must play it. If nothing else you can play that. In between Doom and Cave Story those two find their way into everything because they are so liked. I don't like Doom though. Guess I'm gay. I have it downloaded in various versions/ports regardless though so not aids level gay just gay.

Yes installing gnu/linux and using it as an email server would probably be a good idea. Before doing that though since you already have windows installed you might as well try out some retro weeb novels or rpg games. I recall Rance7 being really fun, not only because of smut and there's a lot of it but the dialog between characters is also pretty funny. Another game that I recall from my windows days is "Yume Nikki" which is a cult classic.

>>4137 There's a lot of good suggestions ITT. Install LXLE for a light, fast and full desktop https://lxle.net/ and then use it as a normal computer. It would be more than enough for all kinds of emulators. GB, GBA, NES, SNES. Or it could be all-in-one sever for anything. I2P router? I2P torrents? I2P Website? Tor hidden site? Syncthing backup server?

>>4149 >linux >all kinds Lakka, as I told OP in my postings to him, cannot emulate a n64 if not 64 bit pic. Windows7 can, project 64 is better than mupen. Also, retroarch forces psx to use bin/cue and most sites gave iso/img. Windows is better for those two emulator reasons. It'd be different if he had a 64. retroarch is bad and it should feel bad

>>4141 >>4144 >>4146 Thanks for your posts Anon, sorry, I was sleeping when you were posting. I'll definitely look into emulation now!

>>4151 Make sure you use the right versions and also get a good epsxe with it's bios and plugins included. I downloaded 1.7 epsxe just to get the plugins, then copied them into the 2.05 one I'm currently using. Bios are probably everywhere but there are three. Even gba emus sometimes demand a bios. The visualboyadvance I'm using is 1.8.0-511 and snes9x is 1.52. I'm also using nestopia (ver 1.40)and zsnes (ver 1.51) I downloaded but do not use though it works.The version of project 64 I'm using, because the newer wasn't working, is from my old win xp and it's ver. 1.6. Make sure you choose 32 bit versions. I figure when using a new OS the versions randomly crash when they're not right and we've both 32bit and win7 so the versions I typed out ought to work. The pirate p2p site should have epsxe 1.7 with the plugins inside if I recall. If it was 1.7. 1.7 works fine but doesn't let you cpu overclock. Also, of course visualboyadvance plays gameboy and gameboy color games. In case that's not obvious. And zsnes I think even had a rewind feature. Zsnes is a weird famous thingy it is. It makes it feel like you're on a fantasy console or something. The sites they say not to soykafpost but I don't even care, check out r2o4m6s2m4a6n3ia57.c8c43 Added random numbers to try to prevent detection. Removed numbers. Though they give isos and img for psx, so c3d5r2o6m9a2n5c5e dot com is another Remove numbers. If you want bin and cue that is for future retroarch use. By the pirate site I obviously mean the imfamous peer 2 peer one. Then again maybe my plugins are bad and that's why some of my games are lagging to the point I had to use cpu overclocking and mess with frame skipping. I don't know.

OP here, I'll bump

OP back again, bumparoo

Since it's such a piece of ѕһіt machine (and an even bigger piece of ѕһіt server) you'd probably want to do some very minimal web design. This project may be of interest: https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2018/09/how-to-build-a-lowtech-website.html Optimized a web1.0-style website to be hosted on solar power. Honestly wish the rest of the 'net was like this. Cut the bloat, just present the info in a simple, brutally efficient way that doesn't resist or try to break out of the design of the protocols, languages, and browsers that all evolved in times with far more restricted resources. But honestly I have no idea why you want to make use of that old laptop that is pretty much outclassed by a raspberry pi 3 or 4.

>>4308 No it isn't. Those linux machines cannot outclass a windows xp nor 7. The software can't do it. I'm not OP but I've tried to move on to that as an option over my bum old laptops I have to rely on, similar to op they are in age. They do far better and are easier to use than the tiny low voltage green earth sh1lling that is those European children devices. They were meant to teach children computer programming and electronics work and have been s h i l l e d waaay too hard. >can't say s h 1 l l here Oh boy. They rely on retroarch and that's bad. They can't install from the tar easily like windows can install by just copying the downloads folder. They're just plum worse.

>>4308 Also, about hardware, op is like 2ghz while the pis are 1.4 at best, and op is 2 gigs ram and most pis have no reason to use more than that even though recently you can go above that that is a new thing. So no, it does in no way outclass it that I am aware of.

Linux is no longer suitable for machines this old

>>4858 It is, use void (or minimal debian) with fvwm

>>4137 You can run it headless as a server, but you should check its power consumption in the long run. I did this with a broken laptop of mine and thanks to it I learned how to use a shell, SSH, iptables, CUPS, etc. Now I have a Raspberry Pi to cover the same things but that busted laptop was great to practice with.

>>4139 I used to run a Lubuntu (until 18.04) on a ~15 yo Dell Latitude D610 laptop without any inconvenience.

OP definitely experiment with some lighter linux distro. linux will run a lot smoother than win7 download a distro (like ubuntu) that searches the web for drivers upon install the new lubuntu sux to be honest

>>4858 that's a lie. i run a mini instance of ubuntu with just jwm (on a atom n450 netbook from 2010, a machine less powerful than OP's one) and it uses just 106mb of ram. for coding on Eclipse (java EE + Tomcat server) it goes up to 600mb of ram consumption

if you want to emulate ps1 stuff without messing with drivers then look into this old ass emulator called "psxfin". it doesnt need drivers but i think it still needs a bios. psxfin runs nearly everything at fullspeed even on something like a celeron m laptop from nearly 20 years ago. plays most stuff except for realy picky things like front mission 3 that needs beetle psx otherwise it either doesnt load at all (psxfin) or crashes randomly in missions (epsxe).

>>4327 >>4326 youre the embodiment of the dunning-kruger effect

>>5659 He says Raspberry Pi can not run Windows XP or 7 which is true, and it pretty much cuts a huge amount of OS-specific software a hobbyist might want to run on his computers.

Oh wow, forgot I had this thread here. The computer has been just sitting idle, haven't done anything with it, since the virus struck and I forgot.

>>5794 OP ignore the morons saying use windows. I literally got a 12 yo laptop from my father recently as well. I opened it up, cleaned it and changed the thermal paste. Now it runs perfectly on linux for most day to day activities when previously it overheated on idle on windows 7. I'm using debian but honestly almost any linux distro with a lightweight DE would work. Also if you don't need to rely on proprietary firmware then alpine linux or void musl would be ideal. In my case I needed proprietary firmware for thr intel centrino wifi card which is why those two distros were out of the question.

>>6060 >linux >driver issues for older laptops means op's wifi probably won't work without windows >have to install software using non-intuitive network craving methods rather than just copying and pasting things in windows Inb4 installation without a network while using Linux. When the world ends we will be using windows. No one installs from the tar. they sudo and apt get their way around then have to look up random soykaf for setting up what they sudo'd and got. I recently installed a browser on lubuntu for someone that hates firefox illogically on it, and chrome was not intuitive to install. I had to follow a step by step guide. I'm the one that gave him the lubuntu because I knew it came with everything one would want, it's also why I'd use lakka for emulation if it doesn't, but installing things is such a pain in the ass. I hate linux so much. But yes, he can risk doing the ol' lakka installation and trust the systemd bloatware that is lakka. or, you know, learn to use debian like you, and I ASSUME that you can do it without a guide? Without the network access? I am a moron but I think most people won't remember how to use Linux really all that well. So I told him to get the winxp emulators I use. I also like windows media player classic more than any other OS's media player I've ever used in my life. It does everything. Nothing else does though.

>>6065 Speak for yourself. Just because you're incompetent to use gnu/linux don't assume others are just as incompetent as you are.

>>6065 You know you could have used the full multi-DVD ISO version of Debian, which includes the full offline repository? There is absolutely no need to connect to the internet to install Debian packages.

>>6068 If someone has to find their way allll the way here just to ask what to do with their laptop odds are they're not much more savvy with computers than I. >>6070 So it comes with deluge and emulators installed and all? Do you just have to type out sudo apt-get install visualboyadvance gtk and then it just werks? Or do you have to remember literal coding language, changing directories with cd, mounting with mnt, and whatever else. With windows you must click the exe file pretty much and use the gui to copy and paste things. Also I doubt having all of debian's files installed is going to be a small download. An OS need not be bigger than 1gb yet you're saying dvd, what is it, four gigs of shovelware when you could have just had winxp? Old windows is like 600ish mb big and would just werk, provided that you had some pin to put into it during installation I guess. Anyway, I've never learned how to install from the tar and websites even say not to try when installing things as it's convoluted.

>>6077 You've never heard of Synaptic before? The GUI frontend for apt included with every version of Debian? Literally all you do with the 4.7 GB full iso of Debian is insert the DVD or USB drive and then install the packages using the Synaptic package manager. Yes, it includes deluge and emulators like Dolphin or higan.

>>6082 No I've never synaptic before.

Install Debian or Linux Lite, shid post, war drive, mine dodge coin https://sourceforge.net/projects/cpuminer/files/ Host a .onion web server and IRCd server to have your own encrypted chats

>>6085 It’s dead easy to use the command line interface too. sudo apt install neofetch (where neofetch is the package name you want). It will not only install “neofetch” but install everything it needs to run (aka “dependencies”). I would happily help you install Debian over a Zoom session fren. Go here https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-including-firmware/ Download the .iso for 32-bit, use Balena Etcher to make your USB stick and then boot your laptop from that USB stick Again, I would happily walk you through it from beginning to end. It really is easy, if you have done jt before

>>6488 How can you mine dogecoin on such low end hardware? I'm actually honestly asking. I'd love to mine dogecoin on a bunch of low end hardware.

Old PCs and lightweight distros are my speciality! LXLE is my daily driver. LXLE is my favorite and I've been running it for years. https://lxle.net/ Antix is also a very good one. It is also systemd free. https://antixlinux.com/ If you want to go REALLY small and lightweight, or want to go portable and run it from a thumbdrive, try Slitaz. https://www.slitaz.org/en/

>>6497 You can still mine dogecoin on a cpu miner. Lots of different miners out there, both command line and GUI. Obviously, you should join a mining pool too.

>>6498 ¿Lubuntu is good? Thanks

>>6498 >Antix is also a very good one. It is also systemd free. The init Daemon on that thing is a broken mess. And Better not to mention the political soykaf anticapitalista put on his distro. Also, why would OP want to run a distro from a thumbdrive when he has an ssd? Instead of obscure things, go simple and easy, OP: Ubuntu (server/netboot) with jwm. A Huge community, any common problem can be easily searched on the web, and it's very stable (it's built to run on servers after all). 106Mb RAM usage on idle, with an X server and jwm running.