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Hello guys. I'm wondering if it will be worth to refurbish an old Toshiba laptop.
It has a Celeron M350, 2GB of ram. the hdd must be replaced
Is this enought in 2024 to create some king of server or a Little project to have have.
Thank you
Posted : 17/01/2024 1:19 pm
A little power hungry and not powerful but that's absolutely not a major issue. Run it with a Linux server (DietPI is excellent and easy to use) and you'll be able to make it into a file server, video server, music server, VPN... and so on - ALL at once!
I use some very unexciting ARM machines (think Raspberry Pi) and it powers all of those. It's just great.
DietPi-Software - Lightweight justice for your SBC!
Take everything I say with a pinch of salt, I might be wrong and it's a very *expensive* way to learn!
Posted : 18/01/2024 2:42 pm
That Celeron Toshiba is a trooper but for a general server in 2024 it might struggle. However, it could be a fun learning tool to play with basic server setup.
Posted : 25/03/2024 11:08 am
I guess it depends on what kind of server they're expecting. I can remember the days when a 486 would serve hundreds of users, logging in an out, inter and extra office email and more. Yup, a lowly 486 and an early version of NT Server, Un*x or Netware.
Most of the work a server performs is I/O (unless we're talking games but Minecraft and some others will run on RPi3). So what's left is the infrastructure. I use 5Ghz wireless lan (because I don't need the security of a fancy smart switch and wired network) but it can easily handle me saving/loading photos and playing an audio book at the same time.
With SSDs the lag time is not that noticeable because the discs don't have to spin up.
Take everything I say with a pinch of salt, I might be wrong and it's a very *expensive* way to learn!
Posted : 29/03/2024 3:15 pm
I might be a bit late to this post (possibly by a few months) but yes, I would recommend looking into Alpine Linux.
Posted : 09/06/2025 10:11 pm
marcdraco reacted
Alpine is wonderful but not really for people new to Linux. It's probably the smallest "serious" Linux around, and that includes the ones designed to run inside routers. I haven't followed it for a few years now but I just checked and sure enough, it now has a desktop option running Gnome 48, LXDE or KDE Plasma. (Swoon!)
For people who just want to "get it done" with the least amount of pain (or at least, the minimum of learning) DietPi is the better option. It's got all the setup baked in and, to date, after running it for many years, I've never had an issue. Most recently we've had some unexpected power cuts here and in spite of that (and not having a UPS) the couple of nano-servers I run on DietPi came back without missing a beat.
I'm sure Alpine would have too of course. Windows... Mwahahahah! I'd still probably be trying to get the hard drives unscrambled.
Take everything I say with a pinch of salt, I might be wrong and it's a very *expensive* way to learn!
Posted : 10/06/2025 5:30 pm