You should be careful: If you start using Linux on your old computers, you might run the risk of never buying another one.
If you read about my experience at 100Mhz, you probably already think me a nut for being amenable to the idea of downgrading all the way to a Pentium with 16Mb. But now it seems that in a roll call for machines and their ages, there are a few more lunatics out there. Like hrod beraht, who runs Arch and evilwm on a 9-year-old Athlon and sees no need for a new machine.
So be careful. Don’t let Linux fool you. You need a new computer every couple of years to be part of the in-crowd, a productive member of society and to gratify your biological instict as a predator. So go on out there and buy, buy, buy!
And send me your old one. You know you’re just going to throw it away anyway. I’ll take care of it for you. … 😈
I’m running Debian on an old machine and its still fast as a hedgehog on methadrine. I hope you don’t get too many people sending you their old machines, there won’t be any for me to dumpster dive.
I use a Pentium II 300 Mhz Thinkpad with 256 Megs of RAM as my main machine. I have newer desktops, but I use the Thinkpad more than those.
My 8-year old Athlon server is 1.2Ghz (512Mb RAM) and still flies like the wind. I’m seriously considering replacing it this year with a 5-watt Pogoplug, and getting a second one for a workstation.
Even with the overhead of X, anything faster than 1Ghz has to have serious hardware or software problems before I perceive it as “slow”. And as long as I have all my console apps, I’m content all the way down to double-digit megahertz.
I hope nobody I know sends you their old machines because that’s how I get mine!
And recently, in addition to the 9 year old Athlon running Evilwm, I picked up another similar machine, also with 512 MB or RAM (for free because Windows was molasses slow on it) and it’s running a minimal Debian install with Ratpoison as a window manager, and it also runs as fast as the wind in daily use. As does my my 800 MHZ Pentium III file server. 😛
I might feel sorry for the people with dual-core machines and 4 GB of RAM who still think their machines are slow, except they’re great hand-me-down computer suppliers! 🙂
Hrod Beraht (Bob)