Former XP POS turned into the media/development hub of my house
About a year ago, my father-in-law was rummaging through his house and decided that he no longer needed some spare computers. To him they were just taking up space. (This is another example of my in-laws’ M.O.: a habit of holding on to various items they collect over the years despite the fact that they will never use them again.) Instead of chucking them, he gave them to me.
When I got home and investigated the bounty I received, I found an IBM running Windows 95, a Dell Dimension 4500S with 256 mb of RAM, and a Dell Dimension 4600i.
Somewhat curious about the IBM, I investigated the internals and put it on the shelf for further analysis at a later date. I found a cheap RAM dealer on Craigslist and upgraded the 4500S to 512 mb, reinstalled Windows XP, added some other basic software, and sold it for a couple hundred. But the Dell 4600i turned into a project on a completely different level.
Until this point, our household relied on two laptops, but I seized this as a great opportunity to make a working desktop and turn the office into an actual office instead of just an extra room. Looking for a new adventure, I didn’t just reinstall a Windows OS; I went off the deep end and installed Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx.
I had spent most of my computer childhood working in a Windows environment. After college I migrated most of my personal computer usage to Macintosh, but this was my first encounter with Linux. I was a little nervous at first, but with the computer being a hand-me-down, I didn’t really have anything to lose, and as it turned out, the world to gain.
For those of you who don’t know, Linux is a very easy system to get started with. For Ubuntu, all you need to do is go to Ubuntu.com and download copy of the install disk. Burn it to a CD, pop it in your machine, and you’re ready to go. (As of this writing, the main download is 10.10 Maverick Meerkat.)
The installation process is very straight-forward. One important thing to keep in mind is that much of the installation involves your computer retrieving packages from remote servers, so you need to make sure your box is connected to the internet. There are also good walk-throughs available all over the internet which will give you some useful guidance, especially if you don’t have much (or any, in my case) Linux experience.
I wanted this machine to double as a normal desktop computer and as a media server, so I opted for the server version of Ubuntu. These are some of the packages I chose for my Ubuntu server:
- Firefly–a music serving platform that plays nicely with other iTunes-enabled computers on your network
- miniDLNA–a media server compatible with Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3
- Apache Web Server–a platform for serving web pages (a functionality that I am just now, a year later, figuring out)
- Samba–a file-sharing server that is compatible with Linux, Mac, and Windows
Topher was a tremendous help in this endeavor because he has been running an Ubuntu server for quite some time. Now, instead of searching for external hard drive to store more media or struggle for ways to connect my media to my gaming consoles, I have a highly functional, easy-to-use server just a few WiFi packets away and an office space where I can crank out blog posts, websites, and a host of other things.
So, if you have a spare computer sitting around, fire it up and start an adventure. Your life might be forever changed.
–SLee
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