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Weekend Roundup - Reuse Old Computers and Plant A Garden!

The adventures this weekend started with a couple of seeds, but it really just shows that it was a pretty green weekend.

First there was the trip to the local home improvement store (shhh don't tell HD, but I didn't go there for my stuff, even though I own their stock yipe!).

Anyway, it was a pretty good trip and about 200 dollars later I had enough supplies to nicely redo the landscaping in front of the condo. It was a good feeling once it was all done, even though it was a lot of work. The total savings by doing it by hand over hiring someone was probably easily several hundred dollars.

In addition, planted some vegetable seeds and I'm hoping that they grow nicely. My neighbor is also going to plant some vegetables so we can swap back and forth. This will hopefully save some money on salads this summer/fall. We'll see. If things go really well this year, I will probably increase my efforts next year.

I also managed to get one of the old computers in my basement working again by installing linux for free. Linux is my choice of operating systems for old computers because windows 98 is now so old and no one is maintaining it that it just isn't worth the hassle. And I've found that Fedora handles pretty much everything I need so I'm pleased with it. So far I'm 2/4 on using it on old machines. The other two machines that didn't fare well is a result of old/bad hardware, I think.

But if you have an old computer, and usually run windows, you might consider trying to get it going again using a Linux operating system. You can likely still use it as an FTP server or a file server which will give you some more space for photos, videos, etc and save it from an untimely death and trip to the junk yard.

Comments

Anonymous said…
I'm a computer systems administrator by trade, so I've seen about every OS imaginable through the years.

Fedora is a GOOD Linux distribution. It's a GOOD choice for older hardware, just like you say. For anyone that may lack your technical know-how, I would point them instead to Ubuntu. It's much easier to get up and running with full hardware support even if you have hardware that requires proprietary drivers -- it just warns you that those drivers are under restricted licenses (ATI, NVidia, Atheros wifi cards, etc). Like I said before, though, Fedora is also a fine choice -- just a little harder for new users of Linux.

Just to add another bonus: putting Linux on a system also gives you access to some great free games like LBreakout. It's a great source of free entertainment.

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