Saving Old Computers – and the planet

Last Updated on September 27, 2023 by David Both

I have written about how Linux can keep old computers running and out of landfills or recycling streams. My most recent article is “How Linux rescues slow computers (and the planet),” at Opensource.com and it discusses one of my computers that has a BIOS date of 2010 so is about 12 years old.

I now have an old Dell I am working on that has a BIOS date of 2005 which makes it at least 17 years old. According to the Intel web site the Pentium 4 processor was released in the 1st quarter of 2004 so that BIOS date is probably as good as anything to estimate the age of the computer.

You can see the specs for this system which are pretty minimal.

#######################################################################
# MOTD for Thu Sep  1 03:23:02 AM EDT 2022
# HOST NAME:            test1.both.org 
# Machine Type:         physical machine.
# Host architecture:    X86_64
#----------------------------------------------------------------------
# System Serial No.:    CXXXXXY
# System UUID:          44454c4c-5900-1051-8033-c3c04f423831
# Motherboard Mfr:      Dell Inc.          
# Motherboard Model:    0F8098
# Motherboard Serial:   ..Cxxxxxxxx00TQ.
# BIOS Release Date:    05/24/2005
#----------------------------------------------------------------------
# CPU Model:            Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00GHz
# CPU Data:             1 Single Core package with 2 CPUs
# CPU Architechture:    x86_64
# HyperThreading:       Yes
# Max CPU MHz:  
# Current CPU MHz:      2992.644
# Min CPU MHz:  
#----------------------------------------------------------------------
# RAM:                  3.142 GB
# SWAP:                 3.142 GB
#----------------------------------------------------------------------
# Install Date:         Wed 31 Aug 2022 09:26:13 PM EDT
# Linux Distribution:   Fedora 36 (Thirty Six) X86_64
# Kernel Version:       5.19.4-200.fc36.x86_64
#----------------------------------------------------------------------
# Disk Partition Info
# Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
# /dev/sda2       298G  9.8G  287G   4% /
# /dev/sda2       298G  9.8G  287G   4% /home
# /dev/sda1       974M  226M  681M  25% /boot
#######################################################################
# Note: This MOTD file gets updated automatically every day.
#       Changes to this file will be automatically overwritten!
#######################################################################
[root@test1 ~]#

It has a single 3GHz Pentium 4 processor with Hyperthreading so the equivalent of 2 CPUs. It originally had 2GB of DDR 533 RAM so I added 2 GB for a total of 4GB which is the maximum amount of RAM supported by this system.

Naturally, I installed Linux on it just to see how it would work. This old computer works just fine with the most recent version of Fedora. My next test is to see how well it runs a Linux VM using VirtualBox.

So yeah – when I say that Linux keeps old computers running, it is absolutely the truth.

I borrowed this computer from Digital Bridge in Wake Forest NC to do some testing for classes I will be teaching. They have a number of these old computers that were regifted to them but Windows is pretty useless on them. The only way to get them to work reasonably well is with Linux. Linux can also keep your old computers working far beyond the point where it is normally assumed they should be discarded.

In addition, Linux keeps these old computers safe from malware and bloatware which is what really causes them to slow down.