2w ago

What are some fun or unconventional uses for an old Atom notebook with 2GB RAM?

It's not worth shipping and handling, it's beaten up, and I don't know anybody who wants it. Nothing is upgradeable, unless you count inserting a microSD card.

Of course I could use it as a janky media server or a dumb SSH terminal, but I've already got other machines for those jobs. Or I could recycle it, but what's the fun in that? Suggest me your wackiest programs to try, dangerous distros, or most unorthodox setups to make use of it.

35 comments

Or I could recycle it
Could you really? E-waste recycling is a great lie made so that people don't get remorse over throwing away their devices. Electronics are too complex, diverse and full of toxic stiff to be property recycled.
If anyone wants to dive more into this, there has been some projects where people from higher income countries put tracking devices inside e-waste before sending to "recycling", to find out where they end up. Spoiler: in poorer countries, to either be scattered around, thrown into a landfill, or be scavenged by underpaid people without any protection equipment.
- There are also charities that take donations of old laptops and use them for things like education in places that don't have access to a lot of technology, so I guess you could recycle them in that sense.
  
  That would be reuse, not recycle ;)
  But that's a nice suggestion

Minecraft server is always easy and fun. Honestly any game server.
You could use it to host a simple webpage too.
- It would have to be a very old version of Minecraft. The recent ones take a lot of CPU power and RAM, even without mods.
  It would probably work great for something like a Quake III or Unreal Tournament server though.
  
  The recent ones take a lot of CPU power and RAM, even without mods.
  AFAIK the footprint is only slightly heavier than the old versions if you use the performance mods, not to mention these flags for the OpenJ9 JVM.

I don't think there's any useful way to put it to regular use for yourself, but you could:
install debian on it and keep it around in case of an emergency. turn it on once in a while to keep it updated (doesn't need to be that often, it's debian)
use it on the go (no worries about it getting stolen)*
use it a place where you wouldn't use your main laptop as to not risk damange (camping, hiking, on a trip, etc)*
install a friendlier linux distro and give it away to someone who doesn't have a computer (a 10yo cousin maybe)
give it away to someone who has a computer, but doesn't have a second one and might be happy to get one to play with
*though i imagine the battery is not in good shape given your "beaten up" description
- Instead of Debian, why not tinyCore?
  
  to play with, sure. but in the case of a backup machine, you want something reliable, rock-solid, low maintenance and easy to use, which is why I recommended debian
  
  SliTaz is fun to play and very small.
  Puppy Linux is very capable and there are Debian variants.

WireGuard, and an external HDD. Run at a remote location for off-site backup.
I do this with a raspberry pi 3 at the in-laws. I copied the data over locally before setting it up, and after that it's just nightly incremental rsync, which is fine even over my slow (35Mbps) upload.
- I've been thinking about doing this too! I have a RPi 4 that's not doing anything, and I don't really have a great offsite solution for backups and I have family in another country. Maybe next time I go over there I'll see if they'll let me set one up lol.
  
  I've been super happy with it. Knock on wood it's been super reliable. I have a single ZFS drive, take snapshots with various retention policies, nothing fancy.
  Another fun thing is to set up a reverse proxy on it as an endpoint for services on your local (home) network which can only be accessed by VPN. For example, my Jellyfin service isn't public facing, but I didn't want e.g. my parents to need to set up WireGuard. So instead they can point their TV to a raspberry pi on their network to access the service --- even a first gen RPI can handle Jellyfin reverse proxy over WireGuard for moderate bitrates!

Host a Lemmy server
- sh.itjust.breaks

Swap in a new display controller board, get a cheap Bluetooth keyboard and wire the eee PC (maybe?) to the controller board. Then, remove the internal board and drive to make space for an old Android phone on which you can install a Linux distro.
Voila! A "laptop" that you can upgrade whenever you get a new phone or if someone donates a phone to you.

Assuming it's not completely useless for this purpose, you could load FreeDOS on it and use it for playing older PC games.
MS-DOS 6.22 would be sub-optimal as it was designed with 486-era and older hardware in mind and since it doesn't support FAT32 and only supports FAT16, you're limited to 2GB partitions, while FreeDOS is actually designed with newer hardware like this in mind and supports FAT32 and thus larger drives.

See if it runs either Menuet OS or Kolibri OS, they're about the smallest non-linux OSs I know of.

Server for various open source games that don't require much cpu or ram. E.g. freeciv, battle for wesnoth.

If it’s an asus ee, the vents are all on the sides. With a couple of shims underneath it would fit in a bookshelf with a bunch of other books.
As far as uses… nat hole punching for an overlay network is one way I’ve used these devices before.

You could turn it into a Home Assistant control panel if it has touch screen support

Well, right now I’m experimenting with an old mini PC, and using a couple of USB HDDs im creating a ZFS pool to serve as storage for an email server

It's okay to let things go when they're not useful any more.
Or, turn it into art.

Could use it kind of like an extra monitor with something like Barrier.
Could use it like a home assistant for a kitchen or something, but I don't know if there's any good privacy respecting software for that ATM (looks like MyCroft went bankrupt).
I used an old laptop I had laying around for controlling a Maslow CNC. Could also use a laptop to run OctoPrint or something.

Batocera linux and retro games!

If it has an ethernet port (or perhaps a USB to ethernet dongle), maybe a PiHole DNS using Debian or the like? It is apparently supported on other Linux distros than Raspbian.
If it supports micro SD XC (i.e. capacities higher than 32GB) or you have a USB hard drive or high capacity USB flash drive, maybe a samba server for file storage? I often use my file server as a substitute for digging out a flash drive any time I want to quickly pass a file between two machines in my house.

As a TV for your kitchen?
- Bad idea, they struggle with YouTube or any video because they don't have hardware decoders for AVC/HEVC.
  Maybe can decode by software, something easy on CPU (MPEG1 maybe), and the conversion is done by other machine.
  Maybe audio?
  Reference: I have one of those Atom netbooks.