Friday, April 22, 2016

Great Uses for an Old PC

New Uses for Old PCs

You like to try new things? Nothing will seem newer than a freshly installed operating system on your old PC—even a downright elderly computer will feel brand new. Most alternative operating systems (translation: not Windows or MacOS) are based on Linux, which comes in a variety of options called "distros." Popular examples include Ubuntuelementary OS, and PinguyOS. You'll find interfaces similar to Windows, and they come with a ton of included software packages. They work pretty great on PCs with 4GB of RAM or more. If you want to hand the laptop off to the kids, there are distros designed for toddlers, like Qimo(recently retired, but still available), DouDouSugar, and Edubuntu.
You might want to try creating your own version of a Chromebook—a computer that's essentially running Google's Chrome browser as the OS. Sadly, Google doesn't give Chrome OS away, or even sell it. There is, however, the "open source" (but still Google-controlled) Chromium OS project based on the same code. Even that's not simple to download and install. Consumers are told to buy a Chromebook laptop. However, you can download Chromium OS fromArnoldTheBat. Here's a video to help you through the whole process and the full article too.

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