What to do with P3 computer.

[powerMarkymark]

Sister bought a new system and gave me her old P3 833mhz.

I've heard that these old processors are more than adequate for a server running Linux.

1) is this correct?

2) if yes, links to "how to" as I have never done this before.

TIA

Marc

 

[CraigRT]

we have linux dialer boxes using 486's that still do the job just fine (they are ghetto but work for what they are), so for that a P3 is totally overkill even... and sufficient at least for most other things.

 

[sparky853]

There are lots of "How-To" guides out there on turing an old box into a server....Toms Hardware did an extensive article on making a router/server with a linux distro.

Just do a google search, you should find lots of info. Your biggest problem is likely to be deciding which distro to use

 

[AluminumStudios]

What do you want to "serve?"

I use my old P3 (running Windows) for my DSL Internet Connection Sharing, software firewall, P2P software (which I don't want to run on my main rig that I do video editing on), and backup storage space (via mapped network drives.) It works great and my P3 is only 500 MHz.

 

[uOpt]

Linux as such works well on 486-100 and above, and that include running apache and a few other servers.

The question is what applications you want to use. Your desktop is what can require more resources.

To use Mozilla in X11 you want a P-III 600 MHz or better. For OpenOffice probably more but I did never use it outside work.

KDE and GNOME might require some horsepower, but you can scale the bells and whistles down and in any case you are not forced to use them. A desktop with fvwm2 and no background magic will run well on lets say any Pentium-MMX and above.

 

[Rongisnom]

I've got an old used school computer P3 733 with 768Mb of Ram running as my home/development server. I've got Win 2003 server running on it along with Domino 6.5.1. No I wouldn't want it being pounded on by a horde but for the 6 networked computers and maybe 20-30 people that hit the Domino HTTP stack at any one time it runs fine. The $250 price tag including monitor sure didn't hurt non either.

Go for it, you've got the makings of a great web server. Go load up LAMP (linux, apache, mysql, php) and have fun.

 

[addragyn]

With SCSI disks and Linux that machine could easily serve hundreds doing basic file or web serving.

Go to www.contribs.org for a simple, extensible Linux server.

 

[powerMarkymark]

Thanks everyone.