ok heres whats going on.... i have an old Pentium 3 desktop with 256 megs of ram needless to say its limited in ability of advanced programs


but i know its good for allot still im just stumped for what...

i have debian etch on it now but i can change it if required


so really what i am asking is how would you use a computer like this one and what should i use it for?


btw the hard disk is 80GB if that helps

That's a pretty good computer, I'd say. I still have a 233MHz Pentium II with 64 megs of memory and a 1G hard drive running (as my router, actually, but still... )
The actual question is what you can not do with it. I guess, resource-hungry games are out of question. Not much of audio/video processing could be done either. But pretty much everything else will do just fine on it. You can use office programs, you can code in C, Python or other languages, you can do some web development, use it as a web/mail/chat gateway, learn databases or you just name it...

eh im leaning twords using it for storage and web communications....

anything else?

How would you want to use such a computer is the first question... How I would use it? I would experiment with: a samba server, a mysql server, several distros, cms's, freebsd, openbsd, netbsd, an apache server, a home baked server, a webcam and the program "motion" a ssh server, xdcmp and so on, play with it! Get your light to turn of and on with it, test media center software...

sounds interesting......

ok my idea may appear stupid but i have been wanting to try it for a while. take a box like this one and hook it into my network via wireless and connect it to my tv and turn it into like a jukebox. its a bit stupid but it could be kinda kool cause u could like download a song and play it right away ,rather then download it then burn it then play it.

you mean use something like geexbox??? ive been there done that

Excellent response. I say find the programs you want to use in the repos, download them and try them out. I, too, am using a P3 based system w/384m RAM, and it does everything I want, including audio/video processing. I've found numerous games for Linux that play quite well, and most of my Windows-based games play perfectly with Wine, also. (although modern resource-hungry games/programs are out of the question). If you find something you really need that doesn't work, then you might want to consider an upgrade.

Cheers

How about signing up for one of those distributed computer projects like Seti@home?
Who knows you may be the one to find intelligent life out there!
There are alot of other worthwhile projects.

Become a tester for Linux distro's, and other FLOSS software.
Could mean alot of work on your part.

Run some sort of server or mirror service that would benefit others.
Attack your enemy eg a DOS style attack against their PC.

This one is in the Ubuntu repo's:

http://elisa.fluendo.com/

It's really nice and simple.

I too have media center ambitions, making a slick interface with big icons to use on the television, I still have problems with my s-video out though, I love trying to solve the problems I run into and learn about computers and os's.

I found it in Gentoo portage, It's really cool, it can record from your webcam when it detects motion (highly configurable), It can take pictures or make a movie with time stamps, really cool to play with. What would also be cool is if you would for example get your computer to play a mp3 of barking dogs when some one enters the door.... possibilities are endless! That is what is nice about Linux, you have an ocean of toys for free, I love that.

thanks guys i'll certainly give some of those a try