Hi all, the private school I work at has a tonne of old windows 7/8 era desktops in a student library. The place really needs upgrades but they never seem to prioritise replacing these machines. Ive installed Linux on some older laptops of mine and was wondering if you all think it would be worth throwing a light Linux distro on the machines and making them somewhat usable for a web browsing experience for students? They’re useless as is, running ancient windows OS’s. We’re talking pre-7th gen i5’s and in some cases pentium machines here.
Might be pointless but wonder what you guys think?
FreeGeek Portland has (had?) a sign: we clean windows.
All donated computers are scrubbed of previous data, tested & reassembled (if needed) & have Linux installed.
Oldest to newest hardware work fine.
Work 24 hours to take a system home. Training is free.
Edit. Adding:
They have a website & videos on how to use Mint OS (for browsing, gaming, homework & basics) for kids of all ages: FreeGeek Online
@EarthShipTechIntern @puck freegeek got me started like 20ish years ago! No clue how it’s run now but back in the day it was a bunch of older guys running it that kept the good stuff donated for themselves.
The amount of volume done, they’d have to be awful hoarders to make a significant impact.
Yes, people that have been there longer will look for gems to pull from the trash (wouldn’t you? I did. It’s a good place, but the pay isn’t great), but we’re talking about <1% of the volume going through the doors.
Kept the good stuff? Naw, then as now there’s plenty of good stuff that makes it to the sales floor. Kept some of the good stuff. As any computer-philic geek would. While still providing free & cheap computers for the community.
30 yrs ago, my college teacher took our class there. Inspired, I volunteered enough to earn two (or three?) systems. Would have liked to do more. Wouldn’t have minded working there.
Haven’t been in 5+ years (I currently reside 800+miles away from it), but I wish there was a FreeGeek where I am now (there are multiple independent instances across the states, just not here).
They got both of us started towards living opensource experience. Cheers to them!