How I wish I did not throw away my old PC. Ever since rediscovering the world of Linux, I've found that Linux today can do so much. It can turn your old hardware into internet PCs and home entertainment units.
The Linux I know from more than 7 years ago has now exploded into a myriad distributions and interesting uses. So much so that it gets confusing and difficult to choose. I'm having a ball playing with LiveCDs and USB drives.
In the future, I'd like to post more of my 'adventures' with the various GNU/Linux flavours. But first, some interesting suggestions. If you have an old PC at home, here are some things you can do:
- Use GeexBox to turn it into a home media player. Preferably, if you have some cash to spare, buy it a video card with TV output and you're all set. GeexBox itself is only about 6Mb. Now you can compress all your videos into DivX format and play them using GeexBox. Just burn the ISO from http://www.geexbox.org or configure your own ISO.
- MythTV! Get yourself a TV or video capture card, a large harddisk, and create your own digital video recorder. MythTV looks very nice and has some advanced features like Media playing/ripping, scheduled recordings, commercial detection and skipping, basic video editing, picture in picture, and even built in weather forecast and games. This one is definitely interesting. http://www.mythtv.org
- Internet pc. Just install a diskless system or boot from CD. Use it to browse securely and do simple office work even. Every time you reboot, you get a nice clean and safe system. No more worries about your family infecting the PC. For this, there are many options available, like SLAX (http://www.slax.org), Damn Small (http://www.damnsmalllinux.org), puppy (http://www.puppylinux.org), and many others.
If you try out any of these options, do drop me a line to let me know how it worked out!
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