Книга: Fedora™ Unleashed, 2008 edition

Using Legacy Hardware

Using Legacy Hardware

If you have an older PC based on an Intel 486 CPU with only 32MB RAM and a 500MB hard drive (which can be hard to find nowadays), you can install other Linux distributions such as Debian from the Debian Project at http://www.debian.org/.

Installing Fedora on legacy hardware is easier if you choose to use more recent Pentium- class PCs, but even older Pentium PCs can be used and purchased at a fraction of their original cost. Such PCs can easily handle many mundane but useful tasks. Some of the tasks suitable for older hardware include the following:

? Acting as a firewall, router, or gateway

? Audio jukebox and music file storage server

? Handling email

? Hosting a remote printer and providing remote printing services

? Network font server

? Providing FTP server access

? Remote logging capture

? Secondary network-attached backup server

? Serving as an intranet (internal LAN) web server

? Unattended dialup gateway, voice mailbox, or fax machine

? Use as a "thin-client" workstation for basic desktop tasks

Older PCs can handle any task that does not require a CPU with a lot of horsepower. To get the most out of your hardware, do not install any more software than required (a good idea in any case, especially if you are building a server). To get a little performance boost, add as much RAM as economically and practically feasible. If you cannot do this, cut down on memory usage by turning off unwanted or unneeded services. You can also recompile a custom Linux kernel to save a bit more memory and increase performance.

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