Had the old Netvista X41, nice look, bought it for the girlfriend back
then. But got demoted fast with it's P4 and 256mb of ram.

For a time it was my bbs. Its resilient, build like a tank and can
reboot on its own after a power failure, so it was perfect. But still I
had a better machine available to make a virtualization server, so I virtualized the image of the machine on that server and that was it, the machine went to collect dust.

From time to time i would put a old windows xp or try distros of Linux
but apart puppy linux nothing was really fast enough.

I'm going to move soon, so I had to decide do I take some parts in it
and send the rest to recycling or do I try one last time to make
something useful with it.

Tried a lot of distro again, wanted to have something still supported. lubunthu 18 managed to work kind of fine but slooooooow for anything
more that opening a terminal in the gui. Firefox would be unusable. More
ram would help ( though it had placed 512 in it, but nah must have used
it on something else, it was a 256)

so i disabled the gui and it became more usable. I though how about a
media server ? tried on install plex but nah, it's 64bit now.

but i found something not so bad. I don't know if you know it, it's
called Gerbera ( https://gerbera.io/ ) wasn't too much of a pain to
install and make it a service that would start on boot up.

So it's great it support UPnP so my Onkyo Amp see it, my Volumio hacked
radio, and phones etc.

it can be configured to watch a folder so when you drop media in it it
update the database. So I've added smb on the box so from elsewhere i
can just put media remotely. So I can shelf that machine anywhere and
don't have to go physically add files to it.

So thanks for reading, just thought it can give an idea of what do to
when a old machine with low specs.

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þ Synchronet þ MtlGeek - Geeks in Montreal - http://mtlgeek.com/ -

Re: small media server out of a all-in-one netvista
By: Ennev to DOVE-Net.Hobbies on Fri Aug 07 2020 09:52 am

So thanks for reading, just thought it can give an idea of what do to
when a old machine with low specs.

You know, all throughout your story, I was thinking "Tiny Core Linux". It has the bare minimum to run a graphical session. If you pick the core version, it has the bare minimum to run a text session. It is designed to let you build what you want on top of it. If I was to use old hardware and wanted a modern operating system, I would try Tiny Core Linux the first thing.

--
gopher://gopher.operationalsecurity.es

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■ Synchronet ■ Palantir BBS * palantirbbs.ddns.net * Pensacola, FL

On 2020-08-07 5:01 p.m., Arelor wrote:

I would try Tiny Core Linux the first thing.

Cool I'll check it, what is it based on ?

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þ Synchronet þ MtlGeek - Geeks in Montreal - http://mtlgeek.com/ -

Re: small media server out of
By: Arelor to Ennev on Fri Aug 07 2020 04:01 pm

Re: small media server out of a all-in-one netvista
By: Ennev to DOVE-Net.Hobbies on Fri Aug 07 2020 09:52 am

So thanks for reading, just thought it can give an idea of what do to when a old machine with low specs.

You know, all throughout your story, I was thinking "Tiny Core Linux". It ha the bare minimum to run a graphical session. If you pick the core version, i has the bare minimum to run a text session. It is designed to let you build what you want on top of it. If I was to use old hardware and wanted a modern operating system, I would try Tiny Core Linux the first thing.

--
gopher://gopher.operationalsecurity.es

That is one of the advantages linux has that the desktop user crowd
overlooks. For awhile when I was still using dialup I used a package called Coyote linux, and it was a dial on deman router that also delivered DHCP, and it booted from a floppy on an AMD K6-266!

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■ Synchronet ■ The Cave BBS - Since 1992 - cavebbs.homeip.net

Re: Re: small media server out of a all-in-one netvista
By: Ennev to Arelor on Sat Aug 08 2020 07:48 am

On 2020-08-07 5:01 p.m., Arelor wrote:

I would try Tiny Core Linux the first thing.

Cool I'll check it, what is it based on ?

It is based on nothing. It is so compact that they had to build it from the ground up.

A kernel plus an X11 compatible server (which is actually not your regular Xorg) plus busybox and a couple of utilities.

The only thing that comes close to this level of compactness and is still current and maintained is Slitaz, which is extremely tight but includes a web browser and some more goodies, and it is
also built from the ground up.

--
gopher://gopher.operationalsecurity.es

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■ Synchronet ■ Palantir BBS * palantirbbs.ddns.net * Pensacola, FL