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?
useless
pre 7th gen i5’s
We must live life on completely different parameters
Yeah, I said they’re “useless as is”, because they’re running an outdated OS, have internet explorer on them, etc. the hardware is obviously far from useless but getting it to a good place in terms of user experience for a younger audience will involve a time investment. So yes, useless as is.
If they can run Windows 7, they can run any Linux.
We’re talking pre-7th gen i5’s
My gaming and photo editing PC has a 4th gen i5.
As long as you can secure them it should be fine, and as long as you can deal with the user account issues. You’ll either need to join them to your Windows domain or explain to people why they can’t use their normal username and password. You’ll probably find the kids understand it better than the teachers.
Yeah, securing them might be the biggest challenge tbh. I work full-time at the school and won’t really have time to provide tech support. The windows machines are ‘managed’ by a third-party IT solutions company, but like I said they’re mostly useless at this point and are rarely turned on anymore.
Students don’t have user accounts so a generic log in could work. could see the school not allowing a Linux install without some sort of management/tech support procedure in place though. Security is probably the biggest hurdle to clear but I guess if we’re paying an IT company to manage window machines I don’t see why they couldn’t support Linux too, unless they’re unfamiliar with the OS :(
The hardware is totally fine, Linux requirements didnt really change at all in the last years.
KDE Plasma is a really well maintained desktop, poorly also with a ton of customization. It has a very familiar user experience. GNOME is also nice but not familiar at all.
On these machines, recommendations:
- some stable distro like Debian 12, with automatic background updates
- OR an atomic distro like Fedora Atomic. (Still waiting for CentOS bootc, which would be the best of both worlds. Or Rocky/Almalinux Atomic)
- GNOME or KDE
best would be to always delete the user account, so they need to store stuff on a network drive. That way they cannot permanently break a desktop, but you still dont need active directory stuff.
Be aware that managing many PCs is work. Keep it as simple as possible, install apps as systemwide flatpaks, keep the OS minimal, automate updates.
Maybe have a look at ansible, I think it is complex but the learning curve is worth the effort if you need to manage more than 4 machines.
daily drive Arch on a Core i3 550 ,I think you’ll be able to figure out something
I highly recommend scavenging the machines, you’re going to have your best chance with the machines if they’re maxed out on RAM even if you end up with 1/4th of the total machines
As others have stated, reviving them through Linux should be a piece of cake.
However, how many is “a tonne”? This is important information for the community to provide recommendations on administrating those systems.
