Hi,
I've come into possession of an old Intel Pentium 4 (HT) HP desktop machine -
a colleague at work was upgrading some of our machines and this machine was
destined for recycling and he was happy (and generous) for me to take it
home. The previous OS which I believe was XP was completely wiped and all
data removed before it came into my possession. I believe too that it was
used as a server rather than a PC. It has an 80 GB HDD and 4 GB of RAM. I've
created boot disks for Trisquel 7.0 32-bit and 64-bit versions. I booted the
64-bit version into a live session and what I've tested so far seems to work.
Ethernet connection is working fine and I don't believe there is a wireless
card - I may consider getting one separetly owing to the layout of my place.
I have a wireless (microsoft branded) keyboard and mouse which I got from a
friend who no longer needed them and I've connected it to my tv for a
display. These peripherals work although I've found some keys aren't mapped
correctly. For example, the pipe character results in the > character and I
haven't been able to locate it. It's not mapped to the > key as you might
suspect.
I appreciate this is an old machine. I found opening applications not slow
but a little sluggish.
(1) Is this because it is the live cd?
(2) Does the fact the 64-bit live cd is operating that the chipset supports a
64-bit OS? Is there a command that I can use to determine this to re-assure
myself?
(3) Can someone provide a checklist of tests I should perform through the
live cd to see what works and what may not? I'm not new to GNU/Linux but this
is my first install. My other machines I purchased pre-installed with Ubuntu
(System76, stolen!) and Trisquel (Gluglug - Libreboot X60s).
(4) What would you recommend in terms of partitioning the disk to have
sufficient space for the OS and the applications I may install later? I
intend this machine to only run distributions of GNU/Linux-libre. Initially,
Trisquel but I may consider tinkering with gNewsense and Parabola at some
point. I have an old 500 GB external HDD that I have been meaning to offload
and I could remove its outer casing and slot into this machine as an
additional drive. But if I'm limited to the 80 GB drive how should I
partition it - root 20 GB, swap 5-6 GB, home 55 GB?
I am thinking of perhaps experimenting to see if I can use this machine as my
own email server, own'cloud' server, gnu social instance so any tips/advice
on these subjects would be appreciated. For example should one run such
things on the same server? Can one still use the machine as normal if its
primary purpose is that of a server? Cheers. TIA.
