Thursday, March 24 2005 @ 10:26 PM EST Contributed by: glosser
O'Reilly presents this beginner's tutorial on creating a multimedia box out of old PC hardware by installing Knoppix to it's hard drive.
Are you the kind of person who can't toss out old gear? I know I am--though I must admit that embracing the art of junk-collecting has come in handy from time to time. For instance, this article will show you how to resurrect a tired old PC by installing a modern operating system, and then revitalize the computer as an internet-enabled CD player, DVD burner, and MP3 jukebox.
I have the perfect test subject sitting in my scrap heap: an HP Pavilion. It was a decent PC in its day: 350MHz Pentium II processor, 128MB RAM, 3GB hard disk, and a DVD drive. I'll assume you're in the same boat.
The secret sauce we'll use to revitalize our elderly PC is Linux, the free operating system based on UNIX. Linux is available in more than 300 varieties ("distributions"), enjoys plenty of online support from around the world, and comes with a truckload of applications, including free CD/DVD players and recorders. (Did I mention "free?")
Several Linux distributions will run fine on a resource-constrained PC. Slackware is a popular option. The flavor I recommend for this project is Knoppix.
