Homelab

371 readers

3 users here now

Rules

Be Civil.
Post about your homelab, discussion of your homelab, questions you may have, or general discussion about transition your skill from the homelab to the workplace.
No memes or potato images.
We love detailed homelab builds, especially network diagrams!
Report any posts that you feel should be brought to our attention.
Please no shitposting or blogspam.
No Referral Linking.
Keep piracy discussion off of this community

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

communick@selfhosted.forum

rglullis

I need to run Windows on a 10 y/old PC. (alien.top)

submitted 11 months ago by Ayly_@alien.top to c/homelab@selfhosted.forum

16 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Howdy!

My parents have a 10+ years old HP that is almost unusable, but they want to keep the computer since they use it to print documents and it "looks nice." I'm trying to find a viable solution to make the PC run smoother. Here are the options I'm considering, and I want your opinion on those:

Install a Windows-like Linux distro so my parents aren't lost. I showed them Ubuntu, but it wasn't conclusive.
Running a thin client that connects via RDP to a Windows 10 or 11 VM on my Proxmox server. Would USB passthrough work? We have a stable network, so latency isn't a big issue.

Since I'm only home during weekends, I don't want something that could break easily. Technology and them is not a match.

If you have any other ideas, I would really appreciate it.

Happy homelabbing!

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] notautogenerated2365@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

I don't know about option 2... if you are only home during weekends, I would stick to something more reliable. (and no, I am not sure if USB passthrough would work this way or not.)

If you want to really boost performance, I would change the hardware. Since the laptop is 10+ years old, it likely has DDR3 SODIMM memory and something like a 640 GB super-slow 5400 RPM 2.5 inch hard drive (of course, check inside the laptop before buying parts if you plan on changing hardware).

I would give it at least 8 GB of RAM (for printing / editing documents and web browsing) seems like a good idea (I would get Crucial or Samsung because then you don't have to play with XMP, which is unsupported on some laptops, to get the full speed). Of course, upgrading to a 2.5 inch SATA SSD would greatly improve boot and load times. But, be careful, as some laptops only leave enough room in the 2.5 inch drive bay to just fit a thin 5400 RPM hard drives. A lot of SSDs are thicker than that, so make sure you have the room if you choose to do this.

With an SSD and 8 GB of RAM, you could just theoretically use the built-in Windows reinstall feature to get a completely fresh Windows install, and it should work fine for a while (should be Settings > Update and Security > Recovery > Reset This PC).

Or, you could get a nice Windows-like Linux distro like Kubuntu or Linux Mint.