Re-purposed old laptop

Took an old Dell Inspiron 9400 that was built for Windows XP and re-imaged it with the Linux Ubuntu distro. Given that XP hasn’t been supported since April 8th of 2014, the laptop (a 3.49kg gorilla with a now retro chassis) was essentially unusable without some changes. The result was an excellent learning opportunity: figuring out the BIOS, how to configure the thumb drive, activate and load the file, and then using the new OS. It was one of my first projects. And a LOT of fun.

In retrospect, Ubuntu is not a lightweight product – and is still too much for the 9400, which is slow and clunky – but secure for now. It has been fun to date and I am going to update to a much lighter Linux distro when the website project is where I want it to be in terms of showcasing my IT abilities.

Insight to my thought process: The 9400 has a 1.6 GHz Processor, 2 GB RAM, and 100 GB Storage capacity running an Intel Core Duo Processor T2300. I’m guessing this is a 32-bit architecture – TBD. So I’d be looking to install something Ubuntu based (I’m used to it) and light enough that it will be usable. I quite like the chassis on this machine and it’s awesome using something in my home lab that otherwise would have found its’ way into a landfill somewhere.