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Asked by DrProfessorKit on 12 Jan 2015.
Question: I have an old computer tower and I was wondering if I could remove it's old OS and replace it with a different one (for instance the Raspberry Pi OS). Is this possible and how would I do it?
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Tim Stephens answered on 12 Jan 2015:
The OS for a Raspberry Pi won’t work directly because it’s compiled specifically for that computer. BUT, the Raspberry Pi OS is based on Debian Linux, which is a free operating system that’s available to download from http://www.debian.org
You basically download the image that they make available, burn it to a DVD, reboot your computer, and tell it to use the DVD drive to load from. After a bit of a wait, there will be instructions that tell you what to do (there are also decent instructions on the Debian website).Have fun!
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Andy Hearn answered on 13 Jan 2015:
I’d like to expand a tad on Tim’s excellent answer (anything to do with Linux is excellent 🙂 ):
There are other distros (operating systems based on the Linux kernel) that provide “LiveCDs” which basically are DVDs (or in some cases still CDs) that you boot the computer from, it will let you have a play around with that operating system without doing anything to your hard drive. (It’d be good to bear in mind that running off a LiveCD is always slower than running off the main drive).
So if you find a distro that suits your taste, you can then tell the LiveCD to install itself onto your computer (of course after backing up any files you want to keep 🙂 )
I’ve tried quite a number of distros, and I seem to have settled for LinuxMint KDE (which is derived from Debian too), and ArchLinux:
ArchLinux has a very steep learning curve to start with, but you get total control over your system with Arch. I would recommend that anyone coming over to Linux from Windows to try the other distros first, and over time, if they want to, moving to ArchLinux will give you far greater understanding of how operating systems work and knowledge to fix things should anything go wrong 🙂
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arch_Linux -
Wallace Viguier answered on 13 Jan 2015:
Hi,
Just to add a bit here. In general pc are based on a architecture called x86. This family of processors date from 1978 and is what is used for all Pentium, Core Duo, i3/i5/i7 and so on.
So you can choose most OS who support those processor and Linux is one, you could also install another version of Windows, it all depends what you want to do with the machine. Generally Linux is great as much lighter than windows and free. If it is your first time wanting to get into the Linux world I would suggest you to use Ubuntu which is very intuitive and has an interfact which is close to Windows.
Comments
DrProfessorKit commented on :
Thank you!
I was wondering if I could take the XP OS off and then replace it with the Pi OS, obviously that won’t work though so I’ll use Debian instead (thank you for preventing huge errors!).
Also, could I use that to run a web server? I don’t want it for the computer capabilities I want it to run a server, hence the Raspberry Pi idea!
Tim commented on :
Yes. There are several different webservers available on Debian (and also on Raspberry Pis). I’m using lighttpd on a Pi at home, and Apache on my server (which runs on Debian). There’s a bit of a learning curve with any of these things, but there’s lots of forums and websites offering step-by-step guides to getting things working.
DrProfessorKit commented on :
Thanks again!
I think that setting up an actual site would be a lot more fun than just getting one of those easy things! I love a challenge.
So, what would you suggest to use for it? Also, does it need to be plugged into my wifi router? Someone said something about a Network cable!
Tim commented on :
Lighttpd is supposedly easier to set up, but it doesn’t really matter. There’s lots of support forums for both apache and lighttpd. I’d use apache normally because that’s what I learnt first, but if I was starting again I’d probably use lighttpd.
You’ll need to connect the computer to your network unless you just want to access it locally (if you run a webserver on the same computer as you have the web browser on, you don’t need it to be connected to a network).
DrProfessorKit commented on :
Cool! Thanks for your help, I was slightly confused.
I hope it’ll work! Thanks again!
Wallace commented on :
Hi,
Just to add on this when you will have your web server configured and some website you want to show the world you will need to route the traffic to and from your server to the web via your router. In order to create this yo uwill need to do what is called a port forwarding. See a goog tutorial on it: http://www.howtogeek.com/66214/how-to-forward-ports-on-your-router/
DrProfessorKit commented on :
Thanks! I think before I try to fully convert a laptop to a server I may test it out on a Raspberry Pi! My IT teacher said that I can borrow one for a while, so I think that will help me have a greater understanding of what I am up against here! 😀
Wallace commented on :
Good idea to start with Raspberry as you will find plenty of documentation and tutorials on the web.
And the good thing is that when you will get a grasp on how linux works on it, then it is very similar to use OS on any other platform.