My basement has a bunch of old computers in it. Unfortunately, the newest OS on them is Windows 2000. Who wants to buy a new version of Windows? And it probably wouldn’t work on such old computers. Another reason why Linux is awesome! I have used Ubuntu Studio (any Linux would probably do) to get these old computers working again, this time as servers in my home’s network.
Here I will list the various things I have learned about running Linux on older hardware as a server operating system. I hope some of it will be of use to others who want to repurpose their old computers.
When Your Console Puts Out Unreadable Text
Sometimes when installing Ubuntu Server on a computer, you may boot the system to find that the console is garbled black text on a white display. To fix this problem:
- reboot the computer (You should be able to tell when there is a logon prompt on the display, though the actual text is unreadable. If you want to make sure you don’t risk corrupting files by forcing the computer off, you should be able to log in if you type very slowly and carefully. Then sudo shutdown -h now -r to restart it.)
- Stop GRUB from auto-selecting the boot option by pressing an arrow key when GRUB shows up.
- Press e to edit the Ubuntu boot option.
- find the kernel line and add vga=1024x768 to the end of the line. Or you can find
gfx_modeand make gfx_mode = text. Either works. - Press F10 to boot.
- If this fixes the problem, edit the /etc/default/grub file to have grub_gfx_mode (or something similar) equal to text. If not, do some research on your computer and see if you find anything. This fix always works on my computers.
- Run sudo update-grub to save the configuration.
- Reboot, don’t change any GRUB options, and see if your console now works.