maybe use it for playing around and learning new stuff
this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2025
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Hmm, that’s a good idea, I have a homelab setup with my jellyfin server on it, but I don’t actually have a computer I can just mess around with and “ruin” the OS
If it doesn’t already, upgrade it to a cheap SSD. You can get them as cheap as $10 brand new nowadays for 128GB. You’ll increase the boot time and make the future plans much better.
perfect machine to experiment with lightweight self-hosted services like pihole, wireguard vpn, or even a simple audiobookshelf server that you can acess from your jellyfin network.
I second this. It's great to have a scrappy laptop to test stuff out on.
No risk, all of the reward.
Core 2 duo is bearable until you run a browser. Overall, it is too weak machine to use modern software. "Macness" won't make things easier either. Give it some Mac fan and wash your hands.
Oh, but now OP will be motivated to test all the lights browsers.
Back when I did that, Midori was a clear winner in terms of usability. If you want to make the browser even lighter, you’ll start bumping into some pretty significant compromises. If you don’t use modern websites, you can actually get away with something like Netsurf or even Lynx.
Should be ok to remote into a more powerful machine. That's what I do with my oldies. That way the heavy lifting is handled elsewhere.
That is quite a rare type of usage. Those who need "thin client", already have one (modern and actually thin), those who don't -- don't have and don't need, let alone some old Mac.
Nothing fancy at my end. Just Rustdesk to my i7 laptop from other rooms in the house using Debian as the client. Works pretty well even from away, so I only have to maintain one 'good' computer.
So you use a laptop to connect to a laptop and think that many people should too? :)
That's peculiar... yes.
I don't know anything about Mac hardware, but if it's possible to put another 2gb of RAM in there and an SSD, it should be fine for web browsing.
I did something similar for a friend. I spent about $25 on hardware to put equivalent upgrades in an old laptop that had a single core celeron processor. I installed linux mint xfce. It ran firefox fine but couldn't quite play smooth video on YouTube. It was otherwise usable. A dual core should be workable.
It should be absolutely possible to put a data SSD in, that model also has an unofficial max ram capacity of 6gb
If you have a homelab server chances are you are able to run a VM with remote access. If that's the case then you can use the MacBook as a thin client for remote access.
Could be useful if you like to have something to SSH into things.
For instance, I find it useful to SSH into my desktop through termux on my phone. But using a phone keyboard for that isn't very comfortable. But yours has a dedicated keyboard.
Run tinyLinux
I'm running klipper for my Ender 3 with almost that exact same config on a 2008 STI IS1415. It also manages to run i3 with qutebrowser without a hiccup. Compared to the Pi 3B+ I had before, I get a keyboard and screen to control the printer without running to my desktop on the other room, and the integrated wifi is actually pretty decent, it even shows the camera feed smoothly.
Try installing Debian or Opensuse MicroOS without a Desktop Environment, that way you can save some memory and disk space. You can run cockpit if you want to control it through another machine. Useful if the keyboard or display isn't working.
You can use it for learning about self-hosting like setting up podman/docker or installing firewall etc. You can even run a simple pihole DNS server.
I see a very decent media player, maybe a PiHole, or you can add some USB storage and have a nice backup server.
Just because it won't run a browser it doesn't mean it should be thrown away.
Core 2 duo? I had one of those in my desktop back in the day. Waaaaaay back in the day.
Check out Bodhi Linux 7.0 HWE
It's good to keep some old computers to play around with. This looks particularly old, so you could look at trying some ultra lightweight desktop environments and browsers - don't really have any current recommendations there myself but it could be fun to see what you can do with it.