Is a old raspberry pi viable for anything with Linux? (programming.dev)

submitted 1 week ago by vrek@programming.dev to c/linux@lemmy.ml

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I don't expect much but I found an old pi I bought probably 2016(may of been 2017). It was supposed to be a pi-hole but was never able to get the dns forwarding to work on my modem. It still works but wanted to somehow convert it to a regular distro(it's based on a micro-SD and I don't have any more microsd readers). I wanted to set it up as a basic system I could ssh into a terminal. Not expecting anything fancy or even graphic based. A lot of stuff I want to learn/practice "work" on windows but are native to Linux, like vim/neovim nmap gcc etc. Is this feasible? Am I under estimating what's possible with it?

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[-] doodoo_wizard@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 week ago

You need an sd card adapter that lets you read and write the sd card from your pc to put an image the pi can boot onto the sd card.

You will need this anyway when you eventually run into the sd card having a bunch of of bad blocks or unreadable sectors.

It will work ”fine” for what you’re describing but consider getting one of those sata/m2 adapter boards so your root filesystem isn’t based on the media explicitly designed for temporarily holding information until the user can get back to a computer.

If you already have a computer, just set up a vm.

this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2026

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