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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[-] pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 week ago

If you need to reimage it, it sounds like you're looking for "Headless Rasbian". As others have said, it is based on Debian.

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?

Absolutely. And it's fun.

Am I under estimating what's possible with it?

Haha. Yeah. I read somewhere that the Pi3 is the most capable budget PC ever produced, and I have no reason to doubt that claim.

But you can always do more with it later. May as well start with trying what you're interested in now.

[-] vrek@programming.dev 2 points 1 week ago

Yeah the problem is I don't have a card reader on my main desktop and I tried a bunch of my old passwords and none worked so I was just going to reimage it.

this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2026

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