What to do with Raspberry Pi B+?

[delsoul]

I was going through some old
Belongings and found my original raspberry pi. I booted it up and still has its original OS on it. I was hoping to run Linux mint or another OS on it like a regular computer, but seems like it’s not possible. What can I actually do with this device/hardware?

 

[Nermal]

If you want to try something a bit different you could give Risc OS a go. Don't expect a competent browser, but it can be interesting to play with and see what else is out there (the OS was developed in a bit of a vacuum and doesn't attempt to be like Windows or MacOS).

 

[AJACs3]

Run Homebridge to connect those non-Apple home automation devices to HomeKit.

 

[splifingate]

I was going through some old
Belongings and found my original raspberry pi. I booted it up and still has its original OS on it. I was hoping to run Linux mint or another OS on it like a regular computer, but seems like it’s not possible. What can I actually do with this device/hardware?

I use multiple (redundant; synced) instances of piHole; one of which runs on a Pi that sits in the networking closet.

The other Pi I use mostly as a chip programmer . . . it's a little fiddly (wire-wise), but much more effective and granular than any of the cheap ch341's I've tried.

 

[Arctic Moose]

I use multiple (redundant; synced) instances of piHole; one of which runs on a Pi that sits in the networking closet.

Beat me to it.

+1

 

[theluggage]

I was hoping to run Linux mint or another OS on it like a regular computer

The original “Raspbian” OS is basically Debian, a full Linux distribution, “like a regular computer”. Just not a very powerful one, even by 13 year-old standards…

Everything is on the SD card, and if you want to run alternative OSs you need to prepare the SD card on Mac or PC (or another Pi). Part of the appeal is that you can change OS just by swapping the SD card.

What you need to do is install the Raspberry Pi imager on your Mac:

Introducing Raspberry Pi Imager, our new imaging utility - Raspberry Pi

Flash Raspbian to your SD card with the Raspberry Pi Imager, our brand new imaging utility. Download it free today!

www.raspberrypi.com

...and if you run this it will give you a menu of operating systems that you can run, even on a Raspberry Pi 1 - although TBH the choices for general purpose OS are pretty much Raspberry Pi OS, RISC OS, or Alpine Linux. But there's a bunch of dedicated OSs for everything from media players to retro gaming. I fondly remember RISC OS from back in the day (make sure you've got a 3-button mouse!), but not sure if I'd want to go back!

Pis are surprisingly viable for running Kodi or something to play playing videos stored on a NAS on a HD TV. However, a base Pi 1 may be pushing it, and ISTR that for the Pi 1 & 2 you had to buy a $5 unlock key for the MP4 decoder for some file formats.

Newer Pis are viable as basic desktop systems but the original is probably better dedicated to a single task (the advantage is that they rtake less power than the newer ones).

Main point of the Pi 1 was playing around and having fun (or mucking about with controlling hardware) - if you want a boring practical use then - as several people have already mentioned - there is PiHole (I have that running on a RasPi 2, but I thing a Raspi 1 would do it):

Pi-hole – Network-wide Ad Blocking

pi-hole.net