Running a modern IDE on a Pentium III laptop using a smartphone.

Background

I bought a nearly two decade old laptop, originally to have a cheap interface with a raspberry pi.
A brief summary of the specs:

  • Model: Dell latitude C600
  • Processor: single core Pentium III 750.0 MHz.
  • Memory: 128.0 MB PC133.
  • Display: 14.1 in TFT (1024 x 768).
  • IO: A lot, even IR and a single USB 1.0 port.
  • It makes nostalgic sounds.

Installing Linux on the laptop

This was a bit more of a hassle than I expected. No matter what distro I tried it kept erroring out at some point. I suspected the cd-rom drive might be faulty, but but even with Plop the laptop would not boot from a USB stick. Network booting was the solution so a house mate left it overnight in a closet with a raspberry pi that served the image.
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In the morning I was greeted with Ubuntu!

Installing Linux on the smartphone

There are many ways to install a chroot environment with linux on android, I was already running Kali NetHunter in Termux.

Installing NetHunter in Termux only takes a few commands and a lot of time depending on your phone and network connection.

pkg install wget
wget -O install-nethunter-termux https://offs.ec/2MceZWr
chmod +x install-nethunter-termux
./install-nethunter-termux

Finishing up

My first idea was using VNC but because of the USB 1.0 port this did not work well. Luckily x forwarding works with minimal lag. Connect the devices with a USB cable and enable USB tethering on the phone. Run these commands on the phone:

#start NetHunter
nh
#install and setup the openssh server
sudo apt-get install openssh-server
sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config

Edit the following settings:

Port 8023
X11Forwarding yes

#start the openssh server
sudo /usr/sbin/sshd
#start the xfce4 session
xfce4-session

Run these commands on the laptop:

#restart network manager after starting USB tethering
sudo service network-manager restart
#start ssh connection with X Forwarding
ssh -L 5901:localhost:5901 kali@192.168.42.129 -p8023
#start x
xinit

And with that we can now use xfce4 on the laptop!
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I promised a modern IDE, fortunately java works great on arm so PyCharm and InteliJ work fine! image could not be loaded
Even though it’s functional and I could definitely have learned C or Python on it, I wouldn’t recommend this project for anything serious. You could lose data when the USB disconnects and Samsung even broke USB tethering for a few months after I finished this project.