Found a great source for dead-cheep pcs ... https://freegeektoronto.org

charity -- they do some kind of computer recycling & educating stuff

Heading over there tomorrow to check out some bright prospects

Bought a shiny old Acer Aspire AX3810 for < Can.$30 & got it up and running.

After unsuccessfully faffing around with vnc and smb (client firewall shite?), I got nfs and http servers up, the bare minimum for this thing to work as a drop-in replacement.

It's pre-loaded with Linux Mint, an Ubuntu clone/reskin of dubious value (the reskin, that is). I was sorely tempted to nuke it for a clean install but Mister Lazy, hypervisor of my id interceded. It configures pretty much exactly like Ubuntu with 99.99% of everything pulled from Ubuntu repositories. Dumb, useless, but it does work. I guess not subject to Ubuntu's lame attempts at monetization, so that's something.

Slow AF but with 8G of RAM I expect it will do.

Quad core, 2.33GHz. I'd have given my right arm for that back when all I had was a 386SX. 

Mint's value is as a way to wean people off Ubuntu/Windows - and as a stepping stone Cinnamon is ok, but I wouldn't run it on a server.

Wonder if there's any places like FreeGeek around here...

Free Geek is awesome! I might volunteer there, and spread my brand of brazen ignorance among the underclasses. Apart from it being a 90-minute commute.

It turns out I probably would have spent less time on configuring a clean install as I have on a 'few, minor tweaks' to mint just so I can get it to serve vnc. Which isn't fait accompli by any means.

The gpu is even worse, it only does the desktop in software rendering, which looks like shit. Not a deal-breaker for a headless server though.

The box is real pretty, and real small, deffo the smallest desktop I've owned.