How to keep using old and cheap hardware.Or how I bricked my QNAP and went Linux

CDs may be more-or-less obsolete on modern hardware, but if you're like myself, or like this author, running old hardware that does the job just fine is preferable over upgrading. And for someone learning about computers for the first time, having multiple old computers to disassemble, rearrange, and put back together, can be an invaluable learning experience.

If you have one working computer with a CD drive, it's probably useful to have two, so one can be used to rescue the other if need be. Some older hardware (Core 2 Duo era) of mine has presented issues when booting from USB, but doesn't have any problems with CDs.