Free I.T. Athens

Free I.T. Athens Bridging the Digital Divide. We are an all-volunteer nonprofit community dedicated to providing refurbished technology & education to those in need. Free I.T.

We are free software advocates. Athens (FRITA), was founded in 2005 by Michael Luchtan, Michael Moore, and Semmy Purewal. The founders were inspired by the ”upcycling” or re-use models of Free Geek (The Mothership) in Portland, OR, and BikeAthens in Athens, GA. Their aims were to close the digital divide, reduce poverty, reduce e-waste, promote technology re-use, technology education, and Free Sof

tware advocacy. Arguably Athens’s oldest technology nonprofit, Free I.T. Athens combines the power of community collaboration, free software and rescued technology and changes lives and the environment for the better. Since its founding, Free I.T. Athens has responsibly rescued over 70 tons of unusable equipment from landfills and distributed over 2,000 refurbished computers to individuals, community groups, churches and nonprofits in Cameroon, El Salvador, Peru and the United States.

Cloud server technology :)
06/01/2026

Cloud server technology :)

Does anyone have or know of anyone that has 2 hood vents to donate? it just has to work and have a way to exhaust the s...
05/31/2026

Does anyone have or know of anyone that has 2 hood vents to donate? it just has to work and have a way to exhaust the smoke up and out

Someone need a door? 80 inches tall 36 inches wide. It is an extra door that we do not need here. We replaced it with ...
05/30/2026

Someone need a door? 80 inches tall 36 inches wide. It is an extra door that we do not need here. We replaced it with a solid door to keep the dBAN room secure. Free.

05/30/2026

Do you need a nice tape deck for your audio needs? We have this fully tested and fully working Nakamichi BX-300 ready for you. $200.00. Cheaper than anywhere else on the internet

A donor that wants to stay anonymous has donated this excellent workbench that is also ESD protected as you can see ...
05/30/2026

A donor that wants to stay anonymous has donated this excellent workbench that is also ESD protected as you can see Brandon Queen is already making use of it

05/29/2026
We honor the brave men and women who gave everything for our freedom. Their Courage and sacrifice will never be forgotte...
05/24/2026

We honor the brave men and women who gave everything for our freedom. Their Courage and sacrifice will never be forgotten.

Played around with AI Video....
05/22/2026

Played around with AI Video....

Click to watch the AI video "Empower Athens: Bridging the Digital Divide" generated with Synthesia.

Ever thought about building a Home Lab using completely OPEN SOURCE solutions? We did… and it has been an awesome learni...
05/12/2026

Ever thought about building a Home Lab using completely OPEN SOURCE solutions? We did… and it has been an awesome learning experience!

At Free I.T. Athens, we’ve been diving deep into enterprise-style infrastructure using tools anyone can explore at home. Here’s what we recently deployed:

* An OPNSense Firewall for network security
* A Proxmox VE virtualization server
* TWO additional Proxmox nodes for failover and redundancy
* A Proxmox Backup Server for automated backups
* ZFS storage configuration for reliability and performance
* Hourly VM backups (okay… maybe that part was a little overkill , we're doing hourly so see how much it can back up)

This setup may be more than most home labs need, but the experience of learning how to deploy, configure, and manage all of it has been incredibly fun and valuable.

We’re currently writing a full article explaining how we built everything step-by-step so you can explore these solutions for your own home lab projects!

Check out these amazing open-source platforms:
Proxmox VE https://www.proxmox.com
OPNsense Firewall https://opnsense.org

Keep an eye out for the upcoming post — and yes, we’ll also send it through Mailchimp!

AND… we will host a hands-on class where you can learn to set up one or both of these solutions yourself… and keep what you build.


Address

995 Hawthorne Avenue
Athens, GA
30606

Opening Hours

Saturday 11am - 5pm
Sunday 11am - 3pm

Telephone

+17064270840

Website

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