I've never minded any sort of coin before, and realistically I don't think it would be economic for me to do so due to electricity costs here in the UK. However, there are two places where I could mine without paying electricity charges.
1) I have a friend with solar and wind generators, who makes far more electricity than he can use, so gives it away.
2) I pay for a virtual private server (VPS), to host my companies website on. That has dual cores, but CPU usage is under 1% most of the time. I pay a fixed charge per month, so if mining uses up more electricity, it will not cost me any more.
Since I have never minded before, I really don't know what I am doing, but I thought I would have a go at home, just for fun. I was particularly attracted to Primecoin, as I am interested in number theory.
I downloaded the linux wallet version 0.1.4 client from
https://primecoin.io/and set it running on my computer, which is a Dell 7920 workstation. That workstation can have some serious hardware in it
* 3 TB RAM
* Dual 28 core CPUs
My Dell 7920 is nowhere near that, having just 32 GB RAM, and a single Intel Xeon Silver 4110 CPU (2.1 GHz, 8 cores, 16 threads. Turbo speed). Details of CPU performance at
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Xeon+Silver+4110+%40+2.10GHz&id=3106(The machine will be upgraded soon, but that's to work with some electromagnetic simulation software, not for mining.)
After around 18 hours my computer had synced to the Primecoin network
1) I run the machine for about 3 days, with nothing whatsoever generated. Is this to be expected, or have I done something wrong? (My load average is about 15.8, so the machine is working hard.
Some parameters reported by the program
{
"version" : "v0.1.3xpm-3-g5ca523316",
"protocolversion" : 70001,
"walletversion" : 60000,
"balance" : 0.00000000,
"blocks" : 4027734,
"moneysupply" : 34670070.61027372,
"timeoffset" : 0,
"connections" : 8,
"proxy" : "",
"testnet" : false,
"keypoololdest" : 1610046153,
"keypoolsize" : 84,
"paytxfee" : 0.00000000,
"unlocked_until" : 0,
"errors" : ""
}
2) Would using a pool be better? I don't really understand how they work.
3) Has Primecoin effectively died? I see a lot of posts about it around 2013, but very little recently.
4) If anyone is feeling generous, and would not minding sending me a bit of a Primecoin, my address is AKDFmJTBCkyDcrtsSGJ3iYR9jbQS74KQgo
I would be keen to see if I can actually collect anything. 
6) Looking at my debug file, I see quite a bit of activity, so I am definitely on the network
2021-01-08 20:02:55 getblocks from height=4027698
2021-01-08 20:02:55 block locator make @ epoch=1610136175.982431 height=4027698
2021-01-08 20:02:56 block locator made @ epoch=1610136176.420092
2021-01-08 20:02:56 getblocks -1 to 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 limit 500
2021-01-08 20:02:58 getblocks -1 to 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 limit 500
2021-01-08 20:03:05 getblocks -1 to 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 limit 500
2021-01-08 20:03:36 received block 349abe536e3f6e5323f3edcf206e3d520ad0b91714c79d9c94826bdf3f95cde1
2021-01-08 20:03:36 Committing 10 changed transactions to coin database...
2021-01-08 20:03:36 SetBestChain: new best=349abe536e3f6e5323f3edcf206e3d520ad0b91714c79d9c94826bdf3f95cde1 height=4027699 difficulty=10.834318 log2Work=30.38267 log2ChainWork=54.022335 tx=7706388 date=2021-01-08 20:03:04 progress=1.000000
2021-01-08 20:03:36 ProcessBlock: ACCEPTED
2021-01-08 20:03:53 ResendWalletTransactions()
2021-01-08 20:04:02 received block 174dae14d647ab5a4ee890ca457f8d754725c6faa8fb2b5dfec5eed6624ace6b
2021-01-08 20:04:02 Committing 1 changed transactions to coin database...
2021-01-08 20:04:02 SetBestChain: new best=174dae14d647ab5a4ee890ca457f8d754725c6faa8fb2b5dfec5eed6624ace6b height=4027700 difficulty=10.83433 log2Work=30.382754 log2ChainWork=54.022335 tx=7706389 date=2021-01-08 20:03:35 progress=1.000000
2021-01-08 20:04:02 ProcessBlock: ACCEPTED
2021-01-08 20:04:18 Flushed 12449 addresses to peers.dat 60ms
2021-01-08 20:05:29 received block f4bcd757970e7cb952c6749fa42863dc5516100557610206173d53e35a0c3a55
2021-01-08 20:05:29 Committing 2 changed transactions to coin database...
2021-01-08 20:05:29 SetBestChain: new best=f4bcd757970e7cb952c6749fa42863dc5516100557610206173d53e35a0c3a55 height=4027701 difficulty=10.834346 log2Work=30.38287 log2ChainWork=54.022336 tx=7706390 date=2021-01-08 20:04:06 progress=0.999999
2021-01-08 20:05:29 ProcessBlock: ACCEPTED
2021-01-08 20:05:29 getblocks from height=4027701
