I have always been interested in computers, and would find myself hanging out with the Computer Science students instead of the Aviation Management or Business Management students I was a part of. At home and at work I have been largely self-teaching myself using computers starting with Excel and Access with VBA through ASP and SQL at work. Thankfully my current employer values education, and so I have been taking classes and not only learning the technology, but un-learning what I have been doing wrong over the years. At home, though, I have been teaching myself Linux, system administration, networking and the overall method of migrating our system from Windows to Linux. I am involved in the Danbury Area Computer Society (DACS.org) I have the opportunity to take what I've learned the hard way and hopefully help others.. I have been enjoying Open Source for a while now, and I am hoping to get a better understanding of the entire model and application.
Authored Comments
Sweet. Which System76 system?
I haven't purchased a computer for my use since 2000. The ones I have have been generously given to me by a fellow Linux user (when all of my systems were less-than-useful), businesses getting rid of old systems that employees have been upgraded from, and my Mom.
All of the computers currently come from pre-i3/i5/i7 chip days, but they run and handle Linux fine.
1. Compaq CQ56 laptop with the motherboard swapped out for an Intel.
.....SCREEN: 15" screen
.....CPU: Intel Core Duo
.....RAM: 6 GB Ram
.....HDD: 256GB SSD
.....OS: KDE neon
.....OTHER: extra-large battery (~ 4-5 hours worth)
Because of its size, it is the more portable laptop and so I use it in that way. I am also experimenting with LXD/LXC and use it to be productive during lunchtime (audio, image & video editing)
2. Dell Inspiron 17" laptop. Due to the screen and HDD size, this counts as my primary computer.
.....SCREEN: 17" screen
.....CPU: Intel Core Duo
.....RAM: 6 GB Ram
.....HDD: 512GB HDD
.....OS: Pop! OS
.....OTHER: extra-large battery
I have a 2nd hard drive with Windows 10 that I swap in-and-out as necessary.
This laptop runs a little better and better with Linux though the stats are nearly identical.
A nice feature is that they both use the same type of RAM. Sof if I wanted to I could max one of them out to 8GB of RAM and leave the other with 4GB but right now I balance them with 6GB each.
3. And then there are the servers.
These are basically desktops (Dell Optiplex) with Core Duo chips and between 4 and 8 GB of RAM.
One server is running my ownCloud server with a 2TB hard drive. This server is set up to synchronize with almost all family members (the Chromebook user doesn't really need this synchronizing).
The other server is a Minecraft server that is accessible to the outside and managed by my son. He's in charge of updating, maintaining it and managing the friends who join it remotely (as well as me during some lunchtimes...)
Since it has an IP that can change, he somehow set up a bot so I can get the current external IP address from his Discord group.
Since the computers are not the most powerful, I am looking into LXD as a means to run multiple servers on one physical box. I hope to be able to use it for services as well as development servers for trying things out.
I've also thought about getting a number of Raspberry Pies (Pis?) and dedicate each one to a server role, but that will cost money and the desktop server I already have.
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At work, we have 2 copies (DEV and PROD) of 4 Linux web servers running Drupal on top of CentOS. Although the rest of the organization is Windows, I can slide into SSH and get my fix for Linux-goodness and shell scripting!