At the end of the year, mainly to shamelessly fill slow news around the holidays, OSNews usually asks the readers to share with all the other readers something about their computer setup. Since OSNews can be quite diverse when it comes to computing environments, these threads can often be quite interesting. This year, please chime in with the setup you use to read OSNews – computer, OS, software and maybe even provide screenshots or photos of your proud workspace. Has it changed a lot this year? Maybe switched browser, maybe switched OS even? Let everybody know!
I’m proud to say that I have returned to the KDE desktop after a few years with Gnome. I’m happy to report that KDE 4.3 is living up to the original promise of the KDE4 team! Looking forward to KDE 4.4 and beyond. Happy New Year!
http://tinypic.com/m/6salww/3
Edited 2009-12-25 14:35 UTC
Why yes, I would like to buy your desktop screenshot on a skateboard XD
Sometimes you can order a nice cup with a picture of some excema
I’m using KDE SC 4.4b2 on openSUSE 11.2. 4.4b2 has a few quirks, but that is to be expected from a beta. The overall increased polish of 4.4 weighs more than a few tiny quirks, IMHO.
I’m not using the giant new features of 4.4 (e.g. tabbed windows management or the new netbook GUI), so it would be a lie if I wrote that 4.4 feels like a totally new desktop to me. YMMV.
Here’s a short list of the little things that improved in 4.4, that weren’t on any “what’s new in 4.4” list I encountered:
– Fully compatible with GNOME’s notifications. That means that any GNOME app that dispatches notifications, now uses Plasma. The other way around is also possible: Disable Plasma notifications, execute GNOME’s “notification-daemon” and all KDE apps use that one.
– The volume bar, displayed when using notebook’s “Fn” keys, is now Plasma themed.
– The new KAddressBook feels much smoother.
– Non-obtrusive animations added to Plasma (OK, OSX had those in the Dock years ago, but better late than never
).
– Various byproducts of using Qt 4.6 (newer WebKit,…)
i still use linux as my primary desktop
kde4 reached functionality i enjoyed in kde3 and i have completely replaced all my kde3 applications with their kde4 ports
changed browser from firefox to chromium
Not a lot of change here—I moved house so that’s been the main area of change this year—Still use the same MacBookPro, still OS X (though now Snow Leopard), still the same wallpaper http://camendesign.com/art/chibi as I had in 2006. Though I do now have a MacMini running MorphOS that’s kicking my arse.
edit: HTML URL parsing is somewhat b0rked.
Edited 2009-12-25 14:31 UTC
ccurious as to how mophios is to run. is it a kick in the shorts like when I fisrt got ahold of BeOS?
Merry Christmas to all the readers.
Currently my machine is dual booted between windows server 2008 with a sql server 2008 install and Windows xp. Not too much has changed over the year other than the decision to go almost entirely with vm’s for training purposes. In terms of using snapshot, features like that tip its hat over normal physical installs especially when your playing with new configurations.
I’m still using chrome browser for “safe sites”
– I can appreciate that we have a tool that is fast and that is the most important characteristic for me for a web browser. I do not belong to the “tool to do everything” club.
I’ve picked up a laptop with windows 7 and I expect that is going to be a blast. Microsoft has long had some very good server products and my feeling (especially after the release candidate) is that they really have delivered a good client.
Take care all
Morglum
My setup is: Macbook Pro, OSX 10.6. Boring… but the interesting part is that I just switched to using an Intel X25M SSD. My reason for switching was primarily for travel, to protect the hard drive against the constant vibration of airplanes, baggage handlers, and people bumping me in cafes.
15″ Mackbook Pro: 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2x2GB Crucial DDR3 RAM, 80GB Intel X25M SSD, and a Kingston Microsaver DS and Orbicle Undercover to keep it secure.
I also started using Arch Linux (again) this year as my hosting OS, via Slicehost. Stability has been terrific and I have been really pleased with the experience.
Edited 2009-12-25 14:33 UTC
How have you found the SSD? Have you noticed any major degradation in performance over time? This has been my biggest concern ATM with SSDs is that OSes are not generally properly primed for SSDs and neither is the technology smart enough for now to handle a foreseeable long lifespan (like that of an HDD).
I have only been using the SSD for a short period of time, so I can’t comment on performance degradation. However, it is my understanding that Intel’s controller is programmed to minimize the effects of long term use. OSX doesn’t support TRIM yet, but if/when it does, I’m sure the performance will be even better.
The biggest performance hit seems to come from overwriting data, eg after deleting large files, the writes will take slightly longer as the newly-deleted data is overwritten.
I’m using a Macbook 2.4 ghz with snow leopard, and Arch Linux (Gnome) on my Dell XPS 1340. CMOST’s comments about finally moving back to KDE sparked some interest in me, I was a very happy KDE3 user but switched to gnome when KDE4 came out. I’m now very comfortable and enjoy GNOME but am always looking/testing every new KDE 4.X.X release and wondering “is this the release that finally brings me back?” Oh when, oh when will I go back to KDE, probably in 2010, it’s getting close.
All the same machines, but with Windows 7 (and Kubuntu with KDE 4.4B2), and my media centres with Windows XP (bedroom) and Windows 7 (living room). My netbook has fallen to disuse as I no longer need it for school, and I’ve been messing around with it aimlessly (Moblin 2.1 at the moment).
The only real addition is my iPhone.
KDE 4.3 was still a disaster for me (crash after crash, incredibly bad performance and responsiveness on an insanely powerful machine), but 4.4 beta 2 seems to be at least slightly better. I think we’ll hit KDE 3.5.x performance levels somewhere around KDE 4.8 or 4.9 – and lest we forget, KDE 3.5 didn’t need the GPU. It’s all so counterintuitive.
Edited 2009-12-25 14:57 UTC
I think it’s something to do with your setup. Perhaps the graphics card or its drivers, because I’ve never had performance problems with KDE4 and I use it on a netbook.
Likewise. I find with KDE 4.3 that there are neither performance problems nor crashes on any machines that I have installed it on, and that numbers somewhere in the teens. It is the fastest desktop of any installed on each of those machines.
There has to be something amiss with your hardware setup if KDE 4.3 is crashing and functions with abysmal performance, as you say. My rig is hardly cutting edge anymore:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+
4096 MB DDR 400MHz RAM
nVidia GeForce 9400 GT w 512 MB DDR2
Sabayon (Gentoo) Linux 5.1 w Kernel 2.6.31
Compiz-Fusion Git
Yet, KDE 4.3 simply flies smooth as silk without notable issues. I do experience the occasional dolphin crash, but then dolphin has always been a bit buggy. Hopefully next year I’ll be upgrading to an eight core system. 🙂
I’ve been hearing the driver/card explanation for two years now. I kind of gave up on caring. I’ll see it when KDE gets there. It’s sad, because it has so much potential. I’m hearing the performance complaints from many people – but just as many say they have no problems at all. Very odd.
It’s a quad core, Phenom X4 4x2200Mhz, 4GB RAM, Radeon HD3200.
These are some strange concepts of “hardly cutting edge”. 1GHz/1GB/XP is still plenty adequate for a lot of tasks, even development. This early 2007 MBP is still what I consider more than adequate and hope it will be for 5 or more years. With the re-emergence of low-end hardware with netbooks, and pressure for low-power chips, especially ARM—the need for efficient software is greater than ever.
I didn’t say my machine was “hardly cutting edge”…? My machine is incredibly powerful for my tastes.
I was replying to the thread, not just yourself. You were discussing KDE being laggy and quoting what I consider _ridiculously_ high specs.
Adequate != cutting edge.
1Ghz CPU is obviously not cutting edge in 2009.
Heck, my whitebox laptop I purchased in 2005 had 1.3Ghz and it wasn’t even cutting edge back then.
I had a lot of crashes under Kubuntu 9.04 but they went away with 9.10. As did support for my onboard sound, my graphics card, working bluetooth transfers and working palm syncing, but that’s another story.
As an experiment, I might suggest that you turn off previews in Dolphin, particularly for video file types. If Dolphin has previews turned on and it encounters a file for which the system has no codec (typically files with DRM), it can crash under those circumstances I have found.
If you turn off the fancy graphics effects, then KDE4 doesn’t need the GPU either. Thats what I’ve done, and this is probably why KDE4.3 is very stable for me.
Actively (but optionally) using the GPU is part of whats new to KDE4, but since its a new feature, you should expect teething pains…
I just want knetworkmanager to work with wireless broadband. Tried Kubuntu Karmic and knetwormanager is an epic fail when it comes to mobile. Guess I should look at 4.4.
My desktop is a Acer aspire m1202 dual booting windows 7 32bit and Ubuntu 9.10.
My laptop is an Acer aspire 5517 dual booting windows 7 64 bit and Ubuntu 9.10.
Just built a multimedia PC for the living room that’s a Frankenstein of old parts based on an old IBM Netvista mobo i got on ebay. Pentium 4 @ 1.8GHZ w/ 512mb ram (will get more soon)running Windows xp and has a new blank partition waiting on some Linux distro (been distro hopping lately but keep coming back to Ubuntu or Mint) may install Ubuntu Netbook Remix cuz 480i stinks for a general desktop usage
Could also try Moblin or Jolicloud for small scale interfaces.
I’ve heard of moblin but my concern is i need at least NTFS read support (i keep my music on a separate home partition in windows and have a small (typically 20gig or so) Linux partition. and ive used too many beta or lower quality distros that don’t even have automount of ntfs right. Plus i need the gstreamer codecs for mp3 and m4a as well as flash.
One thing that i love in Ubuntu / Mint is a program called NTFS-config. Its a gui based program that auto edits the fstab and adds mount on boot for which ever NTFS drives you select and also lets you choose whether to enable write support.
I’ll try out moblin tho in a VM. Thanks
I use a Mac Pro 2008(octo), with dual 28″ monitors, and 16GB of RAM. All my other OSs run in VMware Fusion. Best system I’ve ever had, very happy with it.
Merry Christmas … 🙂
Mac Pro 3.2 -6GB. With OS 10.6 w/ Vista partition (that never gets used) and Ubuntu VM.
This year I decommissioned my aging PowerMac G4 700mhz. Even though it was still doing the job. It was doing it loudly and with allot of power. I replaced it with a Mac Mini (File/Media/Print server). Also running Connect360 for streaming media to xbox360.
Still using Macbook Air for work, Honestly didn’t expect to be this happy with a 1.8ghz machine. But I am
Edit – also , this year purchased a D-link NAS chassis thingamajig with two hard drive bays. Works quite well..
Edited 2009-12-25 15:12 UTC
Intel DX48BT2 Motherboard
Intel Core 2 Quad w/12 MB Cache
4GB DDR3 SDRAM
650GB SATA HDD w/32MB Cache
NVIDIA GeForce GTX260 w/896MB RAM
Dell 21″ Widescreen
Quad-Boot (Microsoft boot loader)
Windows 7 Ultimate x64
Windows XP Professional 32-bit
Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard (Hackintosh)
openSUSE 11.2 x86_64
VirtualBox 3.1.2 on all OS
iPhone 3Gs
Visual Studio 2008 for Windows
XCode 3.1.4 for Mac
Makefiles for Linux
QT 4.6 SDK for All
Edited 2009-12-25 15:13 UTC
Not ultimate…at work we have 2 boxes with dual core i7’s, 24GB ram each. The virtual cores are impressive. Testing IO is important so virtualization isn’t much of an option.
For personal use I built a core i7 860 micro with 8GB ram. Outperforms the previous dual core2 quad system I have. Runs gentoo and windowmaker.
Home netbooks run arch. I had been running xfce but firefox performance started tanking so I switched them to enlightenment e17.
Edited 2009-12-25 15:29 UTC
I was actually referring to the software setup. I’m aware of better procs out there. Nice setup at work and home!
Oh, btw… at work I have 4 Dual-Xeon E5520’s w/36GB DDR3 Memory and 15TB Fibre-Channel SAN for running fail-over VMWare ESXi 4.0. I’m not trying to be ‘topper’ from Dilbert, just wanted to post the specs.
My apologies bout the fibre…the dual 5520’s are configured as desktop machines. Intel really shot themselves with the heat sink mountings being so much more limited with the xeons.
What did you pay for the mobo, cpu, ram setup? Did you hacintosh it to work? What did you use to get OS X running on it?
Mobo/CPU/RAM/Video card under $1000. Yes, I Hackintoshed it. iATKOS v7.
no CMake?
Not yet… I’m looking at SCons, but haven’t decided what I want to build under Linux yet so I’m just using Makefiles. Do you have any suggestions for a game-developer type person? I hate the automake tools probably because I just don’t know enough about them. I use Kate/Vi with DDD Debugger right now.
I read OSNews on two different computers. The first is an iMac laptop, the last of the old PowerPC machines. It is my “time waster” computer; it sits under my easy chair, and I reach for it whenever I want to look something up, or I’m just tired of reading a book.
My other machine is a not-so-new beige box PC running in my home office. I have Slackware Linux installed as the default OS, but recently I have been doing most of my browsing on Haiku, the resurrected BeOS. I love the very fast boot time, and the quick program starting.
OSNews is almost all text, and I hate visual distractions, so I read OSNews on a text browser. On the iMac, that’s W3M, the wonderfully configurable reader and text browser from Japan. I was not able to compile W3M on Haiku, so I use a flavor of Links put together by some Haiku enthusiasts. (THANKS, GUYS!)
I am on a Macbook Pro 4,1 from early 2008 which I bought last december when the price went down because of the introduction of the unibody-models. But after two weeks I couldn’t stand Mac OS X any longer and installed Arch Linux which I have been using since 2007. It’s a nice hardware for a Linux-user. Also I own an iPhone 3G S on which I am typing this Text right now. Even though it’s jailbroken, I’m still feeling locked in and I should have waited for a great Android-device.
On Arch Linux I am primarily focused on Gnome but I’m always testing the new KDE4-releases from the kdemod-project. I am very interested in Haiku and I can’t wait for my Macbook Pro from being supported (e.g. WiFi, native resolution) – for now it’s residing in Suns Virtualbox. Very promising project.
Edited 2009-12-25 15:35 UTC
All my systems (laptop,PC,server) have moved from Gentoo to Funtoo. Not much to report there. Pretty uneventful.
I’ve stayed with kde4 since version 4.1.2 (previous versions were horrible) and had an nvidia preformance issue in 4.2.
Swapped out my XP-pro for win7 ultimate. No major complaints with the switch.
Started to switch from Firefox to Chrome mainly because of the performance increase.
PC=C2D [email protected]/4GB ddr800/1TB btrfs raid0,1TB WD caviar,x2 160GB samsungs for OS’
Laptop=IBM x31/1GB ram/[email protected]
Server=IBM 570/128MB ram/p2@300MHz
Edited 2009-12-25 15:49 UTC
So, here is my Home setup.
Desktop : Antec P150, Asus P5KC, [email protected], 8GB RAM, ATI HD5770 1GB, G.Skill Falcon 128Gb SSD, Seagate 500GB, X-Fi Platinum, Logitech Z-5500 speakers, LG Flatron W2600H 25.5″ & Samsung 2253LW 21.6″, Brother Color LED printer. Running Windows 7 Ultimate x64.
Laptop : Apple white Macbook, Intel C2D 2.4Ghz, 4Gb RAM, 320GB, also connected to the Samsung 2253LW. Running OS X 10.6.2
Server : Antec Sonata3 & 500W PSU, Asus P5B-VM, Intel E2160, 4GB RAM, 4 x Seagate 500GB, DELL 17″ LCD. Running Windows Home Server.
Games : Xbox360 HDMI, Sony PS3/80Gb, Nintendo Wii and DS Lite, Apple iPod Touch 64Gb. Xbox360 & PS3 connected to a Sony SXRD 50″ HDTV, the Nintendo Wii is connected to a Sharp Aquos 46″ HDTV.
That’s about it…
Edited 2009-12-25 15:48 UTC
is same as last year with some extra pci cards
System 1
P4 3.4 Ghz
4 gig of ram
Nvidia 5600 w 256 MB memory (LOL)
500 GB SATA HD
Ubuntu 9.10
System 2
AMD Phenom 9950 processor black edition @ 3 Ghz
4 Gig Ram
1.5 TB SATA HD
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 w 896 MB memory
Windows 7 64
System 3
HP ProBook 4710s
Intel Core 2 Duo T6570 2.10 Ghz
3 Gig Ram
300 GB SATA HD
ATI Mobility Radeon HD4330 w 512 MB memory
Nothing new this year but the notebook and W7
AMD Athlon x64 single-core, 2ghz.
1.5Gb RAM.
80Gb IDE-drive.
ATi Radeon 9800 Pro.
Sound Blaster Live! (the very first and original one)
One 15″ CRT and one rather crappy 17″ CRT configured as clone.
Wireless Logitech mouse and keyboard.
Yes, I know, that’s some rathe sh*tty setup, having trouble playing even WoW nowadays.
As for software I use Windows XP and Google Chrome for surfing. Used FireFox for years, tried Opera too every now and then, but settled on Chrome when it started supporting extensions. It just is so much faster and easier on the eyes than FireFox, and Opera insisting on using their own keyboard shortcuts instead of the system-wide defaults made it fall to the side too.
Screenshot for the curious:
http://img97.imageshack.us/gal.php?g=ssdesktop.jpg
Well, actually – beside your CRTs – I think it’s pretty sufficient.
I use one machine as a server – it’s Dell GX270 with Pentium 2.8GhZ, 2250MB RAM and Philips 190S 19″ LCD and ancient Averatec [now TriGem] laptop with 432MB of RAM and AMD Opteron Dublin 2800+ 1,6GhZ CPU. Recently I got rid of my high-spec Lenovo netbook.
I use many operating systems, mainly BSDs [server-side] and linux [client-side] + plentora of other OSs under VirtualBox.
I really don’t feel any need to have some very high spec HW. Most of us don’t even use it, it takes more power, it is just wasted horsepower and has some serious ecological impact [when it comes to getting rid off your old HW].
Well, actually – beside your CRTs – I think it’s pretty sufficient.
It is more than sufficient for anything else but for gaming..Of course programming, compiling an app every now and then, videos, surfing etc can be done very comfortably even on my specs, but as I am a gamer too my setup just doesn’t quite fill my needs anymore this day.
WoW is much heavier today than it used to be, since the release of WLK. Your weakest point is the graphics card, the CPU is okay except when you are in highly populated areas.
If you’re going to get a new machine, I recommend a fast dual core over a slower quad core for WoW. I play happily in Full HD with a 3 GHz quad (only two cores used) and a 9800GT.
My setup is all-linux: linux laptops for the whole family, a linux “media center” used mostly through the Wii remote, a linux home server. Ubuntu mostly, though it’s getting buggier every year.
I can say something maybe only a few can: I have never used Vista or 7, not even for one hour.
No loss on Vista, but 7 is pretty sweet, and I am a confirmed *nix fan – Debian as my only OS for something like 5 years now, and no Gnome or KDE for 3 or 4 years.
The big change I made was from Vista to Windows 7, and I’m glad I did. 7 runs better and the eye-candy is nicer, too. I’m thinking of adding a Mac to the mix this year. I’ll probably just get a Mac and make it part of my network, although I won’t rule out running Windows on the Mac with Parallels.
desktop: amd phenom 9550 2.2ghz, amd rs780/sb700 chipset, 4gb ram, nvidia geforce 9600gt, some ~3tb storage, running fedora 12
server: mac mini ppc 1.25ghz, 1gb ram, 40gb hdd, running netbsd 5
game/demoscene machine: amiga 1200, 68030 50mhz, 64mb ram, 3gb hdd, running amigaos 3.1
portable game machine: nintendo ds + m3 lite
laptop: compaq mini 700 running ubuntu
that’s pretty much it
Hi,
I have a lowend MacBook white with Mac OS X 10.6 and using open source and unix tools.
My desktop at home is an old AMD64 Athlon X2 with Gentoo and KDE 4.3.2 and my box at work is a Gentoo box with KDE 4.3.2 but using VMware Workstation to my development environment.
After 2 years of being a Mac user, I finally switched back to Windows, which is more suitable for my school work and programming. Now I am very happy with my Windows Vista Business, with Visual Studio 2008, NetBeans and GlassFish installed, all for learning purpose and works very well.
I still use my MacBook Pro, but only when I go to school. I haven’t upgrade to *Slow Leopard*, and the machine is still running Tiger. When more and more latest version of applications requires Mac O$ X 10.6 (especially when JDK 6 is available on Windows/ Linux for ***free***, I must upgrade Mac O$ to get the same thing, which cost me a lot), I just don’t understand why I bought a Mac.
I have got an old notebook, and I use it as my home server (Web server and FTP server). Although the computer is quite old, it works very well. It runs Debian (testing branch). I also run Folding@Home on it to donate some CPU power.
Huh? Strage, that I’m not a Mac user, but seem to know stuff better than you.
First: $29 is not “a lot”. Upgrading from Tiger to Snow Leopard is possible with the upgrade DVD.
Second: JDK 6 (even 7) is available for OSX for free. It just isn’t part of Apple’s build-in auto-updater. I had a faint memory of reading about a OpenJDK port to OSX. A quick Google search confirmed: http://wikis.sun.com/display/OpenJDK/BSDPort
Conclusion:
Either you lack the simplest Google skills or you are an anti-Apple troll.
Thanks for reading,
your Mac-less Linux user.
Last year I booted Windows xp as my default and had Zeta, Ubuntu Linux, and Haiku installed. Since then Haiku has become usable and Windows crashed again.
I now boot Haiku as default and use the zeta partition for aditional data. I have Ubuntu for those times that Haiku can’t handle what I need to do, only about once a month. It’s great, I no longer worry about keeping my anti-virus software up to date and having Windows perform an update when I need to power down the system.
For the last several years, I’ve been using a Gateway with a 1.7GHz P4 and 256 megs of RAM, which I was running Ubuntu on last (previously Zenwalk); lately, in desperation for more RAM, I’ve been running Openbox, which (with Firefox’s requirements) doesn’t help much with the swapping/slowdown. 512 really does seem to be the minimum these days, unless you’re willing to make some serious sacrifices… and not just in window manager.
A few months ago, I got a 64-bit AMD-based Dell with a gig of RAM (it was originally my mom’s, actually), and have been slowly switching to it. So far though, it’s been more of an experimentation machine–I’ve mostly been using the other one, but running Firefox (through SSH) on the old one. Both were running Ubuntu (though I used the full Gnome desktop on the Dell).
Recently I decided to see how KDE4 was coming, and was curious to see Fedora 12’s new Plymouth boot, so I tried it (note: I’m not a Fedora fan). Pretty cool, but it wasn’t long before I decided to try the latest openSUSE, which I liked better. In a surprise to me, I think I’ll be keeping openSUSE on it for a while, I’m pretty impressed.
Also, a couple days ago I got dual-screen set up on the machine, with a 20″ widescreen LCD (1680×1050) and an older 19″ CRT (1600×1200) monitor. Cool, except both monitors have very different default brightnesses, and my setup doesn’t exactly look to pleasant (plus I don’t trust the cats–the other monitor is right in their favorite spot, beside three windows). I can’t find a way to separately change each monitor’s brightness/contrast/gamma (nvidia card with proprietary drivers, btw). For those reasons I’m not sure how much longer I’ll keep the dual-screen setup, but I’m having fun with it while it lasts…
1. Ditched netbooks as being unusable, returned to my good ol’laptop for mobile computing needs.
2. Ditched Ubuntu as being always-semi-ready, went back to Debian on all my desktop boxes.
3. Switched to e16 from fvwm for eye-candy
Totally forgot how nice e16 looks (and looked 10 years ago 
)
Right now… a motorola milestone running linux/android (but posting from the full version because the mobile one isn’t working…)…
But my main machine is an athlon 64 x2 4800+, 4GiB ram, an amd radeon 4870 and a couple of teras for storage… right now it is running win7 rc.
Computer:
Intel i7 870 @ 3.0 GHz (OC from 2.8)
8 GB DDR3 2200
Intel SSD X25-E 32 GB
Western Digital Black 1 TB (7,200 RPM)
MSI Radeon 5870
OS:
Ubuntu 9.10 / Gnome
how well does the video driver work these days?
Main Computer:
Dell Dimension 4400 (8 years old)- Intel D845PT chipset;
Intel Pentium 4 Northwood 2.8 GHz
2GB DDR RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GS 256MB 430 MHz AGP graphics
20GB IDE 5400 RPM (will upgrade to 320GB soon)
Windows XP Professional SP3 (super tweaked to my liking
— visual and performance wise)
Linux Box:
Compaq Deskpro EN (10 years old; handed down to me last year)- Intel 815 chipset;
Intel Pentium 3 Coppermine 1.0 GHz
384MB SDRAM RAM (cannot be upgraded any further, unfortunately)
NVIDIA GeForce 2 MX 400 64MB
40GB IDE 5400 RPM
#! CrunchBang Linux 9.04 (a minimalist Ubuntu variant)
Test box:
Dell Dimension 3000 (6 years old; handed down to me this year)- Intel 865 chipset;
Intel Pentium 4 Prescott 3.0 GHz with HyperThreading
1.5GB DDR RAM
Integrated Intel Extreme Graphics 2
20GB IDE 5400 RPM (might upgrade sometime)
Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit
At this moment, I still feel at home most with Windows XP- and probably will for the rest of my computing career. One reason is because I’ve grown up with computers using that operating system. I know where everything is, and am familiar with the menus and wizards; I know how to tweak that OS the best. Windows 7 still needs getting used to, but I’m quite pleased; it works well out of the box and requires little tweaking. Linux is a nice alternative for me- since it is something new and tries to be familiar. Personally, jumping from Windows XP to an Ubuntu variant (like CrunchBang) was easier than jumping to 7 for some reason. (Well, hardware was a factor, but the menu structure and GUI also mattered.)
I’m also getting used to the command line- where Powershell in Windows and Bash in Linux is helping me out. It’s really powerful stuff (^^).
Edited 2009-12-25 17:02 UTC
Main Computer:
AMD Athlon (unicore 32bits) 2800MHz
2GB DDR RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 5200 256MB AGP graphics
120GB IDE 7200 RPM
Multi-boot (FreeDOS, XP sp2 and Ubuntu)
#! Used Zenwalk from version 3 to 5…
#! Moved to Xubuntu due to problems with Zenwalk-5.
#! Rarelly used XP, and never after it died.
#! Not using it since got the following:
Internet Box:
Compaq Deskpro EN
(10 years old; handed down to me last year)- Intel 815 chipset;
CPU: Intel Pentium 3 Coppermine 1.0 GHz
RAM: 512MB SDRAM (had a 256MB SIMM, now 2 of 256MB)
AGP: original (???)
IDE: original 20GB 5400 RPM ( sys=7GB, HOME=12GB )
#! DEBIAN-XFCE would be a better choice for the net.
#! DEBRIS will probably be next to get more free RAM.
Notes: I’m still using the Mint Ubuntu with gnome and a lot of cuts on unused start-on-log tools (stable baseline is 150MB with the remaing for applications). Naturally it has WINE installed.
Test boxes:
HP Brio (handed down to me with W98 – to give away)
CPU: Intel Pentium 3 400MHz
RAM variations:
#! 128 MB : Slackware SALIX (LXDE over XFCE)
#! 192 MB : Ubuntu DEBRIS (Gnome using OpenBox),
#! 256 MB : DEBIAN Debian XFCE distro
Notes: The advantages are these do not have OpenOffice but Abiword and Gnumeric (perfect here) but are multimedia ready if VLC is added (very efficient).
NetBook:
ACER ONE 110 with NetBook Ubuntu Edition
RAM: 512
HD : 8GB
SD : 4GB
Notes: Bugged hardware.Bad place for mousepad buttons.
Unstable battery. Do not know what to do with it. Love the new Toshiba but do not want to pay for Window$ again. Why to choose troubles? And pay to get them?
FreeBSD is becoming a good choice too! Finally!
Got it from http://freebsd-custom.wikidot.com/
Just missing a live option like Ubuntu. Yet!
I got one too… BUT you can enhance it:
You should replace the 128MB simm with a 256MB one to get the missing 128MB to get the maximum 512MB the MoBo allow.
Though Crunch-Bang is excellent… You should try DEBRIS or SALIX
as that one can handle them.
Specially if you get the 256MB simm compatible with the one you have… or get 2 twins of 256MB and drop those.
That is actually VERY good news. (I believe I did try one time to upgrade it, but it didn’t work… Broken SIMM ? Or maybe it was a DIMM that I tried…)
Just to confirm: your mobo had 3 SIMM slots, right? (So I can just insert a 256 MB on one, and keep the two 128 MB ones sitting there, right? Also, do you remember which type of RAM it would be; at the moment, I think it was a 168-pin SDRAM compatible slot, right?)
Edited 2009-12-27 03:34 UTC
Good!
But I faced the same troubles.
Probably it was a SIMM with different timings…
… That is enough to lose that one or the other.
Since it all depends on the first to be checked, sometimes placing the offending one on the other extreme may solve the problem. It happens.
It should be the same as yours. What’s important (and was a cold bath not to see 1GB when I tried) is that limit of 512MB.
I’m using it right now and the monitor is very heavy. Wait… YES… its 3 slots…
And I have replaced the 256MB/133ns by just ONE SIMM of 512MB/133ns SIMM after failing other attempts I cannot remember.
It is NOT 2 x 256 as I thought. I believe the problem was that 512MB is the BIOS limit.
Still:
– SIMMs MUST be compatible (meaning the timings SHOULD be the same like twins)
– You MAY try 100ns SIMMs IF and only they are twins of 256MB and you cannot get twins of 133ns.
– The best functional solution is to have ONE SIMM or to find a BIOS upgrade that eliminates the limitation, assuming it is not an hardware limitation (unless an hardware memory controller is in between).
I’m trying and cannot find a BIOS upgrade at HP.
And neither the Manuals.
I still have 5 options to get this Ubuntu lighter:
– Debian (Debian XFCE CD with all codecs)
– Debris (Ubuntu with Gnome over OpenBox)
– Salix (Slackware with XFCE)
– WattOS (Ubuntu with LXDE)
– #! (Ubuntu with OpenBox)
From top to down.
But turning off unused services helped allot. BTW: Check http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20090504
Found this:
This means that a 256MB SIMM is read as TWO SIMS and that was your problem not my diagnosis (though it will affect performance)
This confirms the PC in question COMPAQ Destop EN. Mine has the label (on top, under my monitor right) of:
“ENS/SP1.0/20e/6/256cvn PORT” where:
ENS : Model
SP1.0: # of CPUs
20e : Disk size (original)
256cvn: RAM (original)
Meaning that you problem would be overcome…
… but no reference on the 512MB limit I faced when placed just two 512 SIMMs … Maybe that is done. Maybe it now accepts 3 x 256 (equivalente to 6 SIMMs).
Whatever the changes I’ll try it later.
THE NEW BIOS:
I also found the pack, which was not directly pointed:
the SP19580 SoftPac on
ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp19501-20000/sp19580.exe
and it’s description on
ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp19501-20000/sp19580.txt
Already downloaded both…
As it would be nice to get 768MB, or invest on a second 512MB SIMM … and never found it before, until now. Whatever the result… Thank you for pushing me on this quest!
And Good Luck with your oldie!
May it revive a 3th time!
COMPAQ Deskpro EN
Small Form Factor Series : Thas’s the S in the ENS (small case).
You’ll need a DOS partition where to make the burn of the BIOS,
A diskette has not enough size to the new BIOS and the backup of the old one. I’ll temporarily use an old hard disk with DOS instead of the actual working disk. Suggest you to do the same.
http://i46.tinypic.com/30kgj2d.jpg
I use the Dell XPS M1730 for Enterprise IT consulting and Modern Warfare…;-)
The Air is used at Starbucks and for light days at work.
Happy Holidays to everybody!
I know that some people have a lot of computers but I am sure that I have to many, but I will list some of the most important ones also note that I am 15, so the computers that I am listing are the ones that I have total controll over, not the other ones that the family uses. (they do use the servers)
Servers
1: Untangle network gateway
2.4GHz dell demension somthing
2: Nas server
toshiba laptop 1.3GHz celeron M ubuntu karmic
With USB raid connected (750GB raid 1)and this neat web media thing called tonido (web music player, a local “cloud”)
3: Netbook
asus eeepc 900a (atom) with touch screen mod, ubuntu karmic, metacity, awn, lxlauncher
4: Desktop
Home built
Crunchbang 9.04.01
2.8GHz amd athalon 64 x2
4GB memory
nvidia 9500GT
Maudio audiophile 2496 connected to a sweet speaker setup with my dads vintage DCM timewindow (maybe some people here remember these)
I am probobly forgetting somthing!
My Dual 2.0GHz PPC Power Mac blew up in February, and I replaced it with an 8 core 2.8GHz Mac Pro with 14 gigs of RAM and a 640 gig RAID. It is by far the best system I have ever had, and I see myself hanging on to it for a very long time (as hardware goes). This system just screams, and in addition to native performance it’s virtual machine computing and emulation makes it seem like more than one box. I love it.
The laptop (running Ubuntu NBR currently) is getting a little long in the tooth. I am thinking I need an old G4 to run MorphOS, but instead of a new laptop when someone offers the right tablet (capacitive touch screen, big screen, nice form factor, Android OS with market) I may get a couple. Most of the secondary computer usage around the house is web, email and Facebook, and I like the portability of the tablet for that use. Like every other year, I also wish Hyperion would announce Amiga OS for a machine I would actually want to own.
Merry Christmas everyone. Even you, Holwerda.
Edited 2009-12-25 17:32 UTC
My main home desktop is a 2 year old home made computer running FreeBSD 7.2 following the ports tree as it updates.
My hardware is a 2.2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 2 GB Cosair TWINX DDR2 memory. Its also got a 500 GB main harddrive and 320 GB of RAID 1 storage on two other harddrives.
Screenshot here: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/89/FreeBSD_Applications….
OSNews is dedicated to the variety of all those operatings systems and environments out there. Thus no surprise, that many of its visitors use non-mainstream , i.e. non-Windows, systems. Same for me.
When visiting OSnews.com I mainly use my MorphOS 2.x setup with OWB 1.6 browser, either running on my Pegasos or my MacMini. Sometimes also Safari on OS X one of the two systems mentioned or – when at work – on WinXP+Safari.
My main system is an Intel Mac Mini with a 17″ CRT monitor and cheap external speakers. It’s got a 1.83 GHz Core2 Duo processor and is running MacOSX 10.5.8. Maybe I’ll upgrade it to Snow Leopard sometime this year.
My secondary system that my sister is using is a Dell Inspiron 1509 with 1.3 GHz AMD TurionX2 processor and ATI UMA graphics chips on board. (I said I’d buy a Dell if it came with an AMD processor so when they came out with one I bought one.) It runs WinXP and Mandriva Linux 2010 KDE dual-boot.
The other systems I have are a MicroA1-c 800 MHz G3 running AmigaOS 4.1 which I have loaned out to another developer at the moment.
I have a classic Amiga 1200 with 50 MHz 68RC030+68882 FPU and 64 MiB of Fast RAM which I haven’t gotten around to upgrading the hard drive in. It runs AmigaOS 3.9.
Edited 2009-12-25 18:01 UTC
Hello,
My preferred OS is 64bit Ubuntu Linux.
$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
Model name: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU @3.00GHz.
$ cat /proc/meminfo
MemTotal: 3994356kB (~4gB)
Screen resolution: 1680×1050
$ uname -a
Linux karmic64 2.6.31-16-generic #53-Ubuntu SMP Tue Dec 8 04:02:15 UTC 2009 x86_64 GNU/Linux
$ lsb_release -a
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 9.10
Codename: karmic
Both the desktop-PC and laptop run Ubuntu Linux. It’s a very nice OS in-deed.
Android based HTC-Hero phone is my 3’rd device.
See: http://www.futuredesktop.org (com)
Happy new year to you. A lot!
Edited 2009-12-25 18:11 UTC
I use a Mac mini (1.66 ghz Core Duo w/ 2 GB RAM and a 1 TB FW400 external drive) for everyday use. I just built a PC with a 2.4 GHz AMD Phenom Quad and 4 GB RAM to do all my video encoding (I bought a HD PVR this year) using Fedora.
Now my favorite part: this summer I rebuilt an IBM PC-XT 5160 that I bought broken off eBay. I use it to play all my favorite old computer games (Alley Cat, Digger, Striker, Round 42, etc) that I still have from my childhood on 5.25″ floppies. I also bought a HP 200LX off eBay as a birthday present to myself.
Everything is the same as last year and the year before and so on…
At home I’ve got a dual core computer with Mandriva Linux (cooker), KDE 4.4 beta and Opera 10.20 alpha
At work I’ve got another dual core computer with Mandriva 2010.0, LXDE and Firefox 3.5
I wish you all a very Merry Christmas.
This Year I finally returned home to the desktop of yore: I’ve switched back to KDE! I used KDE since SuSE 9.0 (KDE 3.1) until Ubuntu 5.04 came out. After a few years of GNOME, I finally switched back.
Yes GNOME was slick, yes it was simple. However, Gnome was starting to get too simplified, ala Torvalds. The first nail in the coffin was Brasero not being able to burn multiple copies of discs. Then it wouldn’t let me choose a speed to burn other than 16x (I wanted to burn slowly).
Next, NetworkManager, which is handy for Laptops, wouldn’t let me turn of DHCP. Made me configure the network by hand (woo-hoo resolv.conf!) on my server.
The final straw was PulseAudio breaking after upgrading to Karmic.
On a lark I switched to KDE 4.3. It wasn’t great out of the box, but after several modifications I grew to like it. I’ve got my panels set up like GNOME’s, plasmoids displaying both my desktop and home directories, calendar, etc… I couldn’t switch back to GNOME: having plasmoids of various directories makes much more efficient use of my dual monitors.
Towards the end of the year, Firefox’s user profile got corrupted some how and it wouldn’t remember it’s toolbars. Then for some reason firefox would eat 800 megs of RAM with 2 tabs open. So I switched to Chromium out of necessity. Although I’ve grown accustomed to Chromium, Firefox still tempts me because AdBlock+ is better than AdThwart. However, I love Chromium for it’s extreme stability. Being a Tab-aholic (50+ tabs once I get going), I appreciate Chrome’s stability.
EOG is also quite useless to a photographer (me
). EXIF data is squirlled away, and even then you can’t filter the redundant data. When I heard that Digikam 1.0 will support EXIF filtering I installed it right away, and then remembered the good old days of fully-configureable KDE apps. If Kopete is like driving a Kit Car, Pidgin is like driving a BMW, and Empathy is like driving a Ficsher Price toy.
This year my router (a 10 year old Linksys) crapped out, and I replaced it with a WRT160NL, which will be running OpenWRT and DNS server.
Over the Christmas break, I’ll be backing up/reinstalling Kubuntu 9.10, then working on setting up a MythTV server.
Yes, KDE3 was a dying desktop: while GNOME was building on robustness and stability KDE stagnated. KDE4.0 was cutting edge and not finished, I remember when it came out that it looked promising, but I’d only consider it once it matured. KDE4.3 is very close to perfect, and KDE4.4 is shaping up to be an awesome release. GNOME, on the other hand, became stuck with being “in-offensive”, refined, and simplified.
I didn’t understand the reasoning behind Torvald’s argument about loosing fuctionality, but now I know it first hand, and completely understand.
I’m currently running Slackware 13.0, Slackware-current, and Arch on my 5 PCs. I prefer to use XFce 4.6.1
I switched to an Acer Aspire 5536 for my main machine, and am running Windows 7 on it. First version of Windows I’ve really been excited about since Windows 2000. My previous Arch desktop’s been switched to being a media server for the home running XBMC connected to a TV in my room.
IBM ThinkPad T42, 1.8Ghz Pentium M, 2GB RAM, 320GB HDD
FreeBSD 8.0 + Xfce 4.6
http://i45.tinypic.com/2wduc76.png
most used:
Opera – main browser and mail reader
Vim – main text/code editor
OpenOffice.org
eclipse
MOC
MPlayer
FileZilla
Deluge
Pidgin
gpicview
evince
GIMP
Inkscape
wine
VirtualBox
It`s a funny thing. Last year because of Vista I made promise to myself to move to better primary OS.
And I am not comming back.
Desktop:
Intel DQ35JO
Core 2 Quad 6600
2GB RAM
nVidia 8600GT
74GB WD Raptor
ArchLinux/Windows 7
http://nulani.net/~nulani/images/mundilfari-desktop-1.png
Laptop:
Fujitsu-Siemens P7120
1.2GHz Pentium M ULV
1GB RAM
40GB HDD
Windows 7. It runs remarkably well given the hardware limitations. There’s a couple of unidentified drivers though, and I’ve been meaning to retry OpenBSD. Last time I tried the microphones interfered with the speakers and made my ears bleed.
Since last xmas I have been running a C2D E7300 @ 2.66GHz, 4GB DDR2 with Intel GMA X3500 (I might move to a cheap Radeon 5xxx this next year).
Running Debian Sid+Experimental 64-bit with Awesome WM 3.x. I use SeaMonkey 2.0.x nightlies as my primary browser, and FF 3.7 nightlies (yay, out-of-process Flash) for YouTube and other Flash content (although 64-bit Flash is really very stable)(browsers synced with Weave).
Evince, Gthumb, and Comix round out my GUI programs. Everything else I use regularly is CLI – newsbeuter, rtorrent, irssi, xmms2, vim, urxvt+bash. Mplayer is graphical of course, but I launch it from the CLI.
Planning to start dual booting Win7 for games, and because I need to keep my Windows skills up-to-date. Also, it seems to be awesome, unlike XP and Vista.
Sounds like I have the most unique setup here.
I have a multi-seat Ubuntu machine, one seat is a normal desktop and the other runs xbmc on my tv. This machine has a 6TB RAID5 array for media storage and another RAID1 array for the OS, but there still is plenty of room for a few more drives (10 SATA ports).
Since I use my netbook to ssh/rdp into VMs I hardly use the desktop seat, but it still provides communal web access for guests.
Pretty sure the two guys running Haiku and the guy running MorphOS are more unique.
I’m using a Pegasus 2 with a quad boot of MorphOS 2.4, Amiga OS4.1, Debian 5 and Open Suse 11.1, I dunno what that makes me. A complete nerdoid, I’d imagine…
While I’m here I might as well put some screen grabs of MorphOS and Amiga OS4.1, (And Hanna Spearitt :Insert shifty smilie here: )
http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a366/robinsonworld/HS.png
http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a366/robinsonworld/os41.jpg
Edited 2009-12-26 07:17 UTC
Snap!
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpost.php?p=48725577&postcount=626
I submit that you, sir, are Bachy Soletanche :-p
Edited 2009-12-27 16:37 UTC
1 dell mini 10v netbook.
that’s it, unless you count the wii
A Toshiba Libretto 110CT
32MB Ram
P-233
OpenBSD 4.6
I VNC to a P4 downstairs. I have the desktop resolution for VNC running at 800×600 since the libretto has a 7-inch 800×480 screen. Firefox is always running at just the right size for the Libretto screen.
I use DynDNS and forward port 5901 through my router to the P4, so I can even use it at school.
I also have a ThinkPad T41, as well as quad-core Athlon X2 and Core2Duo desktops.
But the Libretto is my favorite.
My wife and I just finished building our home in Oct 09′. I had the home wired with CAT6 to every room, and a small server closet in the center of the home. All of our TV’s are mounted on the walls with video feeds supplied by HDMI over CAT6 Adapters. All of the cables are behind the TV’s. This was my wifes only request, NO WIRES!. Everywhere we have lived in the past, I have had to have wires and cables feeding everything.
New Setup:
Network Closet:
Cisco 24 port Gigabit Switch. Airport Basestation. Mac Mini Server ’09. Running 10.6 Client (I used the server license elsewhere). 4 Gb Ram, 2 External RAID enclosures @ 2 TB each. Mini is running Plex, Playback for Mac (To stream to the kid’s PS3 and 360). EyeTV connected to OTA HDTV. Running SlingPlayer with a Slingbox hooked up to my Father-In-Laws house (He buys every channel and event, Its crazy). Oh and a NetFlix account also tied to Plex.
Living Room:
Samsung Series 6, 52″ TV connected to the 09′ Mac Mini Server. Also connected to outdoor HDTV antanea. We control the Mini mostly using our iPhone 3GS’s, but I also placed a ir Repeater in the living room so the kids can use the Apple Remotes. Plex is great, BTW. We love it.
Master Bedroom:
32″ Samsung & Apple TV with 3.0. (Probably going to hack it again)
Kids Bedroom #1 (Oldest Child, Male, our only normal kid):
32″ Samsung & Xbox 360. All movies streamed and NetFlix.
iMac Late 08′, 4 Gb Ram. 2.4 Ghz Core 2 Duo.
Kids Bedroom #2 (Middle Child, Male. True Geek):
32″ Visio & PS3. All movies streamed and NetFlix
Early 2009 Mac Pro. 8 Core Xeon. 16 GB Ram. 24″ Apple Display. Apple RAID Card with 4 500GB Raptors in a RAID 5. VMware VM’s with Windows 7, Mint, Solaris 10, and Haiku.
Kids Bedroom #3 (Our Youngest, Female, Princess):
19″ Samsung, Connected to an iPod Classic. All of the kids movies.
My Wifes Laptop:
Christmas Present! New MacBook. Upgraded with 4 Gb Ram
My Laptop:
MacBook Pro, Early 2009 with the removable battery. 4 GB Ram
I’m an old UNIX geek. Sun guy. Switched to Mac in 2001. I’m not a Fanboy, but I am a fan. The whole family loves em’. Apple gets plenty of my money, but we get alot of joy from the kit.
Awesome setup, d00d! Glad you’re enjoying it!
This year I switched over from my old Gateway laptop (1.4Ghz celeron/1GB ram/60GB storage) to an Asus EEE PC 901 as my main computer. I have upgraded the memory from 1GB to 2GB, and increased the 16GB SSD to 32GB which is enough for all my docs, music, etc.
I also bought an external DVD drive for the netbook, so when you add up the costs it probably equates to the price of a cheap laptop – but that isn’t a problem for me as I wanted something small and easy to travel with.
I have been running Ubuntu on this netbook for the last 12 months, and currently using version 9.10. In terms of software, using OpenOffice, Evolution Xchat, Pidgin, Gimp, gThumb, Sound Juicer, Sound Converter, and Rhythembox.
I have also been using Firefox as my main browser for the most part of the year, but have recently switched to Chrome as it just seems much quicker on this netbook (e.g. page scrolling, rendering, etc).
One of the biggest changes this year for me was moving from KDE to Gnome, as I needed something that was stable and workable … if you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can ever imagine
Home built computer running Fedora or (more often of late) windows 7 rc. Laptop running Windows 7 Professional. IPhone 3GS. Chrome as my browser in both Linux and Windows, and Firefox before the Chrome for Linux beta came out. Lots of changes this year with my gradual switch from a long-time exclusively Linux user to using a more stable and functional modern OS, and the addition of the iPhone over the summer.
64-bit Gentoo on a Lenovo Thinkpad SL300. My desktop workspace is Gnome 2.26 with the Avant Window Navigator (AWN) placed along the bottom Mac-style.
Very nice set-up.
Don’t forget that the the Mac dock uses a “shelf” along the bottom, Looking Glass-style: http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-proj…
In addition, OSX’s mere inclusion of a dock is PERQ-style (1980?): http://yahozna.dyndns.org/computers/perq/photos/accent-small.jpg
and also Windows-style (1985): http://toastytech.com/guis/bigw101.gif
Desktop
Intel Core 2 Duo E4400
Nvidia GTX 285
Intel SSD X25-M 80GB
Dual Samsung TOC T220
From the hardware side I have to say that an SSD drive is probably the single biggest performance boosting upgrade you can get. Highly Recommended.
For software I am still running Debian linux with a KDE 4.3 desktop now. I am finally happy with the KDE 4.3, it was a bumpy ride but we are finally have a KDE that doesn’t make us miss KDE3.
App side, I just switched browsers from firefox (iceweasel) to Google Chrome. While I wasn’t too impressed with Chrome at first, I felt it was too simplistic. But turns out simple is good, and now I can’t live without their smart address bar. It even makes the one-time speed freak firefox seem clunky. With the introduction of extensions in Chrome it seems it might be time to uninstall firefox altogether.
Also, I just switched to VLC as the main multimedia player. Mainly due to the fact that KDE really doesn’t have any multimedia players right now.
I also got the android based HTC Hero. It is my first smart phone and the single biggest productivity booster in my life. I don’t know how I used to live without it.
Other devices:
-Debian based Fileserver with 4x1TB HDDs in a raid 5 configuration
-Lenovo X300 laptop running debian linux + KDE 4.3.2
My main desktop, homemade with Xubuntu 9.10, 64bit…
2 older desktops, Xub’ as well… 32bit…
My older Mac PPC iBook G3 with Debian Lenny/Fluxbox…
Had some time with CentOS 5x this year… It was nice… But *Buntu is really hard to beat these days, everything is there, everything is easy, it just works…
I still sipport Windows users for a living… I am glad not to use it, and I dislike Mac…
I built a new home desktop system this year. Its a Core I7 920 with 6GB RAM, 600 GB of RAID-0 Velociraptors and a 1.5 TB external backup drive. Graphics are a Radeon 4850 to a 19″ and 24″ LCD. It’s running Windows 7. I only partitioned half the hard disk because I intended to make it a Gentoo Linux dual boot. That hasn’t happened yet.
For Christmas to myself I added a 30 GB OCZ Vertex SSD for a boot drive.
My work laptop is a Macbook Pro with 4 GB RAM, running Snow Leopard and virtual machines of several different Linuxes, BSDs, Windows on VMware Fusion. I use a 42″ Westinghouse HDTV as an external monitor and a Das Keyboard Ultimate to type on. Lean back and enjoy the large, large fonts!
No ECC memory anymore then?
I sacrificed ECC for game performance. And for some reason, no one seems to make laptops with ECC.
Seriously considering upgrading to a Xeon this year though for the ECC.
I guess I didn’t mention the dual P166 (256 MB ECC) (Fedora 11) running my home internet gateway, or the dual 733 MHz Itanium (1 GB ECC) (Debian unstable) 1 that I run occasionally, or the 1.4 GHz Itanium2 (2 GB ECC) (Fedora 9) I’ve got in a server rack at work.
I have a dual Athlon MP (2 GB ECC) (Gentoo) that will only run for about a half hour before freezing up. Replaced the mobo, tried running with single CPUs, etc. Kind of gave up on it.
Have same old Athlon XP 2800 as main pc booting PCLinuxOS, Windows XP, Puppy Linux 4.2, and Freedos. Freedos is for fun with GEM for the desktop and Arachne as the web browser. Linux is the main OS, only use XP for the iPod Touch. Kde 3.5 is the Linux desktop with xplanet and satellite clouds for a background. A few weeks ago, the wife’s uncle gave us a big Duo Core Gateway laptop we’ve named Baby Huey. I hooked it into the 4-way kvm and will use it as a desktop when I need more power. Other kvm lines are for a pc for experiments and a line for pc repairs.
My computer is a 24″ imac (2008).
Bought it with the geforce 8800 GS build to order option, 3.06 ghz core 2 duo, 4 gigs of ram, 750 gig hard drive. Operating system is OSX 10.6 (snow leopard).
Virtualbox is installed; I run Ubuntu and Windows XP as virtual machines.
Waiting for Apple to officially release support for Windows 7 in boot camp, when they do I will run it natively alongside OSX on a 150 gig “gaming” partition.
AT Home:
Dell D830N Fully loaded
Ubuntu 8.04 64 bit
FIrefox 3.0.15
At WOrk:
HP z600 WOrksatation
RHEL5 64 Bit FIrefox 3.0.5
Dual Core E6600, 3GB RAM here on GA-965P-DS3 + 256MB nVidia 7600GT, Windows 7 RC1. Windows all the way here
I intend to buy the full edition very soon. It will either be Professional or Ultimate.
Edited 2009-12-25 20:38 UTC
Still the same old system. Still 8.04 Hardy LTS.
I have updated to Firefox 3.6Beta6pre from the PPA, I ahave also updated to Thunderbird 3.01 from the PPA.
I have installed OOo 3.11 from the deb on the Sun OOo download site.
I plan to upgrade to Lucid LTS in April. I have given up the update treadmill as the best experiences I have had with Ubuntu have been with the Dapper and Hardy LTS releases, though Feisty pretty good. I need a stable platform for the range of scientific software I run.
I am planning therefore, just to stay with the LTS releases and upgrade primarily the Mozilla Foundation stuff and Openoffice.
My laptop is a straightforward Macbook Pro running Snow Leopard.
My desktop, on the other hand, runs a tweaked Ubuntu 9.10. Instead of Firefox, I run Midori 0.22, which does very well by me. Anyone who hasn’t run this new version of this beautiful Webkit/GTK browser should try it. Beyond that, I eschew OpenOffice in favor of KOffice, and I keep my system Mono-free not just because of the shadiness, but because a whole separate VM environment is a waste just to run Tomboy and F-Spot.
Besides, at yorba.org they’ve got a nice app called Shotwell which aims to be become the iPhoto of Gnome, built with this nice Vala language that Gnome has nowadays. This holds promise.
I’d run XFCE, but drag and drop is very important to me in an interface, and they’ve yet to cover that.
Wii browser and IE.
I just finished building my rig last week.
Cooler Master Storm Scout /w LED lighting
EVGA X58 3-way SLI over-clocking motherboard
Corsair 750 Watt PSU modular rail; 80+ silver
Intel Core i7 920 2.67 GHz 8MB L3 cache
6GB OCZ DDR3 1600 Triple Channel
Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 1GB GDDR5
WD Caviar Black 640GB HDD 7200 RPM, 32MB cache
Optical and multi-card reader drives
No operating system yet (planning on Windows 7)
Linux
KDE 4.3.4
kubuntu; openSUSE
Chrome browser (for now)
OpenOffice
Google apps (Gmail, Docs)
4-year old Core-2 DUO 2.66MHz
Ok, I’ve got two computers, a iMac 20inch 2.66Ghz model with 4GB RAM:
http://i990.photobucket.com/albums/af23/kawaiigardiner/iMacScreensh…
and a MacBook 2.4Ghz ‘White’ with 4GB of RAM and I’ve recently upgraded it to a Samsung 500GB which is working perfectly.
http://i990.photobucket.com/albums/af23/kawaiigardiner/MacBookScree…
Both machines are running Mac OS X 10.6.2 which was a little rough around the edges at the beginning but has really matured as of 10.6.2.
As for browsers, I really like Chrome because of the process and plugin isolation – but I’d actually like to see them move to 64bit as well if at all possible. In the future from what I understand Apple is moving their drivers gradually to 64bit so hopefully 10.7 will be the final push to move from 32bit kernel to 64bit.
I’m currently stuck using Office 2008 which isn’t too bad but I am really keen to see Apple finally integrate bibliography functionality with Pages because the third party are either overpriced as with the case of EndNote or the interface is a usability nightmare as with the case of Bookends.
Here are the specs:
30″ HP LP3065 (got it for $900)
Core 2 Quad 2.83Ghz (Yorkfield)
8GB DDR2 1066
768MB 8800 ULTRA (probably not going to upgrade for a long time)
4x250GB
2x500GB
2x500GB External eSATA
Lian Li PC-V2000 Silver
Happy Hacking Keyboard Pro II
Sidewinder X5 Mouse
Sidewinder Strategic Commander
Cheapest SpaceNavigator
Wacom Bamboo Graphic Tablet (8.5″ x 5″)
1x Windows 7 x86-64 install (for gaming purposes)
1x Ubuntu 9.10 x86-64 install (for everything else)
I LOVE my main computer!
I also have a MacBook 1.83 1,1 with a standard Ubuntu 9.10 install that I recently installed KDE 4.4 BETA2 from the PPAs for testing purposes. (I test every new version of KDE 4 to see how it’s coming along, so far I’m liking this one). I’m typing these comments in Firefox 3.5 on the lappie right now. I’m loving the Chrome beta but it crashes regularly when I load it in KDE 4.4. Never had a crash in GNOME though.
Every once in a while, my MacBook overheats with Ubuntu 9.10 and just shuts down but I think it has a lot to do with power and fan management not being fully integrated with the chipset. (if anyone has any ideas as to why this is or how to fix it, I’d love to hear it!)
EDIT: Oh, yeah, I upgraded it to 2GB ram and an OCZ 30GB SSD.
Edited 2009-12-25 21:51 UTC
I’m still using the non-unibody Macbook Pro and Intel Core 2 Quad machines I had at the beginning of 2009. But I did upgrades to Snow Leopard and Windows 7, and I must say I’ve very, very happy with both. I use the Macbook as my main work computer, and the Windows desktop, which is in my kitchen, as my main web browsing and leisure computer. The only thing I’d really like to change is to get a new unibody Macbook Pro. Though I think I’ll wait to see what’s coming out of Apple next before I jump.
Yes, I’m sure that Apple will make a few enhancements to the unibody design in the upcoming year. Perhaps you can wait for that mactablet, eh? (j/k)
I’ve converted to Mac this year. Osnews is primarily read through an iPod touch while I poo and when I feel like the world cannot live without my insightful input I comment using a MacBook Pro + Safari.
I sometimes have to start the old PC to do things in FlashDevelop and it sort of has this feeling of getting a ride in a 25 year old french car.
It is really interesting to see what people use on a daily basis.
Systems I use with regularity are :
Main Tower:
Currently running Windows XP Pro SP3 Corp VLK
Dual Pentium III-s 1.4ghz/512kb L2/133mhz fsb Tualatins
1.5GB PC133 RAM
Areca 1110 PCI-X SATA RAID Controller with 256MB cache running on PCI 32/33 bus with 4*1TB Samsung Spinpoint F3 drives in a RAID-5
Generic 3 port pci sata controller with 500gb WD Blue and 300GB WD drives, two 40GB IDE drives on its ATA133 bus
3 40GB IDE drives on motherboards ATA66 bus
IDE DVD burner
PhysX PCI card
ATI HD3870 512MB AGP card on a 4x bus
Nvidia 9400 GT 1GB PCI video card for CUDA work (almost forgot about it)
Yes, it is totally over the top upgraded for a Pentium III era computer… But I love it. It has always worked without fail
I’m actually planning on upgrading it a bit more…
Laptop:
IBM Transnote – Coolest laptop design *ever*. Desperate need of some upgrade lovin’, tho.
Windows 2000 Pro SP5 (unofficial SP)
600mhz P3
256MB ram
40GB HDD
CF WiFi card
Some pics showing the Transnotes mighty morphin’ powers here – http://www.flickr.com/photos/helfer/3957058447/in/set-7215762233777…
Favorite Daily Use Machine:
NeXTstation Turbo Color
Made in 1992
NEXTSTEP 3.3 + gobs of ported *nix tools, going to upgrade to OpenStep 4.2 soon
33mhz Motorola 68040 CPU
128MB 60NS EDO
2GB SCSI-2 HDD
17″ Eizo LCD
IR PS/2 Mouse via adapter
Apple 600e SCSI CD drive
Still use it almost everyday! I ADORE my NeXT.
I run Omniweb web browser, irssi, bsflite IM client, OpenSSH + OpenSSL packages, etc etc. Extremely usable still. Shot of the machine here (out of date, but you get the idea) – http://www.flickr.com/photos/helfer/3964565667/sizes/l/
Screenshot (also out of date… but not changed much) – http://www.flickr.com/photos/helfer/3825140072/sizes/o/
Other Machines that get used:
Acer something or other laptop inherited from my dad. Still working on upgrading it. Currently a core duo 1.6ghz, 2gb ddr2-533, 120gb hdd, dvd burner. Running Ubuntu 9.10, needs an SSD and some other upgrades.
Dell GX1 desktop w/ 1.4ghz tualatin upgrade, maxed 768mb pc100 ecc, no hdds, dvd burner. Going to turn it into router/firewall/etc.
Edited 2009-12-25 22:15 UTC
VERY interesting main machine, I see some rather large bottlenecks here and there but it’s still VERY interesting and is giving me some GREAT ideas on how to set up my NAS in an ultra-cheap way! Since it will be on 24/7, boot speed won’t matter so I could see my way to a SATA2 PCI card. . . thanks for this!
BTW, wow, I’m very impressed that you’re using NEXT still, I LOVED reading your post!
Thanks! Ping me anytime if you want to know some more about anything!
Yeah, the PCI 32/33 bus is a bit of a bugger on that machine, but most of the time, I’m only using it for data IO. There is rarely contention between the storage controllers and sound/graphics/whatever. I get around 90MB/s both ways sustained on my RAID, which is about normal max for PCI/33, so I’m happy.
I have had issues with the areca corrupting data. I had to get a second one… honestly, I’d suggest getting a cheaper controller like a FASTTRACK S150 TX-4 card. I’m using one in my bros tower and never had issue with it. Its running 4*80gb satas in a RAID-10 and he averages around 80MB/s off it. Only reason I’m using the arecas is due to the amazingly low price I nabbed them for ($100, retail for $300 still)
Idling, it uses around 90watts (without that physx card.. it uses around 20watts idling and I’ll probably be ditching it). So it isn’t a very power hungry machine.
oh, found a newer screenshot of my NeXT. About 3 months old..
http://www.flickr.com/photos/helfer/3925283786/sizes/o/
SOMETHING SOMETHING SOMETHING DARKSIDE!
I am the motha*#&@er of the universe! LMAO
(teh innernets just isn’t the same anymore)
helf, what would interest you in trade for a nice fat cd of proggies that I could run on my NeXTstation?
Cale
Sent you a private message.
I also see that you have a BUNCH of keyboards (BEAUTIFUL pizzabox btw), I COLLECT keyboards, last count I have 53, I can’t go a week without catching slack from my fiance, family or friends about it!
Yep
I’ve ended up with a bunch. I don’t actually collect them yet, but I always take them when given to me. My favorites are my IBM Model M keyboards (CLICKETY!), IBM AT keyboard, and some unknown make/model keyboard with arabic on it. Its really nice 
I just finally acquired an Apple IIGS and I must say, its keyboard is superb!
If I started listing off all of my lovelies, we’d be here all damned day!
My two faves are my Unicomp Linux keyboard (grey and black) and my HHKB pro 2. I used to have a Samsung NC-10, and the sad thing is that the only reason I chose it is that I noticed that the ctrl and caps lock keys were identical in size (I swapped em), sad I know.
I can’t stand the caps lock key.
I used a mac from 1997 until 2008 when I got a PC running Vista Home Premium SP2. I have no issues with it and I get to use FrameMaker, which makes me very happy.
I still have my Dell Inspiron 5150 which I used to geek out on. Right now it’s running Debian Lenny with 9wm as the window manager.
Box 1
Athlon64 2400+
2GB RAM
Radeon 3800 or 3850? AGP 512MB
CMEDIA 7.1 soundcard. Different company made the card, only remember it’s a CMEDIA chip.
IDE hard drives still
Sidux and WindowsXP. Haven’t logged into Windows in a while. Usually use the latest Arora browser and Firefox for reading OSNews.
Box 2
Athlon MP 1600+
768MB RAM
Nvidia 6800 Ultra OC
SoundBlaster Live! 5.1
I usually this box for some reason. Archlinux e17 mostly and LXDE. Almost always latest Midori. Although using Firefox right now because I couldn’t stay logged in while navigating OSNews in Midori. And FreeBSD 8.0. XFCE and mostly Midori.
I have used Firefox since it was Phoenix 0.4 and I still don’t see performance issues, except on those large social websites. I have problems with those on other browsers. I do like where Midori and Arora are headed, though. Haven’t used Chrome or Chromium yet. I really, really like FreeBSD but I think I am in love with and want to make children with Arch.
Merry Christmas to y’all!
And now for something completely useless:
Not much have changed in the HW/SW department for me this year. Still running my(or rather my companys) Compaq/HP 8710w.
As for software the 8710w runs Ubuntu 9.10(just upgraded). It has been running Ubuntu for a couple of years now, usually doing the dist-upgrades a couple of months after the release.
For my dev work it’s still bash(yes, no dash)/emacs for me thank you very much. And of cause svn, gcc(in many flavours), make etc.
The only real change is that after upgrading to 9.10 I removed VMware Workstation and I am now running WindowsXP using VBox 🙂 Works pretty much just as good/bad as vmware(incredibly slow the first 10 minutes).
I’m still running a Be/Haiku and linux mix on the 2 dual xeons, plus 1 sunblade 100 with solaris 9, 2 SGIs (O2 and Octane) with Irix of course, 3 PowerMacs that dual boot Mac and BeOS, and one poor bastard x86 sgi with w2k on it because linux isn’t worth it on the poor thing.
I have switch my 2 x86 debian setups to the Maxx Destop so the blend with Irix better.
I forgot the alphaserver and the sun 3/50 quietly ticking away in the corner.
Edited 2009-12-26 01:04 UTC
Yes! I _knew_ there’d be IRIX somewhere down this line
I have kept the same desktop I built for two years now, it seem to good enough for my tasks so I’m not planning to upgrade my desktop hopefully for another two years. It use it for work and home media as one: Q6600 2.4 to 3ghz, 4gb ddr2 1ghz, 9800gt ECO version that doesn’t require extra power beside PCI, inside a microATX case with two slots that can insert and eject 2.5mm labtop hdds.
Although I don’t have a labtop, portable seem like a big deal now. I have already envision what I wanted for a long time now, I’m just waiting for it one to be available that I like. A handheld device that can run Debian based linux OS and with decent control and performance, something along the line of the OpenPandora device, but more as computer in general. I would love to get a device like this with a multicore ARM Cortex cpu. I have no interest in getting an x86 based Windows UMPC.
But actually I have a WindowsMobile cellphone, HTC TouchPro2. This is important for me because do not have internet wired to where I live. I use my phone as a WIFI router for my computer to connect to. I do not see Android as an open source, but a closed source OS controlled by Google so I’m not planning to get Android phone.
I am currently using Windows 7 Ultimate for my desktop also, but I stripped away components based on my preferences, so it end up only taking 2.5gb instead of the typical 5gb.
Yes, I feel a bit guilty using Windows OS on both of my devices while using many opensource and ported-from-linux softwares in them.
http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b233/eksasol/desktop.jpg“ desktop screenshot
I use a 12-inch PowerBook G4 running at 1.5 GHz with 1.25 GB RAM. That’s it. If I need to crunch some data, I can SSH into my uni’s compute pool.
Nothing has changed over the past year—I’m still running Tiger in fact.
Actually, I suppose I’ve grown more patient by waiting on those spinning beachballs to go away.
Heya,
This is what I run now:
MacBook (early 2008)
2.4 Ghz Core 2 Duo
Mac OS X 10.6.2 Snow Leopard
4GB RAM
160GB HD
external 120GB HD for Virtual Machines
Work #1:
Dell Latitude e6400
Windows XP SP3/Ubuntu 9.10 dual boot (Windows partition encrypted with TrueCrypt)
2Ghz Core 2 Duo
2GB RAM
160 GB HD
NVidia 8400m mobile graphics
Work #2:
IBM Thinkpad T61
2.4 Ghz Core 2 Duo
3 GB RAM
Windows 7 Pro 32-bit
160GB HD
Nvidia Quadro NVS140 graphics
Thinkpad T61 Dual Core with Intel Graphics and 4GB RAM running Arch Linux. Switched full time to Chromium and Xfce, taking up ~400MB RAM right now. XP64 and Windows 2000 in VirtualBox for development and Visio UML diagrams. Everything runs perfectly, suspend to RAM, OSS volume controls are mapped to the multimedia keys, etc.
I spent about a week of winter break playing with a full ZFS FreeBSD, but 4965 wireless kept dropping the connection and the Intel graphics driver was pitiful.
For the past decade I’ve run 80% Apple computers, with side machines for special cases like BeOS and OS/2, and linux.
Now I am running (starting with Win 7 beta) Windows 7. I am waiting for special hardware from Apple before I switch back. My son inherited my large, aluminum iMac.
Now I have a home-built PC…
Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3L
8 GB RAM
Core 2 Quad (Q9550 2.83)
GeForce 9800GTX+ w/ 512MB
A few terabytes of disk space.
A laser printer.
A scanner.
BENQ 23″ (1920 x 1080)
I can build our (where I work) website in seconds, start and stop JBOSS in seconds… gotta love it.
AND
I can play Spore, Torchlight, Batman Arkham Asylum, Civilization, VTMB, Black and White and BioShock without any problems.
My machine at work is an old IBM Pentium 3 at 450Mhz. It dual boot’s Windows 2000 and Debian 5. It was in the trash and i needed a testing machine for instrumentation interfaces (I’m an electrical technician).
The mobo was going bad but that was due to 3 bad caps (DAMN capacitor plague)at the +5 rail on the mobo. Got a few caps out of inventory and installed them. Me and another tech then reverse installed the offending caps on a PSU during break and watched a nice smoke show. Management was happy i fixed it as they weren’t about to buy me a machine in this economy and so they let me keep the old IBM.
After i got rid of my old AMD k6-2 mobo in my old secondary machine at home (replaced with a p4 IBM netvista mobo), my work machine *somehow* gained 256MB of ram
As you may be able to tell my workplace is small and has no IT department (I’m pretty much it and my boss doesn’t ever understand my explanations. All he knows is that if he leaves me alone the computers somehow run faster.)
Edited 2009-12-26 05:53 UTC
🙂
For traveling to and from work (I take the train, 2700 miles across the USA) I bought a netbook, a Toshiba NB205. It has 2 GB ram… running Windows 7 as well. I’d LOVE to run Moblin on it but the atheros wireless stinks until the next kernel is released.
AMD X2 2.8Ghz
4G ram
Debian Squeeze and Windows 7 Ultimate
AMD X2 2.4Ghz
8G ram
Win2k8
Dell Latitude D630
Xubuntu 9.10
I use XFCE in Debian, I used to use KDE, don’t care for KDE 4. The Win2k8 box has hyper-v with 3 or 4 VMs and runs TVersity to stream media to the xbox 360 in the living room. I also have an old dell running Lenny doing DHCP and DNS.
…my old PC that ran BeOS exceptionally well… it was my R5 machine, BONE networking… I did everything personal on that machine but it was in my basement, it was damp down there, something bad happened to it.
It was a dual CPU PII (later a PIII when I found a matched pair, cheap). 512MB RAM, old Nvidia card… what a machine! BeOS hummed on that baby.
Ah well.
That reminds me, I need to dig out my old machine I used for beos and set it up again.
Its a dual katmai p3-600mhz, 1gb pc100 ecc, ati radeon 7000 64mb pci card, 18gb 10k rpm scsi drive, 3com 3c905b-tx pci NIC. Used that machine for years. BeOS adores it
I’m jealous!
If it had an AGP slot, I’d probably still be using it
Hi! I am hoping to upgrade both my hardware and operating system during 2010.
The hardware will be a middle of the road Intel 2 Quad processor (perhaps AMD) system with about 4 Gb of memory, 512 Mb graphics card and 24″ flat panel display. I will either buy a Dell or build my own (my current desktop is a “build your own” but getting a Dell looks simpler and probably cheaper).
The operating system will be Windows Home Premium 64 bit.
With a bit of luck I have cured my Linux addiction and won’t bother installing an future releases of Ubuntu ever again. But it is an addiction and I am trying hard to give it up.
Regards,
Peter
welcome to the light 🙂
My fileserver is an AMD Athlon x2 brisbane at 1.9 GHz, with 2 gigs in RAM and 2,7 TB in HD space. I’m currently switching all it’s HDs to 1 TB ones to maximize storage space. It has an ATI radeon 1900 XT VGA card, no longer in use and an M-Audio Audiophile 192 SoundCard, hooked up to my amp. It runs Windows 2008 ’cause I don’t trust linux to be able to handle my soundcard (the current ones don’t support my model nor ASIO, both of wich are fundamental to my needs).
My notebook is a Toshiba Satellite x205-SLi5 with 4 gigs of RAM and a couple of 500 GB HDs. It’s connectoed to two 23″ full HD LCDs and runs ubuntu karmic (for work) and windows 7 (for multimedia and games).
I currently use Gnome as my DE but have kubuntu-desktop installed and am waiting for KDE 4.4 to be pushed into the repo’s to give it a try.
I also have and external BluRay writer and my amp is a creek CAS 4040 from 1984 hooked to a couple of Acoustic research 28ls speakers that are about to die, so I guess my next purchase will be new speakers, or a workstation (ws comes in march, speakers when my current ones becomes useless =P).
Last week I bought a MS reclusa keyboard made by Razer and am very pleased with it ’cause it’s backlit so I can work in total darkness, aside from having 10 programmable buttons and a knob that I haven’t yet configured because I’m rather new to linux; and a Logitech G500 mouse gliding on a Razer ExactMat mousepad. I’m halfway through configing it for linux.
I’ve been using linux for roughly 4 months now and am really falling in love with it’s potential, though I still sadly depend on windows for gaming and multimedia (full HD simply doesn’t play on my laptop under linux, probably ’cause it doesn’t support CUDA that I know of – wich is just a tiny little piece of the GNU/Linux puzzle, though I’m awaiting my latest book purchase from amazon that includes the linux bible and the linux bash scripting bible).
BTW Windows 7 as far as I’m aware turned out to be a pretty decent product, building atop Vista (to me a very misunderstood but ultimatly – or after SP1 at least – an excelent OS). I really like the new aero features and the kernel improvements MS is making. I expect windows 8 (or 7.0 if you count the version number) to be the culmination of this effort and the coming of a new improved era for MS, though I think I’m sticking with Linux anyhow (’tis a lovely wild beast =)
regards!
PS: I use aptana to make web pages and virtualbox for a couple of vm’s – one with winXP and my diabetes software and anotherwith win2003 for database modeling (Oracle designer and Erwin data modeler, aswell as Visual Studio 2008 professional for the ocassional ASP.NET project). I use my fileserver through rdp to make my custom windows images with nlite and test them on vmware workstation 6. Now that ws 7 is out I dled the trial for linux to see if it’s worth buying rather than continuing with virtualbox.
Edited 2009-12-26 07:19 UTC
Here’s a pic of my (kid) desktop! =P. I’d love to get rid of the panel and the dock but can’t because I still don’t know my way around linux commands that well. Maybe after I read the Linux Bible =)
http://i46.tinypic.com/wi1rg5.png
Edited 2009-12-26 08:04 UTC
Server: Asus EEEBox running Debian Stable.
Wonderful little thing, runs everything from a full-blown Gnome Desktop to Apache, MySQL, OpenVPN, Samba, CUPS, Fetchmail, Dovecot, Postfix, NFS, SSH, X11VNC and finally VSFTP. I couldn’t be happier.
Workstation: Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Notebook (ca. 2 years old). It’s a 12″-Notebook with a Core Duo Processor, 2 GB RAM, a 320GB Harddrive, running Windows XP, Vista und (used 99% of the time) Ubuntu 9.04. It didn’t like 9.10, had hardware issues with the sound so I still use my 9.04 partition for work. Will probably just skip 9.10 and use the next LTS on this one.
Oh, yeah, it’s connected to a 22″ display and I use USB mouse and keyboard of course.
Notebook: the new Acer Travelmate 8371 (the business version of the Timeline 3810). 13,3″ non-glare (yay!) display, 1.6kg, Core Solo 3500, 2GB RAM. The only special thing here is an Intel X25 SSD (first generation) with 80GB. Nice speed Boost for this Notebook. Running Windows 7 and (again used 99% of the time) Ubuntu 9.10. My Windows partitions are merely used for testing purposes and some gaming from time to time.
Regarding software it’s all standard Ubuntu stuff. Gnome, Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice. Battle for Wesnoth 🙂
All in all, I am quite happy with my setup, but I will replace the Amilo Notebook that I use as my workstation with a real desktop computer again. It’s jsut beefier and easier to upgrade/extend. Probably won’t do that before 2011 though.
Edited 2009-12-26 09:08 UTC
My Main “OpenSource” machine is:
IBM NetVista PIV 1.8Ghz, 1GB RAM
(black, with black keyboard, mouse and 18″ ThinkVision)
FreeBSD 7.2
WindowMaker, GNUstep, GWorkspace, all GNUstep Application Projects apps needed for a Desktop
as a browser I have the faithful SeaMonkey, although I also have Opera.
Matched to that is a ThinkPad T23 running Gentoo Linux and the same applications and setup mentioned above.
These are the main development machines for FOSS stuff. Then I have my Macs for all the Cocoa ports.
Last but lot least, the latest acquisition of this year: A Toshiba NB100 netbook.
Dual boots to Windows XP and Debian, but – I hate to admit this – Windows works just sooo much better on this mobile setup.
On Windows: Opera as a browser! And of course, the windows port of GNUstep (*).
(*): Maybe latest at this point it is clear that I am a GNUstep developer….
AMD Athlon 64 3200+
1 Gig Ram
Running Linux Mint 8 (Helena)
amd x2 5000, 2 gigs of ram and nvidia 8600gt, running latest snow.
On the office i use a toshiba laptop running win 7, since osx does not boot (damn you toshiba for the crippled bios)
Also, as a media center, i have a celeron d overclocked at 3.85 ghz, with 1 gig of ram, running leo. It plays 720p videos just fine, i haven’t tried 1080 because the tv is “hd ready”, but i suspect it won’t play as good.
I used to have different linux distros on my main pc, but i gave up and went with osx instead. Everything is much more stable (yes, even on an amd
).
I’ve replaced most of the innards of my PC this year. From a Sempron 3400+ to a Phenom X3 720 (major upgrade) and from an NV 8400 GS to a 9400 GT. All on the cheap, but what a massive improvement! Also from 2 GB DDR2 to 4GB DDR3 memory.
I’ve also gone from 2×17″ CRT to 2×22″ flat-/widescreen displays.
I’ve installed trusty old XP, because at the time I did the upgrade, Win7 wasn’t out officially. I’ll be purchasing that sometime soon.
My desktop, as always, is immaculately clean – no icons, just the windows taskbar and a dock (rocketdock), which I use almost exclusively rather than the start menu (which is only used for the less used applications).
http://danwa.net/junk/frostburn-26-12-2009s.png
mmmmm….. I was suppose to get myself a second 22Inch LCD… but I decided to build a HTPC.
Did you swap motherboards too or do you have one of those awesome ASRock motherboards?
Edited 2009-12-28 06:45 UTC
I did swap motherboards. I did have an Asrock motherboard but it wouldn’t take the Phenom. It would recognize the cpu, then lock up after POST. Meh :p
Well, i upgraded this year to a AMD X2 Athlon 6000+, ASUS M3N 780 mainboard and NV 9800 GTX – as the OS there is ONLY linux (ubuntu 9.10 as my main operating system) and some other OSes/distros (no windows thou) running under VirtualBOX. Main screen is a 22″ Samsung and secondary a Philips LCD 32″.
Next year i go quad or more core, but currently all my needs are satisfied.
Cheers..
get yourself one of the i9s… 6 cores and Hyper Threading… 12 threads processing at a time.. crazy.
Laptop: HP EliteBook 8530w (I don’t believe in netbooks)
Intel CoreDuo T9400 @ 2.53 GHz
4 GiB RAM
250 GB Hitachi HDD @ 7200 rpm; getting full
nVidia Quadro FX 770M
DVD-writer (didn’t see the need for Blue-Ray)
64-bit Windows 7 Ultimate; did an upgrade from Vista; it used to be pretty unstable until HP released the Win 7 drivers.
I use it for work, browsing and the occasional Monkey Island episode.
Total Commander, Slick Edit 2008, various versions of Visual Studio, Wireshark + a lot of crap from work.
Thinking of turning on hard disk encryption
Occasionally I find myself without the laptop and needing to do some browsing/email/IM; fortunately, I always carry my HTC Touch Pro 2 with me.
Edited 2009-12-26 13:44 UTC
AMD 64 X2 5000+ (2.6 GHz)
ASUS M2A-VM HDMI crap-mobo
2 GB RAM
0.5 TB harddisk (SATA+PATA), DCD-ROM + DVD-RAM
OS 1:
Windows Server 2003 w. SP 2 (tweaked to be a workstation) [32-bit]
Lots of minor customizations (Visual Tooltip, home-grown mail client etc.) and a blend of butt-old software and some quite new software (work-arounds needed for some of it)
Vista sidebar
uxtheme.dll is not pached, and never will be
Cygwin
OS 2:
x86-64 multilib Cross-LFS blatantly violating the brainfart known as Linux FHS*
No KDE, no Gnome, no XFCE, no GTK, no nothing really :p
Centered around GNUstep (and a GNUstep like fhs)
* Yes, this is a provocation :p
that Mobo is decent enough… I had that for a year before I moved to the Q6600.. I gave my son that board.
This is too far down the thread for anyone to read, but i think ill enter it anyways. A amiga 1200 with a Mediator board, BlizzardPPC 240mhz, voodoo5 5500 pci and a intel SCB card with 1,8ghz p4/2048mb ram running BeOS. My ultimate all in one amiga.
And a laptop that is running BeOS and haiku with fully supported hardware including 3d graphics.
*edited for spelling errors*
Edited 2009-12-26 16:37 UTC
I know what you mean about the thread where nobody cares but you never mentioned whether you have OS 4 for classic Amiga on that BlizzardPPC or if it is OS 3.x.
Its os 3.9. I’ll hold off on OS4 untill i buy a Acube SAM but im waiting for the magical 1ghz limit =)
I still want that Amiga, judgen… someday you will cave and sell it to me
I’ll consider you first of all when/if i ever get rid of it. But im more likely to get a faster SBC (or add another) and keep using it like i do now.
Which PC? 🙂
my server runs OpenSolaris with ZFS on some low end hardware
my Son’s PC runs an X2 2 GHz cpu with 2 gigs of memory and windows 7 HP
My Laptop a Dell Insperon with one of those new Pentium chips based on core 2 with 2 gigs of memory and windows 7 HP
My wife’s netbook is an Asus Eee PC 1005HA still with a gig of ram and the 5400 HDD (will upgrade memo to 2 gigs and the HDD to an SSD) and windows 7 HP student upgrade on it*
my HTPC is a basic HTPC case from nMedia, usb IR receiver, dual core, 2 gigs of memory, a gforce 8500 GT card for accelerated video (a little loud) and windows 7 HP. I will either be moving to Linux on this machine to use XMBC with accelerated video or wait for the windows version with accelerated video to get out of alpha.
and my main machine is a core 2 Quad core Q6600 with 4 gigs or memory about a TB of storage in it on two disks windows 7 Ultimate and Chrome as my browser.
For ultra mobile computing I have a rooted mytouch with the latest cyanogenmod ROM on it. (its OK, but they still need to fix the bluetooth)….Oh… and ford sync (still on v 1.1 though… need to take it for a full upgrade to 3.0)
*For those who are students… if your school uses google apps for webmail, use the + operator when signing up for the 30 dollar purchase and they think it is a new e-mail address and send you a new link. They do track the billing information too so you will need to use someone else for the billing… It works… I did it 🙂
Edited 2009-12-26 17:54 UTC
I built myself a Hackintosh this year. i7-920 @3.6 Ghz, 6 GB RAM (1866 Mhz), X58 chipset MB from Gigabyte, Geforce GTX 285, 2x1TB HDD, ATCS 840 brushed aluminium chassis. HP LP3065 30″ monitor at 2560×1600. Running Snow Leopard smoothly at only a fraction of the price of the closest Mac Pro i can configure at Apple store, and that includes a legal copy of Snow Leopard.
I still have my beloved HTPC/server with 6 TB disk in a closet running Arch Linux and XBMC though.
I have four computers currently.
gandalfwhite: Zotac IONITX Atom motherboard passively cooled in a Mini-ITX case. It’s running Ubuntu Server 9.10 and does all the file/media serving tasks for my home.
aragorn: MacBook Pro 15″ as my general usage laptop, running OS X 10.6/Ubuntu 9.10 dual boot.
gollum: Acer Aspire One as a netbook that I keep on me at all times, running Ubuntu Desktop 9.10.
sauron: C2Q 2.83GHz, 8GB DDR3, 4x 750GB 7200RPM HDD, Radeon 4870×2 2GB desktop in a nice CoolerMaster case without any of those tacky blue lights! For games and programming, so it’s running Win7 for the former and Ubuntu (with 10.4 repository) for the latter: http://lh4.ggpht.com/_v2Eq7wZ3xBY/SvPngtSWANI/AAAAAAAAAWs/RnUqt1Bp9…
A PS3, 360 elite, gandalfwhite and sauron are plugged into my 42″ panny plasma in the lounge. A second PS3 is plugged into a 32″ LCD in the bedroom. Fixed machines are connected to one of two gigE switches and wireless to one of two 802.11n routers. gandalfwhite is also plugged into a 1080p LCD on my desk (in clone mode). It has a wireless mediaboard/mouse or a 360 controller for using it, because I tend to play games on the sofa on either it or my PS3/360, as well as a wired Microsoft natural keyboard and Logitech gaming mouse.
I have a Mac Pro running Snow Leopard with 2 TB of storage and 16 gigs of ram. This is the rig I do all my work on (lots of photography, web development and video editing). On the Mac Pro I also run VMware Fusion with Windows 7, Windows XP and Ubuntu virtual machines
I have a Dell XPS 720 H2C Edition running Windows 7 – I just use this for gaming
Both the above share an Apple 30inch cinema display, apple keyboard and Microsoft mouse via a KVM switch
I also have a macbook recent edition unning Snow Leopard
A Dell 10v Hacknintosh Netbook running Snow Leopard (cheap, light and expendable – just for travel)
A 3g 32 gig iPhone
A mac mini used a as a media server attached to my plasma flatscreen TV
An ipod classic 160 gig for toting my complete music collection around on vacation and as my main music player at home via a zeppelin speaker (I just sold all my CDs)
My wife has a 24 inch iMac running Snow Leopard
I’ve been using Ubuntu steady for about five or six years, ever since I dropped dual-boot Gentoo and Windows XP (the latter for working on Flash animations). I’m at 9.10, using GNOME (which I’m very comfy with, for the most part, although I’m really scared of GNOME Shell and may switch to KDE then).
My computer is a hacked-together piece of who-knows-what. It’s an Athlon XP 2200 (I think — it’s hard to keep track), with 1 GB of RAM and an old Matrox G400 dual-head video card that I threw in there after my nVidia died. I do all my web development, graphic design, and photo editing on this machine, and I just can’t stand the clunky workflow of Windows.
I’m using mainly Acer Aspire One AO531H-0bk with Archlinux, powered with GNOME (I don’t have enough time to create a more usable setup with dwm/xmonad, usable and etc) and Epiphany as web browser.
Also I use Dell Inspiron 1721 (Archlinux with dwm and surf) and IBM ThinkPad T23 with Plan9 and Abaco…
My Ultrasparc laptop’s video card stopped initializing. While the machine functions, it doesn’t display anything on the screen, making it of limited utility for laptop usage. I’ve been saying that I would not even think about getting a new laptop until quad cores were available at a reasonable price point (future proofing more than anything else). Right about the time my laptop went blind, the Lenovo Y550p came out.
4 GBs of RAM, 500 GB hard drive. Shipped with Windows 7 which was immediately replaced by Ubuntu 10.10. Everything works very nicely. Gnome is my “Desktop Use” desktop; I use awesome (because it is awesome) for more productive use (harder to fire up suduko). I’ve named her “Cassandra” after Batgirl III; I name my personal computers after female comic book characters.
While the thing is faster than my quad core desktop, I still miss my Ultrasparc oddity. It was old and slow but I was really fond of that machine. Hopefully, Cassandra will put in several years of good work.