Embracing my inner geek
I've been speeding the past month trying to update the old computers at church. We bought "state of the art" stuff about seven years ago - meaning that they are over glorified paperweights today. I took the old Dell desktops that were running Window XP (rather poorly) and upgrade them to Linux. I've used Ubuntu before in the past, but I really don't like the new Unity desktop. This time around I've been messing with LinuxMint with the KDE desktop. I find that I really like the feel and look of it and it seems to be very stable with those old Dell's and can do pretty much everything that we need. The next challenge for me was my old Dell Inspiron 600m lap top. Last year I cannibalized my computer and Cindy's computer to try and make one lap top that was stable (I had the good hard drive and Cindy had the good motherboard) for Charlotte to use when she visited. The computer worked (somewhat) for Charlotte, although it was extremely slow and somewhat buggy (that's what I get for running an out of date XP). When I went to Puerto Rico this year, I decided to see what would happen if I turned it into a Linux box.
I installed Ubuntu on it and took it to Puerto Rico. I was just looking to get a stable computer that could check e-mail and upload some pictures to the internet. Ubuntu worked but would get stuck every now and then (also - did I mention I hate the new Unity desktop?). A few weeks ago I tried to put a KDE desktop on top of the Ubuntu system which work somewhat OK - although it seemed slow at times. Yesterday I decided to see what else I could do to it.
I blasted the hard drive and installed Kubuntu - the KDE version of Ubuntu. After fixing some video card bugs, I got it to load, only for it to continually hang up during updates. Next, I blasted the hard drive and installed Mint 12 KDE. Same update issues (which is funny, considering that there were no problems with Mint 12 KDE on the desktops.) Finally, I tried Mint 12 LXDE. This computer has been working like a charm ever since (this is actually the computer that I'm writing this post on).
All this reminds me of the good old days when I was a computer geek in High School playing with my good old Commodore Vic 20. It only had 4k worth of memory (expandable to 16k) but who could want more? It was so state of the art - with it's cassette recorder storage and a 300k modem- even William Shatner loved it. Oh - those were the days!
My first computer was a Commodore 64. I got it to learn BASIC, but I think I spent more time playing Buck Rogers and Donkey Kong on it.
I remember the whole cassette drive thing. You could actually listen to your stored data if you wanted to. :-)
Would you believe there is actually a retro/new Commodore 64 out now?
P.S. I never knew you were a computer nerd. :-)
Posted by
Jon Davis Jr. |
4:53 AM
I upgraded to a Commodore 64 a year or so later. I saw the "reto" unit - it brought back memories!
I wasn't just a computer nerd - I was more like Matthew Broderick's character in "War Game" - jacket and all. (I actually did some of the same stuff as well). Every now and then I kinda have a flash back and get engrossed with a computer issue here at home or the church. It drives Cindy nuts because I will get into the "zone" and mute everything around me - staring at a screen late into the night. Uggh!
Posted by
Joe Holda |
2:27 PM