My Laboratory

A while ago I came into the posession of three old computers. They’re all micro-atx cases that have 500MHz processors, 128MB of ram and a 5GB hard drive. I got them for free with keyboards, mice, and monitors. I wasn’t sure what to do with them at first but after thinking hard for five seconds I had decided their destiny: they would run Linux. Not just any Linux mind you, all possible versions of Linux that can run on them - and the ones that can’t too.

I’ve got them set up in the basement of my house where none of my housemates nor I ever go. They’re sitting on an old workbench with a giant vice clamp on it and to get them connected to the internet I had to run a 50ft LAN cable down my basement stairs. I call this place my laboratory because when I’m in it I feel like a mad scientist.

I’ll be writing reviews of distros from time to time and when you read one you can be certain that I wrote it while in my lab trying wild new things with four computers (my laptop included). It’s funny to think about how excited I get about using these three donated computers when their combined resources are still less that those of my laptop in every regard. Still, I have a lot of fun down there.

Last weekend I finished setting the laboratory up and the first thing I did was reviewed Dynebolic 1.4. It turned out that the PS/2 mouse with no scrollwheel didn’t work on this distro so I had to swap mice. I also prepared (but didn’t write) a review on the Linux Live Gaming Project and Mandrake 10.1.

This laboratory is to a distro jockey what a good ranch is to a real jockey - it’s a place to ride freely. I hope to be able to try out many more operating systems as the days progress, there’s a lot of good stuff out there.