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I am glad to share this Re:log with some friendly people!
For me a computer is an equipment that allows me to create something or for doing creative activities (e.g. creating a document file, editing a photo, etc.), or traditional computer stuff like serving files (NAS, Samba, Media Player, etc.) or provide other services (Transmissions, etc.). Must support the majority of the *nix OS and must be controlled at least by a keyboard or through SSH, I must be able to install any OS any time because it is designed for such scope.
Many modern devices have probably more computational power than this old netbook I use to write for my capsule. Many of them can ran heavy applications and heavy websites, but they do not allow you to install any other OS, they are not meant to be used with a keyboard; for that reason I won't include in my count:
Mobile phones
Tablets
Consoles (but I have an exception)
Smart devices (TVs, Box TVs, Radios, A/V Player)
IoT devices (Fitbit, Thermostats, don't really know)
I have a lot computers, the majorities are just old. I am not interested in the "latest & greatest" hardware. I am not an hardware GUI, I am not interested in technology, I am more interested in the software side. I'd like to see which new features brings Inkscape or the next version of XFCE4, and I don't need a newer or more powerful computer for such discovery activity. Solderpunk also led me into the philosophy "Less is More" therefore everything I need should be achievable even with the least powerful hardware!
I am going to order my computers in a chronological fashion, although I may not recall exactly the year, I hope you can forgive me for not being so rigorous!
HP-635 (2012) — This was the very first laptop I've ever bought. It was also one the first of being sold (in Europe) with a Linux distro, it had SLES. It worked as charm but SLES was unfamiliar for me therefore I delete it (without ever taking a backup) and I installed Debian. The setup wasn't easy but it served me decently, this was already slow in 2012, today I still use it with Xubuntu (bad moves) to make my daughter have a computer to play with. What I found incredible is this computer can't no longer run heavy websites; whether you use Firefox, Chromium or Vivaldi page won't load or so slow to be unusable, even though the laptop got a SSD disk and 6GB of (slow) ram.
Raspberry PI 2 Model B (2015) — My first SOC, this was pretty exciting because the small form factor made me super exciting until I realized how it was under powered... It was used initially as Retro-Game emulator, then I moved over OSMC booting from an external disk. Osmc is one the best Debian derivatives as well as one of the best KODI based os. When arrived the TV with Netflix it was downgraded as Samba server it is survived till these days when I eventually replaced it with "a most reliable" system. Because the form factor and low power consumption I am evaluating if connecting it again and use it as PI-Hole or as a dedicate PICO-8 computers.
System76 Serwal WS (2016) — Using the HP-635 became impossible for any normal task, the HP-635 was a cheap laptop therefore I don't blame it, but it was barely good enough to run LibreOffice. Since I needed a new computer I decided to support a Linux company (I wasn't into BSD back to these days) buying a System76 laptop. I think that was the worst purchase I ever made. The laptop was a Clevo rebranded, I installed Debian testing but there some compatibility issues with to the S76 utility to update the firmware. Then I decided to use it with POP!_os. I was able to last one year, it was my worst Linux experience, never felt so sad using a computer, I saw the most horrific things of my life: I saw kernel updates a week and the next week I saw the same kernel being downgraded. I was naively convinced that Linux hardware company would embrace the freedom but this company was trying to lock me down in its ecosystem as any other vendor. After POP! I moved to Devuan and eventually dual-booting FreeBSD with Devuan, where the former is the main OS and Devuan is to use that proprietary software I have to use to connect to my son's school. Nowadays Linux is only useful to run proprietary stuff pretty sad, indeed.
Hardkernel Odroid-XU4 with OGST Case (2018) — I love retrograming especially the period between 80's and 90's, I used it with Odroid-RetroArena until the Nintendo Switch take over it and my son stopped to play with it. It has been used for a while to play Disney+ till it was replace by the Ryzen Mini PC. Initially I would love run the capsule from this SoC, it has enough computational power and sufficient RAM to run any Gemini server, the OGST allows to connect any disk. But to avoid ghost cost and to many inquires from my wife I decided to move host my Gemini server on a VPS. I am still planning to do something evil with NetBSD but I do not have time...
Motile M141 (2020) — this was bought for son because the Covid-19 and the remote school. It is a fairly good Ryzen 3 APU, with a decent built quality and despite the careless it have received, this laptop still resists. I bought it because a good review on Phoronix and I am overall satisfied. It allowed me to install a second NVMe stick so I could double boot Linux and leave Windows as backup. Initially I had a very annoying issue that used to frozen the laptop because Zoom, Flatpak and anacron! It took me weeks to troubleshoot it, eventually I was able to fix it scheduling the anacron task from midnight to 6 a.m. avoid conflicts with zoom and flatpak. My son has access to Windows and Linux, surprisingly he prefer using Debian GNU/Linux: he finds XFCE4 much better than Windows. Smart kid!
Mini PC AMD Ryzen (2021) — I bought this unknown Chinese mini computer because it was good deal, I planned to use it as media server using Vivaldi to run the streaming services, I also bought mouse/tv remote that works like a Wii controller, but it didn't work out very well. This computer uses OpenSuse Tumbleweed and it is barely updated but when it does, even though is a rolling system, it doesn't break; amazing this Tumbleweed. Eventually it was replaced by a FireTV Hacked (unfortunately Amazon killed any hack). Anyway its future is not clear but next time will run a BSD.
Odroid-HC4 (2021) — I bought it to replace the PI2 + OSMC + EXT_USB_DISK; however for lack of time, ideas and inspiration. This was left taking dust for more than a year. It is just recently that I fire up this board. I really like Odroid SoCs these are well built and designed, however they have an awful OS support. In my early FreeBSD enthusiastic days I thoughts that FreeBSD was diffused as much as Linux, wrong! Also the SoC support for BSD is ridiculously poor! Raspberry PI taught that is more important having decent OS support rather than the most powerful or cheapest SoC, you can squeeze more juice from a SoC if that has a great OS support as the Raspberry PI SoCs do! Since the FreeBSD is missing and I would like to use ZFS I ended up using Armbian/Ubuntu which is better than the official Ubuntu image provided. I hope for the future to get rid off Linux and to use FreeBSD instead.
Acer Aspire One 532h (2010/2022) — This is the latest arrived but also the oldest computer I actually have. It runs OpenBSD and WindowMaker to manage the graphic session, the combo is pretty nice to use, and WMaker became rapidly my favorite WM alongside XFCE4, unfortunately I haven't had time to customize better the "look & feel" so I am run the vanilla version. If the HP-635 barely can run an heavy website this is even worse, the only reasonable browser you can use is Seamonkey and the only reason it can browse some page is because there is still available a legacy version of "uBlock-origin" which allows to take down the majority of the shit that make using internet impossible. However I was prepared for this scenario and, as a matter of fact, this laptop is used exclusively to write gempage and to navigate on the Geminispace. I can read and write email through Sylpheed, and manage the capsule through rclone, ssh and midnight-commander. I use micro to write my content. As terminal I use standard Xterm because it can't run my favorite one: Terminator. This laptop which I got exactly for Gemini really is a demonstration how Gemini (and Gopher) is really important for a sustainable access to online content.
There are others computers & co. in my household that I will just mention:
my wife has a branded, fairly powerful, tower computer (2019);
she still has a branded, fairly decent, 17" laptop (2012) but it would need some repairing;
my mother-in-law has a decent branded 15" laptop;
I have two FireTV that were nice to use with a custom launcher, but Amazon neutralize this feature and now they really disgust me;
I have a Sega Genesis Mini (hacked) which is essentially an Arm SoC, I think that would be possible hacking it for doing something else;
tablets, kindle readers and mobile phones are in the household;
Thanks for allowing me to talk about my stuff!
For the future I'd like to replace the Acer One. The form factor works fine but the CPU is too slow, even if I updated the ram and the disk, this netbook is barely usable just for TUI tasks. The weight is not ideal, the Motile M141 is a 14" laptop and is way more light, also burns a lot, I hope to get a cheapest 11" mini-laptop (not a Chromebook) which is powerful enough to browse on internet when I need, that is lighter and don't burn!
For comments or suggestion write me at:
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