Computer Love

[maru]

So I had gotten into remission with my computer shenanigans. Then lately after a friend came over, it got reignited.

So, in sum:

1. satsuki: Razer Blade 14. Windows 11 Pro. Last time I used this was to beat Atelier Sophie 2 and I just felt like having to do it on PC made me less inclined to play it. Very few games will make me want to sit at my desk. I wish I could've just played it in bed, on the sofa, whatever. So, I recently moved her to be a Big Picture Mode computer on the TV and took the Steam Deck off of it.
2. Steam Deck: Has no name! Maybe should fix that. Mostly a VN device for bed or travel or whatever. Or a roguelike device. Whatever. Still counts as a computer.
3. nanami: a Thinkpad T500 17 inch beast I rescued from my sister's basement, put 8GB of RAM in it and an SSD and it's like, Fine. It's got a Core 2 Duo and it needs to be running Windows to run any games decently. I put FreeBSD on it making it entirely useless. So, I need to put Windows 10 LTSC back on. But then I sort of don't know what to do with it other than 2000s games.
4. tsubasa: Thinkpad X1 Carbon is still around. As my lightest and most precious she ends up coming with me on trips a lot. But, if my partner needed another computer, this is probably the one I would give. It's the most useful and recent with the least purpose in my life.
5. keina: MacBook Pro. Still more or less my main PC, though, who knows now.

And yes, now we have sadako, this ThinkCentre M710s sitting on the side of my desk.

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An i3-7100, 128GB SSD, yes it is definitely 2010s computer lab stuff. A librarian's computer. It had Windows 8 -> Windows 10 on it and left there. We ended up going with OpenSUSE for no reason besides curiosity and then put MATE on it after it defaulted to IceWM (if you don't want KDE or GNOME: that's what you want, right?).

We hit a weird hiccup with the DPI on that, but then got into MATE; we thought WiFi didn't have drivers (we're using a dongle that seems to max out at 20mbps) but it did, as soon as you boot into a desktop. Then we were figuring out graphics. Intel HD 630 on a 4k display; compositor wasn't having fun, but it turned out you need to set Xorg to use modesetting or something, and then it runs nicely.

Today I went out and decided to put a GT 1030 in it to help ease the bottleneck a bit, and yeah, it's comfy now! Firefox is good, can run whatever heavy web app you need, YouTube, plug into my Navidrome server well enough. Guild Wars runs at 60 fps on 1080p, very nice.

I guess when it comes to "what's the purpose of this?" it's more that I haven't had a desktop computer in twenty years. The feel of a desktop is very singular to me; it feels like a site, a space, a portal, a distinct appliance; I have a ton of portable devices that feel nomadic. I had an iMac for a few years in there, and it was better, but not the same as this box I crank open and start tweaking. I don't know how to describe the phenomenological difference. So I would prefer to think of plugging another machine at my desk as a 'visitor' and this desktop as my fun, default PC. My preferred desktop environment, childhood games and stuff I come back to. Something I can continue to tweak at and upgrade to an extent.

Also I ended up spending like 3 hours tonight figuring out Nvidia drivers. tldr; combo of TPM and the kernel being afraid of the Nvidia module and maybe defaulting to Intel drivers in the Xorg from the other day? It kept booting to a blank cursor without much guidance, and pinpointing the issue was not necessarily easy. It normally means "Xorg doesn't know how to render something so it's just not gonna do anything", and when nouveau is blacklisted, it comes down to whether it's allowed to use the module, if the module can even be loaded, etc.

[8sumint]

i guess i should contribute one of these huh. i have a lot of computers..... people just keep giving me them and i'm starting to think they're taking advantage of me somehow (by giving me free stuff? idgi :p). they are all precious and i try and love them as much as i can

• desktop: the workstation. doesn't have a cute name unlike most of the others for some reason. runs win10 themed to look like win7. 26tb across 9 disks. where the actual work gets done (music, video, software, ..). been in use since like 2016 but i don't think a single part is the same anymore except maybe one of the hard drives. photo of that setup below
• astraea: webserver, debian. thinkcentre m58? core 2 duo, 2gb ram, 200gb ssd. owns port 22 and 80 and 443 of the ip and proxies requests to all the websites on the other servers, plus serves my main website and files i need to share and other miscillany. stole it got it for free from school years ago. hangs out in my tiny closet with all the wires.
• satsukitane: webserver, debian. some "compaq" thing. pentium dual and an nvidia 7100 (?? i didn't know that), 4gb ram, 500gb ide disk an old friend of mine's dad salvaged out of some security camera device (actually two but one died) + 2tb disk for archival. runs the song-of-the-day service, plus various people have logins so it's a general dumping ground for stuff, webpages, cronjobs, ..
• tomoko: webserver, debian. some hp thing. weird 3-core amd cpu. 16gb ram, 1tb disk(!). doesn't really do much these days but i use it for development sometimes and it runs a discord bot and a postgres. it has docker installed so that's where i put containers and other heavier feeling stuff when i have to.
• oregano: the mac mini 3,1 that's under my tv i watch stuff on to chill out. just has some smb shares from desktop perpetually mounted and i play them in vlc. os x 10.9 and it can barely keep up with 1080p at the best of times. also runs an airplay server so i can in theory cast stuff to the speakers over there (there being.. the other side of the room. i tend to just use ajaxamp (lol) and crank the speakers at my desk)

there's also like 4 more towers including a duplicate of maru's thinkcentre sitting around but i don't know what i'll do with them yet. would you like one

laptops:

• Macbook Pro: 2012, 13". os x 10.9. was given it with the purpose of getting precious video footage off the dying original disk.. was my primary laptop computer for the past 4 years or so. used it to track an album and some shows, wrote most of my website on it.. audio output jack has been busted for as long as i've had it so i have to use a stupid usb thing. has all the cool stickers. now generally supplanted by..
• hiyori: an identical 2012 mbp but running arch linux and gnome. cause i needed to run actual software (firefox, vscode, ..). she comes to the park with me these days but i love them both very much and was rather conflicted about this.

not really in use but still notable are:

• thinkpad t61 - i grew up with this one (9). first ran vista, then some linuxes, then osx 10.9 as a crappy hackintosh, then linux again. the fan bearing or something is broken so it doesn't get much use, and also i can't find the power adapter in my room!
• ibm thinkpad t22 - i grew up with this one first (win2k). this isn't the same one cause the real one got thrown out at some point :< but i wanted something with a serial port to talk to my oscilloscope so i found another a few years ago. there's some problem with it where it'll just die (something bad in the power circuitry.. i'm scared) so i don't touch it anymore.
• imac g3 dv (ruby). runs os9 and osx tiger and sits on the other desk looking pretty.

there's also an mbp 2011 15" (dead gpu), some tiny macbook air (i use it as an ip camera sometimes), a couple white macbook 1,x's, mbp 2008 15" (dead gpu), powerbook g4 (i need to find a new adapter for it cause it's pre-magsafe), nec versa 6050mh (windows me), some 201? imac, some others.

here's the pic of my desk, where i do my uhh... software engineering. i'm sorry for the mess. most people don't get to see this you know

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join me next time when i talk about my cameras