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Any Computer Enthusiast in the house?

My job for past 20 years has been in technology. Have spent time in multi national banks as well as global pharma players. Personally am a Linux, OpenSource, C/C++, Python enthusiast. Love Opensource. I use Debian linux on all my computers including my 2019 Dell XPS 15 core-i9 / 64gb which i use for complex number crunching for projects I indulge in for AI/ML algorithms.
 

oc_in_fw

Fridays are Fishtastic!
My job for past 20 years has been in technology. Have spent time in multi national banks as well as global pharma players. Personally am a Linux, OpenSource, C/C++, Python enthusiast. Love Opensource. I use Debian linux on all my computers including my 2019 Dell XPS 15 core-i9 / 64gb which i use for complex number crunching for projects I indulge in for AI/ML algorithms.
I have been in flight simulation since 1998- I am on the cutting edge of technology. I have built a lot of computers. Should Apple ever go out of business, my home PC will be Linux or FreeBSD based. With lots of Unix background, both of these led me to Apple (OSX is built on FreeBSD). I refuse to have an MS computer in my house
 

rbscebu

Girls call me Makaluod
I wouldn't call me an enthusiast but my first programming language was Fortran IV and later V in uni. My first PC was years later when I purchase an Apple IIE (64k RAM, cassette tape storage, etc.). Then there were very few programs available for my profession so I wrote my own. Then came an IBM PC with MS DOS. After that it was IBM PC clones, also with MS DOS. Eventually I was using MS Windows. That lasted until after Windows XP came out. A few years later I thankfully moved 100% back to Unix type operating systems. Now all my computers are running Ubuntu or Debian. I am also a great believer in (and contributor to) open-source software.

BTW, I am not an IT professional. Computers are just something that I need to use in my profession so I have to have a very good understanding of how they operate.
 
My job for past 20 years has been in technology. Have spent time in multi national banks as well as global pharma players. Personally am a Linux, OpenSource, C/C++, Python enthusiast. Love Opensource. I use Debian linux on all my computers including my 2019 Dell XPS 15 core-i9 / 64gb which i use for complex number crunching for projects I indulge in for AI/ML algorithms.
I ran Linux on my home system since the mid-90s and recently switched to Mac, only because many of the distributions didn't support the NVME SSD drives.

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I spent a lot of time ovr last 2 decades with lowpower fanless mini-itx systems and asterisk. Lately ive been trying to get into arduino, raspi, etc but kinda of stalled with a pihole/vpn box as i dont have the time anymore.
 
I was until I started working on them for a living. Now I just want a machine that does what I want. Which in this case is a second hand laptop running Linux.
 
I've built a few gaming PCs and I really enjoy it. I don't have one currently though, and the technology has advanced so much since my last build that I feel like I'd need to re-teach myself how to build if I wanted another one. Lots of fun though. I love running PC games at max settings and downloading mods.
 

EclipseRedRing

I smell like a Christmas pudding
I have worked in IT for 30 years and am currently North West Europe IT Systems Administrator for a multi national company with 80,000 employees. By the time I finish work I am sick to death of computers so I do not consider myself an enthusiast; in fact I am gradually becoming something of a Luddite.
 
I guess you could say that I have been a computer enthusiast for over 50 years.

I have been working with computers since I started college in 1968. My first experience was using a Hewitt Packard time sharing computer which you programmed in BASIC on a RTTY terminal that produced a ticker tape for input into the computer. Output was on a a dot matrix printer. Later I learned to program in ALGOL on a Electronic Data Systems mainframe that used punch cards for input and a line printer for output.

When I got my first job in a R&D lab, they had a small IBM 360 mainframe that ran Fortran IV. It had only 36 kilobytes of memory, of which 18 kilobytes were user accessible. Input was through punch cards, but there was a removable storage disc about 14" diameter that could store a whopping 100 megabytes of data.

With the advent of personal computers, I joined the fray with the Commodore 64 and later Commodore 128 computers. The C64 has an amazing 1.023 MHz 8-bit processor and 64 kb memory. That was superior to the mainframe I used at the R&D lab a decade earlier. I learned to program in 8-bit machine code as well as using BASIC I had learned in college. The C64 had sequential storage tapes as well as a later floppy disc drive.

My first IBM PC clone had a 16 bit 8086 CPU and 4 megabytes of RAM. My next computer was based on the 80386 CPU which was the first 32 bit processor.

I built my next computer myself using an 80486 CPU. I also built one using an AMD K6 processor.

Over the years, I have had a variety of computers, both Intel and AMD based. I currently have four desktop and two laptop computers and a variety of devices networked using gigabit Ethernet and AC (WiFi 5)and AX (WiFi 6) wireless routers. It has been a few years since I built a computer from components, but that one is still one of the most capable ones I own. I can play video games at 4K resolution as I have upgraded memory, hard drives, and video cards over the years.

Back in 1995 when Microsoft first release Windows 95, search engines were in their infancy. Many people struggled trying to figure out how to get their hardware and software to work together. The software folks like Microsoft and Lotus knew software, but had no clue about hardware. Hardware folks like Intel, AMD, Sony, Hitachi, etc. understood hardware, but had no clue about software. I operated a website as a free service to those with questions that bridged the gap between hardware and software and could not readily be answered by the folks who were strictly hardware or software related. I answered questions from people all over the world. I continued the website for several years until the Internet became well populated with information and search engines advanced to the point you could find the information needed. At that point, my web site was rendered redundant, so I shut it down.

Since computers have advanced to the stage that off the shelf computer can do most anything I want to do, my current focus is on home automation. I have my lighting, TV, stereo systems, HVAC, ceiling fans, etc. working under computer control, including voice control using Amazon Alexa.

So, yeah, I guess I could be called a computer enthusiast along with being a shaving enthusiast.
 
Always quite liked playing with them. The first I remember was a rubber keyed Spectrum 48k, first build was a 486 running MS-DOS.

Running linux based systems for a good few years now. Next scheme is to retire an old server & laptop I'm using as a media centre and hopefully replace it all with an 8G ram Raspberry Pi 4 running Gentoo.
 
I have worked in IT for 30 years and am currently North West Europe IT Systems Administrator for a multi national company with 80,000 employees. By the time I finish work I am sick to death of computers so I do not consider myself an enthusiast; in fact I am gradually becoming something of a Luddite.
I am right there with you, but stupidly started a masters in IT. It should be over in December, which can't come soon enough.

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Chandu

I Waxed The Badger.
I have worked in IT for 30 years and am currently North West Europe IT Systems Administrator for a multi national company with 80,000 employees. By the time I finish work I am sick to death of computers so I do not consider myself an enthusiast; in fact I am gradually becoming something of a Luddite.
I'm at about 23 years and rather on the same path. I used to have a bunch of pcs that I'd load with Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD and so on. I've run windows two. These days my primary home computer is a mac, I have a Chromebook and there is one Windows computer.

I've found pluses and minuses in every OS I've ever used. I tend to like Unix like systems because you can do just about anything from the command line, but there are are certain apps I like on Windows too. For work on servers though, I'd rather work on Linux more than any of the others.
 

Eben Stone

Staff member
I learned to program basic on my Atari 800XL when I was around 10 and have been using computers ever since. Currently I'm a C/C++/C# software developer for Windows desktop. I've built my own gaming rigs a few times but mostly low budget (compared to most gamers). I like and use Linux, Mac, and Windows. For a while I had a strong interest in Linux and dug into it enough to install Arch from the command line. That taught me a lot (wasnt very difficult) . I've tried approx 20 Linux distros and never really found one I liked enough to keep using long term. My interest shifted from Linux to Project OSX86 and for a few years I was successfully running Mac OS on my PC as my primary home machine. I think it was the challenge of getting it working that interested me the most. Currently I'm running Windows on my home PC mostly so I can play Witcher 3.
 
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oc_in_fw

Fridays are Fishtastic!
What brand NAS is that? We use Synology here at work. I have fallen into the role of Backup King here (as well as being Senior Lead Tech). I manage the backup jobs on 17 full flight simulators, each with at least an 8 computer network. The jobs are automatic (full backups on 1st and 15th, incrementals on M W F, we use ShadowProtect), but once a month I have to verify each and every backup- each verification takes at least 20 minutes. Of course, you can run more than one job at a time. On the 2nd of every month another backup occurs to a different folder on the NAS. These are then moved (by me) to external hard drives that are kept in a fireproof safe. May be a bit of overkill, but it only takes one disaster to make one rethink that opinion. I reckon I spend over 30 hours a month dealing with backup related activities. I am the only one willing to do it, so that helps to add a little job security.
 
I'm a retired programmer, with the emphasis on the word "retired". I'm about to ditch my current Thinkpad, the last of 5, for an Android tablet.

I once dated a girl who worked for a florist shop. I asked her how long it took before she hated flowers. Two days, she said.
 

Chandu

I Waxed The Badger.
What brand NAS is that? We use Synology here at work. I have fallen into the role of Backup King here (as well as being Senior Lead Tech). I manage the backup jobs on 17 full flight simulators, each with at least an 8 computer network. The jobs are automatic (full backups on 1st and 15th, incrementals on M W F, we use ShadowProtect), but once a month I have to verify each and every backup- each verification takes at least 20 minutes. Of course, you can run more than one job at a time. On the 2nd of every month another backup occurs to a different folder on the NAS. These are then moved (by me) to external hard drives that are kept in a fireproof safe. May be a bit of overkill, but it only takes one disaster to make one rethink that opinion. I reckon I spend over 30 hours a month dealing with backup related activities. I am the only one willing to do it, so that helps to add a little job security.
By verify I hope you mean restore. I've been in IT for 23+ years and the amount of times I've seen companies do backups but NEVER once practice recovering from them before an emergency are too numerous to count. I'm hoping your fireproof safe is not on prem.
 

oc_in_fw

Fridays are Fishtastic!
By verify I hope you mean restore. I've been in IT for 23+ years and the amount of times I've seen companies do backups but NEVER once practice recovering from them before an emergency are too numerous to count. I'm hoping your fireproof safe is not on prem.
No, ShadowProtect has a verify option that can scan a backup to ensure that it not corrupted. I don’t know enough to say how they do it, but I verify them all, and the times I have had to restore from a backup have been flawless. The same can’t be said of the DAT backups we used to do.
 
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