[sudo-discuss] Hardware for the masses

Fri Jul 18 02:06:59 PDT 2014

So I had a chance to muck with one of the new OptiPlex 755 machines that
I brought home to tinker with, it has a Intel Core2 Duo E6850 @ 3.00GHz
processor, which is quite nice, 3rd quarter 2007, and quite powerful.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core2+Duo+E6850+%40+3.00GHz
http://ark.intel.com/products/30785/Intel-Core2-Duo-Processor-E6850-4M-Cache-3_00-GHz-1333-MHz-FSB

Energy usage is reasonable, about Max TDP: 65 W, maybe 11 W more then a
current generation Haswell i3-4130 desktop CPU. 

The machine is quiet and has one low riser PCI slot. a metric buttload
of USB ports (6 back, 2 front), a DVD-RW, serial ports & most unusually,
it looks like 2 RCA sound-out jacks.  No PS/2, though. 

It seems to sport a 270 GB SATA drive. Plenty, plenty.  I ran it through
a short smartctl hard drive test and it passed and has about 40k hours
on it, a fair amount. 

The box I grabbed only has 2x1 GB DDR2 sticks, but has 2 free slots.  I
gathered from Brian that some of the boxes have 4 GB. Because of the
marginal amount of RAM I decided to install an i386 version of Kubuntu
14.04 Trusty Tahr, and the thing performs well.  I may throw on XFCE4
for those who want a lighter environment, but I'll try to rein in my OCD
and not install too many additional desktop environments. If folks feel
like they prefer Cinnamon, Mate, LXDE, Gnome3, openbox, Unity, etc. they
can all be installed on individual boxes later, but I feel like KDE is a
good choice for these robust boxes, being very configurable and familiar
to people coming from a Windows background.  BTW, the 14.04 version of
LXDE is much improved, particularly the file manager, pcmanfm.

RAM & 32 bit vs. 64 bit:
http://askubuntu.com/questions/7034/what-are-the-differences-between-32-bit-and-64-bit-and-which-should-i-choose/70551#70551

Unfortunately an old friend and his spawn and mate are visiting from
Guanajuato, MX, so I won't be able to do much else on the project until
mid-week. 

On 07/17/2014 04:50 AM, Matthew Senate wrote:
> Awesome!
>
> Perhaps La Commune would be interested in hosting a few for general
> usage in the entrance cafe/bookstore?
That would be great.

> On 07/17/2014 05:24 PM, Marina Kukso wrote:
> > this is amazing! thank you ed!
> >
> > i'd love to help get as many of these set up as i can. feel free to
> email me offlist with some more info about what's needed to get these
> set up.
> > question for anyone: forgive my ignorance, but are the small
> library/classroom spaces downstairs slated for a particular collective
> right now or are they available? (also, is there a map that shows what
> collective is in what space?)
> >

> On 07/17/2014 05:24 PM, Vicky Knox wrote:
> > This is perhaps the greatest news I've read on Sudo Discuss EVER. It
> has always been my dream that Sudo Room provide public computer
> terminals for folks without access to the hardware, for classes such
> as basic computer literacy, and for events that require computers such
> as Oakland Wiki editathons.
> > Ed, how can I help?

You guys are far too nice, cut it out, really.  Once I get a nice image
ready I'll bring it to the room and if folks are interested I can show
them how to install the pre-configured image and test the hard drives
and memory.  I wrote a little script that is helpful, it renames the
host in 4 places, etc. 

If folks want to install Linux on their own I put a binder with a bunch
of recent Debian & Ubuntu (and PCLinuxOS) DVDs on the top shelf where
all the computer parts lurk.  It says Micro$oft Developers Tools or
something.  Just please, please, please don't disassemble the boxes and
take or lose the panels and hardware like some helpful individual did at
the old sudoroom. I'm hoping if this bloke re-emerges that folks will
chase him off, he made working on those donated machines a pile more
frustrating.

But another thing that people could do if they feel the call is run the
machines' little self-diagnostic routine. Hook a box up to a VGA monitor
and USB keyboard & Hit F12 as the system is booting up and use the down
arrow key to choose DIAGNOSTICS.  After you run the routine it will ask
you if you want to test the memory more thoroughly, which is probably a
good idea.  Then label the machine as checked with a piece of paper or
tape and note any problems.  Extra points if you write down whether the
box has 2 GB or 4 GB of RAM. 

> On 07/17/2014 06:38 PM, Max B wrote:
> > I think another really interesting model is the way that a lot of
> community bike shops have people volunteer for a number of hours and
> then build a bike which they're able to keep. Public terminals would
> be really great and I think it would also be amazing to be able to
> send folks home with their own machines (and maybe some basic computer
> knowledge)

Max, OTX West already does that.  It takes 20 hours of "Service Bucks"
to buy a computer.  Seems like they charge extra SBs to add peripherals
and to "upgrade" to a faster machine with Windows 7.

http://www.otxwest.org/volunteers.html

I've been meaning to go over there and volunteer a bit.  I can "earn" a
mouse an hour, since I'm a little more experienced then their typical
volunteer maybe I can con them into throwing in an extra power cable as
well.  Also, I'd like to talk to them about the benefits of open sores,
particularly for older machines that can't handle Windohs 7, especially
now that XP is no longer supported by MS.

Anyway, I think that a labor-for-hardware program would be a great idea
for us, too, though I would hate to have to administer it.

All PowerBooks to the People,

Big Red Ed

>
>
> On Thu, Jul 17, 2014 at 10:09 AM, Ed Biow <biow at riseup.net
> <mailto:biow at riseup.net>> wrote:
>
>     My crony Gerald & I picked up about 15 'puters from Youth Radio
>     <https://youthradio.org/> today, and brought them to the
>     sudoroom.  We also grabbed about 7 monitors and a bag full of
>     cables.  These boxen look pretty sweet, dual core, Windows 8, 4 GB
>     of RAM.  I was planning on installing some version of Trusty Tahr
>     (*buntu 14.04) or maybe Debian testing and then using a live disc
>     (redobackup <http://redobackup.org/>) to blow the image on the
>     rest of the machines after testing the memory and hard drives. 
>     Brian, the IT bloke at YR is replacing the machines with NUC
>     <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Unit_of_Computing>s.  It looks
>     like there are another 30 or so of these Dells available to us
>     when they get readied. If we can spare the table space maybe we
>     can set up a few machines for visitor browsing in a quiet corner
>     somewhere. And we should have some nice boxes for the Oakland
>     kids' computer center.  The four boxes I have ready to go are
>     mostly pretty funky, missing panels, or very loud, etc.  I'm sure
>     we can find them a home, though. I also have a few more expendable
>     desktop Linux machines at home.  Finding rodents, power cords,
>     monitors & keyboards may prove a bit of a challenge, though I have
>     a few extra keyboards and power cables.
>
>     I'm planning on going camping in August, but in September I'd like
>     to start hosting a weekly Linux install fest/trouble shooting
>     session on Friday afternoons at 4 PM.  Folks can bring their Linux
>     problems in for troubleshooting, and I can bring pizza back from a
>     pickup I make at 8PM from a local collective.  Maybe if nothing
>     else is going on we can cap the evening with a tech/polit-related
>     flick to go with the pizza, perhaps even a round of frosty malted
>     beverages. As I mentioned before, maybe we could use some
>     always-on machine to act as a proxy for deb files, so we could
>     update machines at 11MB a second instead of pounding our limited
>     internet bandwidth.  I'm familiar with approx and apt-cacher,
>     though there are others.  I'll bring up the idea during one of our
>     weekly Wednesday meetings soon.
>
>     Einstein & campaign staff
>
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