Beanworks

We sorted a lot of stuff that day. A lot of people unloaded a lot of electronics.  About a third of it went to recycling (there is a recycling station near us that takes electronics).  We built three awesome systems, and the rest was divvied up among whoever wanted it.  Most of it ended up in my Mom’s garage.  She had been ecstatic as we hauled things out of her garage that morning.  We brought back about 2 to 3 times as much as we took.

She only said, “That’s going to be gone when the guests arrive (for Christmas)?”  We nodded solemnly.

The next day and over the next couple weekends, my Dad and I tested parts, sorted the box of RAM chips a friend donated to the cause, and put together another 6 working systems.  He got pretty good at installing Linux on them.  We used LinuxMint until we got down to the really low resource systems (Pentium II’s).  We put 20+GB hard drives on those, upped the RAM as much as we could (usually 256+MB), and put MacPup on them.  They were beautiful. 🙂

My brother arrived for Christmas, and during one of my days off, we put together another 4 systems, all with MacPup on them.  Unfortunately, my brother couldn’t get the case back on the last system, so it’s still waiting for me. 😉  After Christmas, my dad took them all to a local school, to eventually be given to students and families in need.  The teacher in charge of it had never heard of Linux and was eager to see it and learn more about it.  My dad, of course, was eager to tell her about it.  It sounds like another Linux fan has been born.

My mom is happier:  the garage only has as much computer parts in it now as it did before the Frankenfest. My dad collected a few more computers, waiting for the next call from the local school.  One of them is a laptop.  He installed Ubuntu on it and showed it off to me.  We decided to upgrade the RAM to 1GB and put Ubuntu 8.04 on it instead of the older version he had.  He spends as much time on it now, learning about Ubuntu, as he does on his Mac.  He is so happy with it he decided to put Ubuntu on another machine to give to a 90 year old friend in need of a computer.  So I helped him customize it to make it easier for his friend, and to strip out all the things that a novice is better off not messing around with.

I’m thinking Linux advocates should consider Frankenfests: get the cast off machines, put together working systems with Linux on them, and give them away!  If you have an idea of who it’s going to, you can customize it to be as full or as stripped as it needs to be.  I think most people will be like my dad, and become fans, too!

CPUs and Monitors for the Frankenfest

It was Kevin’s idea.

At a PBLUG meeting held at Nova Southeastern’s North County campus in Palm Beach Gardens, he suggested it. Frankenfest?  What’s a Frankenfest?  Kevin explained it’s when people bring whatever computers or computer parts they have laying around to an event where you (those attending the event) build whatever you can from what you have.

Kevin had a motive.  He had a garage full of computers and parts, and his wife was not happy about it, but he couldn’t bring himself to just pitch them.

Of course we were intrigued by the idea.  Especially me.  I kept the idea alive by continually bringing it up to the group.  They, of course, took the bait, being Linux geeks.  We ended up with a plan, of sorts. We needed to do something with all the computers we were sure to build.  Laura came up with a group that would like to give away the computer systems to needy families for Christmas.  We needed a place to do it.  My library had fortuitously cancelled all programming for December, under the impression they would be closing, so a very large meeting room was available to us almost any Saturday that month (actually, almost any day in December would have been available, but Saturdays worked best for everyone).  We needed a Linux distro to install.  I suggested Kubuntu because I like KDE and Ubuntu seemed mainstream enough to be easy for the ultimate recipients to find books or help.

Cables, anyone?

So we did it.  The Frankenfest was today.  We spent two hours sorting and testing what we had. We spent the next 4 hours trying to load Kubuntu on the best machines we had, since I had created a Kubuntu cheatsheet to give to the ultimate recipients.  We started with 7 candidates, from Pentium III’s to a 2.16 MHz box.  We ended up with three successful installs, two with Linux Mint on them, and one with Kubuntu.  Travelin’ Rob had brought the Linux Mint because it runs on anything, and he likes it.  He also promised to do a Linux Mint cheat sheet to give to the foundation to include with these systems they will be distributing.

We almost had one more Linux Mint box, but the install ultimately failed, probably because we tried to put a 160GB hard drive on an older machine that couldn’t recognize bigger hard drives.  One of the better machines we had didn’t like our RAM upgrade attempt, and didn’t seem to know how to operate without the three centuries worth of dust we removed.  As much as we’d like to think of ourselves as computer geeks, we’re really just linux geeks, and have lapses in hardware sense from time to time.  I had spent most of the last week getting screenshots of Kubuntu on my virtual machine, thinking that it would work exactly the same on a real machine.

Speakers, keyboards, and mice

But ultimately, I guess it was a “success.”  Three families will be getting awesome computer systems. Kevin cleared out his garage. We got everything cleared out by the time the library closed.  I finally learned everyone’s names.

Someone (Travelin’ Rob?) suggested we do it again.  I said, “Yeah, once a year wouldn’t be too painful.”  Someone else suggested we let one of the local stations know, because they would cover it and advertise it if they just knew in advance.  We actually had people walking in and asking if we were taking computer donations.  I looked around at the 20+ computers in various stages of usability, and said “No, thanks.”  I can imagine what a little advance advertising would do.  Of course, since Kevin’s now got his garage cleaned out, it might be interesting to see what we’d get from people dropping by to drop off their computers.

Yeah, I guess I’m hopeless.