Wednesday, October 5, 2022

My First Computer and Intel's NUC

My First Computer and Intel's NUC

The NUC with WiFi and Bluetooth is cute.

My first computer is huge, heavy and was beast (a behemoth).

I cannot lift it BUT it's RAM was 128MB and Video RAM was 4MB.
 
It boots up with CD and I cannot believe, all my research work was done on it.

This may be the first research work done on a computer (earlier it was done on paper and a typewriter) in the Faculty of the University. It had 5 computers with 16MB RAM(I did the pioneering work on the network of computers). 
The computers were discarded from America.

By the way network does not need lot of memory and the server did provide the workload. 

For my research work I used Windows 95 and Office.
 
The office with bad macros could not get my research thesis in full print out.
I bought a dot mat printer and later Cannon Large printer and still later a digital scanner (from my pocket saving from UK). 
University had none.

They all are in working order except the dot mat printer and they fill my bedroom. 

This piece is about my entry into Linux distributions. 

Since my paper print out was bad and did not satisfy University Soecifications, I used Sun Solaris OpenOffice 1 for my research work. 
It removed all Microsoft Macros and I got the paper layout of my research thesis in A4 papers amounting to roughly about 180 pages.

Then I did some search and I found Debian, Suse, Mandriva, XandrOS and Redhat Boot CDs and booted them on a 10 GB hard disk.
I installed them all in 10GB HDD.

That is my Linux beginning without a GURU but with lot of books.
 
The outcome was multiple distributions in one PC.

I never looked back on Microsoft  again after my research work was accepted by the University.

Original hard disk was only 2GB.

I replaced the 10GB HDD and stuck a 80 GB hard disk and installed Debian with only one CD.
All the others need at least 3 CDs for installation.

Windows had about 42 odd floppies.

HDD (Parallel) to  serial SATA was a long journey and I love the NUC with 8GB RAM and 320GB SATA inside and 320GB SATA on an external case.

I have Mint (Ubuntu replacement), Debian, Emmabantus and Ubuntu installed and they are running smoothly on 18 Watts out put and without any noise.

What a turn around in my life with Linux.

I generally do all this just before Christmas BUT I did finish it by 3rd October, 2023.

I have three month holiday from Linux.