On topic, this is how I got into computing and Linux. I moved out as soon as I graduated high school and the only computer I had was an gen 1 mac mini and a tiny netbook with a blazing 1Ghz single core Intel atom (32bit). Even XP ran slow. Couldn't install vista nor the relatively new windows 7.
A friend told me about Linux. So I thought I had nothing to lose. What I didn't know is what I had to gain.
Ended up getting hooked. Grabbed computers out of the dumpster at my local community college and was able to piece together a few mildly decent machines. And even to this day I still recycle computers into random servers. Laptops and phones are usually great. They can't do everything but that's not the point. You'd be surprised what a 10 yo phone can still do.
I'm not trying to brag, but do want people to know that it's very possible to do a lot in absolutely nothing. I was living paycheck to paycheck at the time. It's not a situation I want anyone to go through, but there is a lot more free hardware out there than you think. People throw out a lot of stuff. A lot of stuff that isn't even broken! Everything I learned on was at least 5 years old at the time. You don't need shiny things and truth is that you don't get a lot of advantages from them until you get past the noob stage. It's hard, but most things start hard. The most important part is just learning how to turn it into play.
Yep same. Amazing what you can pull out of the skip these days and run for nothing. I lifted a couple of dead Lenovo P720 workstations out and managed to get a working dual Xeon silver 32 core machine with 64Gb of ECC RAM.
Uses a bunch of power but two orders of magnitude less in cash than buying another ECC ram desktop over 3 years.
If it blows up it cost me nothing other than an hour of part swapping.
Having been poor for most of my life, it's what you didn't pay for that keeps you afloat generally. If it blows up, I will move to the Lenovo M70s I found without a hard disk or RAM the other week. I put an 8 gig stick in it and it works so will get some more off ebay.
I have a fairly high end M4 Macbook Pro but prefer to live as if I don't most of the time. All of us can take a big fall in life so it makes sense to keep one foot in both worlds.
Yeah my partner laughs at how cheap I am a lot of the time. But also I just now like making stuff too. It is very rewarding and it's always a useful skill. Maybe AI will be able to repair everything but sometimes it's about logistics
A friend told me about Linux. So I thought I had nothing to lose. What I didn't know is what I had to gain.
Ended up getting hooked. Grabbed computers out of the dumpster at my local community college and was able to piece together a few mildly decent machines. And even to this day I still recycle computers into random servers. Laptops and phones are usually great. They can't do everything but that's not the point. You'd be surprised what a 10 yo phone can still do.
I'm not trying to brag, but do want people to know that it's very possible to do a lot in absolutely nothing. I was living paycheck to paycheck at the time. It's not a situation I want anyone to go through, but there is a lot more free hardware out there than you think. People throw out a lot of stuff. A lot of stuff that isn't even broken! Everything I learned on was at least 5 years old at the time. You don't need shiny things and truth is that you don't get a lot of advantages from them until you get past the noob stage. It's hard, but most things start hard. The most important part is just learning how to turn it into play.