Hey, I managed to resurrect my old PC today! I dropped it down a flight of stairs last time I moved house, which didn't exactly do it much good but did at least prompt me to buy the bits I needed to make a 'new' Windows box. Now, the regular reader of this blog (hello... er... oh, you're not there. OK fine) will recall that said Windows box was a bit of a git to stabilise, but at the moment it seems OK. Though it's about to run out of disc space. And I find it hard to care because Windows XP is really horrible, and the more I use it the more horrible I think it is.
Anyway, I had almost enough bits left over to make another machine, based on the old K6/stairs hybrid box. Tonight, it powered up... and to my astonishment, the old 8Gb Maxtor drive in it not only had an OS installed, it had a working Mandrake 8.1 setup. Last booted three hundred and eighty-odd days ago, apparently.
However, I've no idea what state the thing is in, nor do I recall most of the passwords. So I'm going to wipe it anyway. It's likely heading for Mandrake 9.1, but there's a slight problem. I'm burning the install CD as I type this, but... er... I only have one gash CD drive, and that's in the Windows box. Ah.
Then there's the problem all Mac OS X users face when contemplating Linux: why bother?
I suspect I will anyway, if only to have another PC I can pull out when I need it. But really, I fear it's just the hard-case geek in me that will see this through.
badjfvhoiureghlknyotierug
:)