I am moving my glassblowing shop back to New Brunswick soon, and will have access to more computers than I can shake a stick at. The ex who I am getting back together with runs the weigh scale house at the recycling depot in Hillsborough, New Brunswick. All the computers that get thrown in the garbage in Atlantic Canada pass through her hands...

I was programming back when I was 12 or 13, and I am 40 now. I had designed a database program to keep track of tire molds in a warehouse for Firestone, and was stuck doing the data entry to maintain it for 3-4 years as a part time job. Got me swearing off computers for a good many years. I have started using them again in the past 6-8 years, but I am basically useless with command line at this stage. I expect I have a lot of learning to do.

I am interested in building clusters out of old junker hardware.

That was a nice intro !
Hello and welcome to LQ

Excellent!

I'm in Nova Scotia, so hello maritimer ; I too enjoy rescuing and playing with 'old junker computers' if they aren't "too junky". I've been known to rescue hardware from the roadside -- sounds like you've got access to a treasure trove of goodies! Much fun.

Welcome to LQ,

Sasha

Treasure trove indeed. Anything you don't pick up I will have a chance at...

I am always amazed at how often people upgrade their hardware, when all they really need is to downgrade their OS. I am currently running PartedMagic, with the new simplyMEPIS as the installed OS on a 2 GHz P4. I tend to do a lot of distro-hopping, and I have a handful of OS's that I find work really well on the old machines. Puppy is another favourite...