My Workstation. What's Yours?

[Mike Lobanovsky]

Hi all,

Well, this is for those who always wanted to know but were too shy to ask: a casual Belarusian outsource indie developer's workbench; in other words, my own homebound NASA Mission Control Center.

Q. Why?
A. As a minimum, to firmly stand by one's "Been there, seen that" on programming forums.

-- Configured in a LAN w/ unlimited web access via a dedicated 100Mb fiber optic land line connection @ ca. 11 euros/month
-- Ca. 10TB common data HDD storage pool
-- Maximum respective RAM bank configurations
-- ATi R7 240 / nVidia geForce 8600 GTS / GTX 550Ti / GTX 650Ti graphics
-- Monitors 19" thru 27" w/ switchable multi monitor support
-- True HW multi boot (no VM nonsense)

In short, ready to work "in flesh" with all that's got anything to do with Windows.

Individual configs (left to right by box rather than by monitor):

-- 3.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo: x64 Windows 8.1 Pro / Hackingtosh macOS Sierra w/ Wine Bottler
-- 2.2GHz Intel Core Duo Fujitsu-Siemens laptop: x86 Vista Ult Sp2
-- 0.5GHz Intel Pentium III ThinkPad laptop: Windows 98 SE (w/ sockets) / ReactOS v0.4.4 / KolibriOS (for exercises and never ending fun w/ hardcore 32-bit assembly)
-- All-AMD/ATi 3.0GHz Athlon 2 64: x64 Windows 7 Pro Sp1
-- 3.0GHz Intel i5: x64 Windows 10 Pro Anniversary Edition / x64 Ubuntu 16.04 LTS w/ Wine
-- 3.6GHz Intel i5: x86 XP Pro Sp3 / x86 elementaryOS Luna w/ Wine / x64 Windows 7 Pro Sp1 (my workhorse)

[ZXDunny]

Here's where I work in the summer:



And here's my indoor work station:



There's another large desktop PC to the right of that on a 27" monitor, but I generally only use that for gaming at present.

I love being my own boss

[Mike Lobanovsky]

Cool!

And what's that tiny thingy in between the two laptops on the right?

[ZXDunny]

Cool!

And what's that tiny thingy in between the two laptops on the right?

That's an OpenPandora, running Angstrom Linux with XFCE as the window manager. It's a lovely little machine, and the reason that SpecBAS runs at a default resolution of 800x480

[Mike Lobanovsky]

Aha!

I was about to scream "Such a cutie!" but then I read up on its HW specs and prices and now I have to admit you must be a real geek or philanthropist, Paul, to be ready to pay $600 for those 800x480 open-HW/SW pixels you could've spent on a stylish top-notch full HD Apple iPhone for your wife. Hats off!

[wang renxin]

Here's mine.

An i5 desktop, a MacBook Air, a headless Mac mini, and a Cube iwork8 (with Indel Atom CPU).



I was thinking the same words as Mike did about the OpenPandora. Really sharp! And I recommend the GPD Win to you, you may like it. I'd get one when I get more outdoor time.

[ZXDunny]

I got the Pandora in the first run. Cost me £200, back in 2011

They're a lot more expensive now. GPD Win is not for me, it has some serious issues with compatibility and form factor. The GPD Pocket looks quite nice, but again... Not sure about that one either. The successor to the Pandora (the Pyra) is in development but will be more than €700 so possibly not!

[Mike Lobanovsky]

I got the Pandora in the first run. Cost me £200, back in 2011

Then hear me yelling: "Such a cutie!!!"

There seems to have been just one single -- broken! -- Pandora box selling recently for disassembly/spare parts on eBay for $250 with 9 people following the lot, and none at all, on AliExpress!

Now, if I may, what are those distant yet mouth-watering bottles I'm seeing over there on the window sill, please?

Here's mine.

Looks very, very neat, especially that snow-white ATX beneath the desktop -- something that's definitely unimaginable in my own environment because we don't have a tradition to walk shoeless on the premises. My workhorse's black box on the right gets scratched brutally by my slippers every time I put it directly under my desk in winter time for some extra cosy warmth emanating from its coolers.

The only white object I have on the desktop is the white mouse that connects to my alternative Win 10 box. The color helps me not to confuse which mouse is which when I have both PCs switched on for some reason.

[jj2007]

That's an OpenPandora, running Angstrom Linux with XFCE as the window manager. It's a lovely little machine, and the reason that SpecBAS runs at a default resolution of 800x480

Looks nice in your first post, but in this one (google user content) I just see a small grey circle with a white bar in an otherwise huge empty image...

[ZXDunny]

Now, if I may, what are those distant yet mouth-watering bottles I'm seeing over there on the window sill, please?

I'm partial to a drop of single-malt now and then

Those are Haig and Jura, presents from relatives for my last birthday.

[Mike Lobanovsky]

I'm partial to a drop of single-malt now and then

I hear British scientists (no joke this time) have just discovered whiskey helps fight cancer and vascular diseases.

Those are Haig and Jura, presents from relatives for my last birthday.

I've just had mine on March 3. When was yours? Not in a too distant past I believe, with the bottles still standing there...

... I just see a small grey circle with a white bar in an otherwise huge empty image...

There used to be a hu-u-u-uge closeup of Paul's Pandora in that place, Jochen, showing off its magnificent spherical keyboard buttons popping up high above the gadget's case. They are renowned for making the OpenPandora's keyboard highly usable regardless of its tiny size. And of course there was also a glimpse of SpecBAS on its 800x480 screen -- probably the only place in the world where I could read the accompanying "Hi Mike!" message in its native resolution. And then all of a sudden, right in the middle of my admiration paroxysm, the entire scene was gone from view and my browser shrank three times smaller to its usual size again...

[EDIT] Yes yes Paul, I know! Shrink-shrank-shrunk; can-could-been able to; sheep-sheep; ox-oxen; brother-brothers [hist. brethren]; and my favourite: sword-hlaforde [old Eng.]!!

[ZXDunny]

Sorry about that.

[jbk]

Hi Mike Lobanovsky
that's a serious compute environment, my computer is just for web browsing with an occasional twiddle in programming.
I am curious about KolibriOS and your Hackintosh, are there any serious users (business/industrial) of KolibriOS?
my computer is a macPro mid-2010 but I also use VM's to run Windows and Linux
coming from Windows it took quite some time to get comfortable with MacOS.

[wang renxin]

We don't have a tradition to walk shoeless neither at office, but we do at home. And that is my SOHO room. Generally speaking, in my country, some Apple style companies use Macbooks, all the other ones use Lenovo or Dell desktops with top-down black. I didn't pay too much attention about the color when I built it, but I'm always sensitive about the noise. I'm glad that until now it's still unnoticeable, even when I am playing some triple-A games.

[Cybermonkey]

So, at last a picture of my (new) desk from IKEA.  One display for the stationary computer and to the right sits my notebook. To the left you can see my new 8 inch converter tablet with Windows 10. Really nice keyboard.
As you can see I am coming back slowly, we had a case of death in my spouse's family (her father), so it took some time to come back to normality.
Anyway, a new project is waiting in the wings ...