Hi... At one point I also had a huge room devoted to my computer hobby, and at any given time I'd have 3-4 desktops, 1-2 laptops, and whatever classic computer I was in the mood to play with setup. That was before I got married, had a kiddo, and went back to school. Now I don't have time to 'nerd out' for hours a day, so what was my computer room has evolved into my daughters room, and a closet and corner of a spare bedroom are now where most of my gear sits now. My wife and I both have moved to using laptops exclusively (me on a System76 PanP system with Ubuntu 9.04 and her a MacBook running OSX 10.5 Leopard).

I still have a dedicated Linux server running in that spare bedroom which hosts various websites, and a second server for backing-up our laptops, both running Ubuntu Server 8.10. But outside of those, I don't have a desktop per say that I use on a regular basis.

Some day I'll go through my stash and take most of this stuff to Goodwill or give away to others in our LUG, but for now it's still hard to think of giving any of it away. I guess kinda like the guy who still holds onto his classic car from high school that sits in a garage collecting rust and dirt.

In the end I'm good with our setup because whether at home, at work, or on the road we have all our stuff with us, and also we're not tied to a desk or room, but still having that monolithic room full of monitors was just neat, in a geeky sort of way :)

Take care,

Sam Alex

This is recognizable. But somehow the setting here remained the same, except when the laptop came into my house. Then the functions of the computers started to change: from render-machine to media-centre, from server to render-machine and so on.

For the rest nothing has really changed: same full ashtray, same zero tolerance to machines not running Linux, et cetera. Well something changes: I always have a big vase of flowers on my worktable. The flowers change every week. :-)

And, of course, after every update, the contents of the harddrives change.

That is already more change than your president promised... ;-)

Greetings and keep up your good work!
Maternitus.

My girlfriend and I have different computing needs. We have two desks in separate rooms. I needed a lot of space for my university stuff and I had an iBook connected to a mouse, keyboard and monitor for writing and researching. My girlfriend is a HTML/CSS and photo editing junkie, so she has her own desk with a desktop.

Now that I have my masters thesis done and my desk is ready for other uses, I have a desktop computer for Linux with all the audio stuff. It stays in »my« room, because there I have my guitars and equipment and I want to use them whenever I please.

The iBook is still a good companion and serves as a surfing station on the balcony or the kitchen and we sometimes use it to watch movies in bed (sundays in the winter – what could be better than hot chocolate and movies while lying in the bed? Right, nothing). Travelling is also an iBook job.

I've been going back and forth, dumping some, collecting others ... I've just had a bunch of 32-bit SPARC hardware dropped on me (sheesh, it's heavy!) ...

But I did get rid of two boxes (old Pentiums -- one II, one IV) recently, as well as a stack of dead, half-parted-out laptops.

I still have more, and I think over the next few years I'm going to try to get rid of just about everything and have only the number of laptops and desktops we use day to day.

I'm just tired of the mental and spatial burdens of having all this old stuff.

I went from having almost no computers to a couple dozen ... and I'm ready to go back to two or three "good" ones ...

I have a corner of the downstairs den set aside for my work tables, a nice solid wood square table, and a bench for tearing up and building out. The main table has two flat panel monitors, connected to my server/workstation in a multi-head format, and an old dell monitor connected to my sandbox machine for testing with a kvm for switching while building.

As far as the rest of the house is concerned, there is a Desktop running upstairs for the quick web surfing session, and a media center connected to a 32" LCD HDTV. I'm building a Educational Desktop to put in a playroom/studio we are developing in our basement.

However I only sit at the work tables while I telecommute. For all other times, I rock an Acer Gemstone laptop connecting over wireless to compute where I want in my house. My daughter has an iPod Touch and Asus Eee so she uses the wireless drink ;)

So no, there isn't a dedicated computer room, other than the basement den where the cable modem lives and feeds into the server. Other than the laptops, everyone shares every station. I try to keep the family deep in the cloud via google and a file server.

Mrs. Panik and the Colonel live in less than 900 Sq.Ft.
She, all laptops. Himself, one desktop one laptop.

Nothing is cooler than being in the recliner, on the couch,
out on the porch with the laptop. And if I can rig something
to hold the monitor/keyboard/mouse for the desktop while I
sit in the recliner, well then I can finish this World Domination
thing I started a few years ago.

Free software, free to move around. Wonder what my typing teacher
would say? Sit Up Straight Robert! lol

Like most, I too went under a metamorphosis when I "grew up". My home server is still around, but has moved from originally windows 2000 to Free BSD with samba and now Debian with NFS and cups. It's currently on it's second mainboard, with a few parts still left from the original build in 1997

My home media PC hasn't been turned on in years due to (1) my 200MB home server just not having the space for a massive digital video collection due to other needs, (2) lack of good TV time, (3) lack of time/interest to actually rip my DVDs and (4) a lack of interest in file sharing/downloading. I now demand media with my purchases (no streaming, downloading), and insist (moral ground) that I actually buy media that I use. It's still loaded with Debian.

I still keep a "powerful" desktop mostly for gaming, and i still enjoy a good game. Now of course, a run through of Baldur's Gate can take over a year instead of an intense week and a half. I've also noticed that my gaming habits/interests haven't really changed since the new millennium. Even today, this still dual boots between Debian and Win XP.

Finally, I have generally kept a laptop for normal work, and some light gaming. In the past due to budget, it was always a 5 year old something or another bought used or given. The modern netbook revolution has really taken hold in me, as now, for the same price point, I can get a roughly equal powered machine, but smaller and brand new. No more sticky keys, dead pixels, weak screen hinges, or batteries that only hold a 60 second charge. Even now, I'm typing on a Asus 1000 ha.

Still somethings are very different. My game boys, SNES, Genesis, and PSX are all stowed somewhere, replaced completely with emulation for any actual use. Only my DreamCast remains hooked up to my TV, classic console speaking. Dosbox in particular replaced my 486 w/ Dos. I once had all of these consoles hooked up with a simple audio mixer (home made) and VGA boxes passed through a 8 channel server room grade Belkin KVM. All are gone now to make up for space. Even my Mame cabinet was left on the curb when it was moved to the garage for extra space in the house and then water damaged.

At least this past few days i built a new arcade stick, using the left over pieces. It's not a whole cabinet, but close enough and a lot less "wasted" floor space.

Finally, I've added a wife, and she came with a free laptop. She's however firmly attached to her Windows Vista and iTunes. I know, don't start.

I'm still living with my parents, so all of my stuff is in my bedroom. I have my computer and game consoles connected to my 21" LCD monitor (I love that DVI is the same as HDMI's video, but I'm kind of wishing the monitor had HDMI...). I seriously need to rearrange this room though. Between the foot of my bed and my desk, there's barely enough room for the chair; I don't exactly have to hold my stomach in to sit at the desk, but it's hardly ideal. When I finally move out though, I'm going to sink a whole lot of money into a powerful closet machine and put remote terminals in most rooms, for example, one connected to the lounge room TV, another in my room, and so forth. Isn't X wonderful? :P

Main office with 2 desks and closet for filing cabinets (2nd story spare bedroom without the bed):
1. Macbook Pro 17″ rev. 1,2 triple boot Mac OS X Leopard, Mint 7, and Winbdows 7 RC - My main workstation
2. Compaq Presario x1000 running Ubuntu 9.04 - My wife’s main workstation
3. Acer Aspire One 110L running Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR) 9.04 - Go anywhere shared netbook

Basement game room (not everyone can play the Wii):
4. Desktop eMachine T1120 dual booting WinXP and Ubuntu 8.04 (default OS) - My kids’ main workstation

Unfinished basement mechanical and tinkering room (peg board wall and shelves for equipment):
5. Two NSLU2’s running Debian Etch Slugger – Samba server for backups and cron job to download podcasts | Sluggo – currently retired web server
6. MSI Wind PC running CentOS - Web server
7. Cable Modem, Linksys WRT54gs, Vonage Thing
8. UPS for network and servers

I have a small place in my in-laws basement, what was suppose to be temporary in Feb. 2008 as part of a move from Colorado Springs to Denver turned out to be a living situation 1 1/2 years long. We're closing on our new house Sept. 2 and I'll be moving my operations into about 200 sq. ft dedicated to my 4 IBM Thinkcentre's, connected to a CRT via 4 port KVM, my hobbled together HP (sort of a Frankencomputer) and my two custom monsters running from a 2 port KVM with a 20 inch Widescreen! One of the Thinkcentres is running ClarkConnect 5, the two custom's are running Linux Mint 7, two more of the Thinkcentres are running SipXecs 4 and the other Thinkcentre and HP are for playing with. All connected to a 1Gbps Trendnet 8 port Switch. It's sort of tore up, getting ready to move, but it's going to be a thingy of beauty! Currently the two "play" machines have monitoring servers running on them, Zenoss and Hyperic (both REALLY good!).

In short, I go for the old fashioned terminal server approach.

90% of my time is now spent roaming my apartment on my Dell Mini 10v running Arch Linux.

I have a MSI Window desktop computer running Debian, which backs up all my files on my other computers, and acts as an NFS server to stream music and video to my laptop. I also keep a running screen session on it, with weechat open.

I also have Core 2 Duo desktop running Arch, which I use for occasional photo editing, watching movies, and playing games.

It's kind of amazing that I spend nearly all my time using the Atom powered laptop and server, costing less than $600 total.

You've heard of urban sprawl. Well my office at home and my server room at work have "computer sprawl". Basically both areas are poorly planned out and I've ignored all concepts of virtualization. My company has gone from outsourcing all IT needs to wanting to bring everything in house. Often it's easier to simply add another server rather rethink the server room.

That's the unfortunate aspect of being the "point" man for everything. I've built the support department, hired our techs and a few months ago my replacement. I'm now in a development / network / system administrator role. Some day I'll get everything built and can kick our remaining vendors to the curb. Then it will be time to rework everything. ;-)

My personal goal is to find a way to thin out the 6 computers surrounding my desk at home.

My current setup is simple; I have a Desktop (twin screen at last) and an eeepc 701 - the original. Both wireless, running Mepis 8. Wife and daughters have laptops, end everyone's happy.
BUT - I have a CUNNING PLAN!
Having the usual collection of stuff, I now find that there are a growing number of out-of-date laptops with dud batteries, HDDs or such, but perfectly good screens and processors. I'm designing (over a long time - I don't have much hobby time) an enclosure that will wall mount these with just the screen showing (to hide and unify the crappy old-fashioned cases etc). Just needs power, and there can be a terminal in each room, with all the lovely things Linux (I'm thinking Puppy or DSL) can do to access a central server and the internet. The enclosure will present a USB or wireless keyboard and mouse (or expose the trackpad).
You think there'd be a market for such a nicely-styled enclosure?

My most impressive setup was the Sinclair Spectrum and 286 sharing a desk, with both monitors on shelves and the printers, joysticks, manual scanner and all external storage within easy reach. Now I'm down to a single Linux box beside a desk, and have trouble finding a CD amongst the mess. I have grand plans involving a second monitor with a dual seat config so I don't have to time-share with my wife, but time will tell.

In case trackback won't work (thanks WP):
http://www.cyberfux.de/blog/it/the-linux-home-office-whats-in-your-cyberspace/

Hi,
my current setup is full of atoms....one dual core atom 330 CentOS server for backups (with an external RAID 1 esata disk setup), a Samsung NC10 for netbook need (with Fedora 11), my main laptop (Dell d630 with dual core core duo) also Fedora powered and a Macbook 13.3 white (Jul 08 buy).
The network is wireless, streaming to my Xbox 360 for video (not too often) which is attached to my 40 inches Samsung LCD TV.
A nice setup - backups are automated through BackupPC and TimeMachine on the Mac.

My focus has been on using as little energy as possible for computing. From high performance desktops with dual monitors etc. I eventually moved to a laptop with a 15.4 inch screen in 2005. I had XP running on this machine (One) for about 2 years and managed to edit and produce professional video (part time) and manage 2 successful businesses. Eventually I made the blessed leap to Linux and One was reborn and is still going strong. Besides managing the remote web servers that run company websites and code repositories, today I use a simple dual core HP AMD notebook (at least until I can afford to purchase a Lenova and a solid state disk) with a 14inch screen that satisfies all my requirements. I have this configured to my specific requirements and it gets most of my work done with minimal frustrations (I try to stay positive, but HP really took a dive with their Pavilion DV2xxx range) . I'm happy because I know how little energy this device consumes and I have the freedom of travel which my job requires. I appreciate the low or no noise output of notebooks and I usually arrange my workspace to be clean, open and minimalist. And thank God for open source! Like one of the other commenters, I appreciate plants around my desk and trees when I turn my head away from the screen.

Well, I still live with my parents, and therefore don't have complete control over the computer setup. However, I've got my own little computer room in the closet under the stairs.

My parents' computer scene is as follows:
- A Dell XPS desktop (that runs like crap) for my Dad's work (architect).
- An HP Tablet PC that my dad uses when he wants to be away from his desk.
- An old/dead computer a friend built for my dad (that he used to use for work).
- An HP/Compaq laptop for my mom's job (for HP).
- My mom's old dilapidated work laptop (also HP, considering that's who she works for...)
- The old frankencomputer built in the skeleton of Micron PC... this was my Mom's computer for a little while.

The only computers used in that setup are the Dell and my mom's current work laptop. Everything else is just sitting and taking up space.

My computer setup is as follows:
- My HP Pavilion dv6000 laptop, running Windows 7/Ubuntu 9.04.
- My multipurpose server that I just finished building, running Ubuntu 9.04. Used as a web/mail/DNS/Samba/Backup server.
- My old server, which was built from my old desktop. It was on it's last leg, hence why I built the new one.
- My very first computer, and HP Pavilion from the turn of the century. It's most definitely dead, and hasn't been turned on in years.

All the computers in use are networked wirelessly (except my server) to our Linksys WRT54G router, which is hooked up to our Qwest DSL line in the closet with the server.

Most of the computers can be gotten rid of... but I guess we keep them around for sentimental value :)