What am I running?

Here's a rundown on what operating system I'm running on my hardware stable:

Toshiba Satellite 1100-S101

1.3 GHz Celeron, 1 GB RAM, 20 GB hard drive, internal Ethernet port, Cnet CWD-854 USB wireless adapter

This is my main laptop. I do most of my work on it. I just swapped in the LCD inverter from my identical Toshiba, the latter suffering from a severly cracked LCD screen and hence not having much need for a "good" LCD inverter. The working Toshiba's sound module is dead. I just recently found out that this module is indeed modular and could easily be replaced with that of the more-ailing Toshiba. I might just do that, but in the meantime I'm using a sub-$3 USB Sound Module (which identifies itself in the system as USB Headphone Set) from DealExtreme.com. This little thing actually works. I need to adjust the mic gain in AlsaMixer, after which I'm going to record some audio so everybody can see how it sounds.

OS: Debian Lenny with the Debian Multimedia repository hooked up. I can play pretty much any multimedia out there. Even the 3gp cell-phone video from my LG Neon phone plays with sound (but didn't in Ubuntu). I recently added Bordeaux for Wine, and after installing Debian's Wine over Bordeaux's, I have the ability to run selected Windows apps if I wish. I added Wine so I could run the IrfanView image viewer/editor, which is an essential for my work.

Gateway Solo 1450

1.2 GHz Celeron, 512 MB RAM, 30 GB hard drive, internel Ethernet port, Cnet CWD-854 USB wireless adapter (borrowed from Toshiba laptop when needed)

This is the first "big" laptop that came into my possession. I got it for free from someone because it had a busted power plug, and the quote for repair was extremely high due to Gateway insisting that the entire motherboard needed replacement. I instead bought a $3 part at Fry's, split the case open as much as I could and soldered wires leading to the new plug, which I then screwed into the back of the laptop. It works. I gave the drive back to its owner and replaced it with a 30 GB drive I got on eBay.

This laptop is tricky because you generally need to use a shell script to control the CPU fan. It works automatically under Debian Etch and Red Hat Enterprise Linux/CentOS 5.x, or anything with a 2.6.18 kernel, but after that, a lovely regression makes it so you have to run a simple script (mine is much, much simpler than those that I saw on the Web before I accidentally discovered that simple was better) to set the fan to turn on and off at the proper times.

It has only two USB ports, one of which is broken (the plastic tab pretty much just broke off one day). The Cardbus slot has bent pins (there was a little screw stuck in there, and when I first tried to put a wireless adapter in there, it bent the pins; I need to look into replacing the part, which I probably can find in one of my dead laptops).

Our 6-year-old uses this laptop. That means it gets heavy use of Gcompris, Childsplay and TuxPaint.

OS: Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Hardy). The laptop still has CentOS 5.x on it, but I haven't booted into it in a long, long time. The Gateway runs so well in the Ubuntu LTS that I've been very reluctant to upgrade. I'll try the Lucid live CD when it goes into release, or some months thereafter, but I'm not looking forward to it, given all the trouble I've had with the Toshiba, which in hindsight I probably should've left running 8.04; I think my Wifi-related crashes would've stopped at some point in the patching cycle, but at the time I felt that I had to upgrade.