For a long time now I wanted to run linux on one of my computers, but at the end of the day I was too incompetent to make it happen. Enter necessity, the mother of invention and vanquisher of complacency. Getting sick of going to the library every day to check for work and having less than $100 to spend on a computer I looked at the buy/sell ads and saw what I thought was an incredible bargain. Granted she was an old computer, but when I went to take a look at it I could tell it was in pristine condition and hadn't been used for years, plus it seemed to have everything we needed to give us a simple internet connection at home. That is the day I learned that you should never buy a computer without checking how much RAM memory it has.
When I got it home I quickly realized that something was wrong the moment I tried to do two things at once, as the computer made a sound that made me think that Windows XP was about to XPire (HA!.. I kill me!). But luckily for every mistake made in the computer world there is a legion of geeks ready to come up with a solution, and puppy linux was designed to resurrect old computers with low RAM to run like new.
I'll be damned, but it works. Weighing in at a whopping 100 mb (a fraction of the size of windows) it runs amazingly fast and comes with a freeware version of almost every program we needed, so Tens and I have become big fans. It has definitely taken me a bit longer to set up because I know nothing about code and needed to look up how to do every little thing, but with all the time in the world that has been more of a blessing than a curse. If you've got an old clunker lying around I urge you to give it a try.. puppylinux.org
In other news the King Family continues to reign supreme as Mama King comes through in the hash brown challenge to save my breakfast. She correctly identified that my problem was frying the potatoes in butter instead of oil, as only oil will get hot enough to brown the outside and keep the hash from turning into mush. The test kitchen proved her diagnosis, turning out a lovely product in no time flat. Thanks Mom!
MMmmmm.. hash browns
Doug-here is a helpful page that has various smoke points for the sake of comparison: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoke_point
ReplyDeleteExtra virgin olive oil's smoke point is close to butter's, so make sure you use a different oil for cooking where heat is an issue. You could also use clarified butter.