I’d like to collect all those hardware stories in one thread!
Are you using a custom built PC? Do you have a favorite laptop? Have you gotten your hands on a PinePhone/Librem 5 devkit? Maybe you hacked together a Kindle to run Linux? (what about that PineTab!)
I’d love to hear of these stories and more, maybe you saw Linux in the wild running on something esoteric as well!?
I myself don’t really have any funny stories. My daily driver is a T480 which needed a few fixes to get up and running correctly (it’s documented in the Arch wiki). I’m happy with it though, but haven’t gotten around to try getting the nvidia card to run. It do have a nice WQHD screen that has caused a lot of headaches and hacky resolution solutions (if only all my screens were WQHD…).
Other than the laptop I have a Desktop PC running Proxmox and a few virtualized host. And a RPi running Kodi as a HTPC (gen 2. iirc).
My daily driver is an Asus Zenbook ( ux330u ) with an i5 with 2-cores and 8GB’s of RAM.
Last year, I built a server for my home lab using an Asus b350 motherboard and a Ryzen 7-1700x 8-core CPU. This server has 32GB’s of RAM and boots from a Samsung 860 EVO 500GB SSD. I’m using WD NAS drivers for storage ( 2TB’s each configured with LVM ). I put all of this into this sweet case:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00M49SNVI/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I’m running CentOS 7 on this server with KVM and Docker. In the past 6 months, I’ve used this lab to prepare for and pass the Security+ and CySA+ security certification exams. I will be working on LPIC-1 and 2 next.
I have Nessus running in a VM and OpenVAS running in Docker. I’m using Zabbix for monitoring purposes.
I have a PI running Pi-Hole and a NUC running Sophos, but I’m preparing to migrate from Sophos over to OPNSense. My wifi router is running DD-WRT.
While I love my little Zenbook, I’m jonesing for one of these:
https://www.asus.com/us/Laptops/ASUS-Zenbook-15-UX533FD/
As I type, I’m seeing Debian 10 Stable running Gnome on my ancient Samsung NC10 netbook - which is obviously not what I use for major work - but I like that Linux still runs acceptably on it whereas Windows XP which it came with ground to a halt on it more than half a decade ago 
I am running Manjaro on a custom PC that i have built myself.
So not really a funny story ;o)
Ohh, I love to hear of homelab setups. I’m only running a few services to keep my data at home (funkwhale for music, seafile for files, seedbox et.c.). Maybe there is space for a separate thread only for homelabs (or even a dedicated subforum, that’d be nice!), there’s lots of things to discuss in that topic!
I had to google that one. 11 years old, and those specs, what a beast! (
) Jokes aside, it looks really cute!
Have you replaced the battery or done any modifications to it at all?
Not even almost a necessity, nice setup! (:
The Samsung NC10 was an absolute Rolls-Royce netbook for its time and I have to say it’s pretty solidly built given it’s still going strong! Yes, I think I upgraded the RAM a bit, other than that, still on original battery and powersupply
That’s amazing, I don’t doubt it’s nice for it’s age! But I would have thought the battery and HDD would be complaining a fair bit this far in. 
I use it only very lightly if on the move, so about three hours battery life still serves me well! I’ve tried two other cheap and cheerful devices since and it’s more dependable than either
Not sure what life expectancy of laptop drives is like nowadays, but so far no problems, thankfully!
It’s nice to hear you’ve gotten so much out of it, and that it keeps on giving. Three hours isn’t all that bad, especially not for such an old one. What a buy!
You must make sure to give it a proper burial once the dreaded day comes!
So over the years I have run Linux on everything from a Pentium 2 300Mhz Desk top PC with 192Mb of RAM, all the way to my 5year old i7 Tower with 24Gb Ram, and much in between. My current lowest spec unit is a 2008 Acer Aspire One with an 8Gb SSD and 1.5Gb Ram the SSD is the one soldered to the mother board so not up gradable but you can boot from USB so it’s possible to install from and to a USB flash drive as the primary HDD, turning the internal SSD into storage. as those early netbook SSD’s were so slow it runs a little faster from a modern USB3 than the original drive despite the slow USB interface which I think is 1.1 although you need a 32bit OS as despite the atom 1.6Ghz CPU being a single core HT processor it was not 64bit.
I have recently run both 32Bit versions of Peppermint and MX on this PC and while it will not break any speed records it does still run and if it had a battery that held a charge would be an OK portable for the kids to take to school. It does however weigh more than my i5 Toshiba Z30 with exponentially more power and storage 
My Lenovo X61s is a more practical Laptop of a slightly older vintage, but it has a core2 duo running at the same 1.6Ghz 4Gb Ram and a 120Gb 2.5" SSD and will run a wider selection of Linux Distro’s and is about as portable as the Acer.
Other than that my current stable include:
Dell E6220
Dell E6440
Dell E7250
Dell E7440
Lenovo X200 tablet, X201, X230i
Toshiba Z30
Raspberry Pi’s of various flavors including the latest 4B 4Gb model
and an old mac book 2007 (the rarer Black one) that I’m still trying to figure out how to get Linux on it.
PS correction, I said the Acer is the lowest spec PC I currently own but that’s not true, as I still have an original Pi B with 256Mb Ram and only 2 USB ports.
I’m primarily using a Dell XPS 15 9570 which runs well except for the hybrid graphics. The latest beta drivers provide native PRIME support so maybe this won’t be an issue for much longer.
I also just ordered a Ryzez 7 2700x, x470 motherboard and new RAM to update my aged 3rd gen i5 system. Very curious to see how that runs. Very well from what I’ve been told.
The first computer I installed Linux on was an old titanium PowerBook G4 (500MHz, 128MB of RAM) back in the Yellow Dog Linux days. 
These days I’m running Arch Linux on two laptops and desktop. Also running ALARM on an ODROID HC2 which serves as my NAS and Plex server. I have multiple Raspberry Pi’s and some knockoff boards that serve different purposes and run either Armbian or Raspbian.
My favorite little workhorse at the moment is my $10 Orange Pi Zero that powers my home email server. 
I had two old iMac 7.1 (2007) collecting dust because Apple abandoned updating security on them. Even Google chrome was stuck in the past. Well, they now run Peppermint 10. Salvaged!
I recently purchased a 2019 Razer Blade 15, and I plan on putting Linux on it. Hopefully it will work without too many issues, their main forums site has a Linux board so I’m hoping it will. If anyone has tried it I’d love to hear if there was any issues.
Shorter list would be what haven’t I seen it running on?
I did see Debian running on a point of sale machine. I was in my local Verizon store and the manager had to reboot the POS machine. I could see it was booting Debian and using a 4.xx kernel. I know most/all POS devices run Linux. It was just cool to see in the boot screen.
*All of my machines run !00% Linux with the exception of my wife’s machine, which dual boots Peppermint and Windows 10 (for her school)
My main machine: currently running Arch, Fedora 30, Fedora 31 Beta
AMD Ryzen 2700x, MSI X470 mobo, 32GB DDR4 3200 Mhz ram, MSI AMD RX 590 gpu, (1) 500GB Samsung SSD, (1) 500 GB WD Blue M.2 NVME, (1) 120GB HP SSD, yada, yada…
My older machine: Arch, MX Linux
AMD A-10 7850 apu, 8 GB DDR3 1933, Nvidia 960, (1) 250GB SSD, (1) 120GB SSD
Other machines:
Sony laptop: Peppermint OS
Dell netbook: Raspbian
Acer netbook: Raspbian
Gigabyte BRIX: Peppermint OS
Raspberry Pi 3b: Kali Linux
Raspberry Pi 4: Nothing yet hmmm…
I am currently “Octa-Booting” 
I guess would be the Phrase…Manjaro, Windows 10, Endevour, Kubuntu 19.04, Pop!_OS, Ubuntu 19.10 daily builds, MX_Linux, and Fedora 30 on my Acer Predator Helios 300 with 8th Gen Core I-7, 32gb GTX 1060 6GB, 1 TB M.2, 750 GB SSD…and all of those have installed and booted with absolutely zero issues thus far,it’s a great time to be into Linux!!! Its so different than it used to be fighting each device for the hacked driver to get it to work!!! Loving it!!!
I’ve only ever quad-booted. Octa-booting!!! You are my hero.