Snape



Snape is the second Piga Software laptop, which replaced Flitwick (inheriting its prior name of Snape) as Graham L. Wilson's main computer, before it was later replaced by Nomad. It runs dual-boot with a small Windows XP Professional Service Pack 3 partition, alongside a more important Fedora 20 partition using LXDE. It is a refurbished Dell Latitude D600, with all of its components now relatively upgraded as far as they can go. Although still used for Windows testing, and other uses, it has now been primarily given to their mother to use. The machine's name comes from Severus Snape of the Harry Potter books.

On the naming scheme: &quot;I don't know how we ended up on Harry Potter names, since we have never liked them in particular, compared to anything else. The main point of it was to continue the tradition of comparing Microsoft to a famous fictional evil. Star Wars and Star Trek references have been overdone, and Harry Potter was another famous fictional universe to reference (we name our Windows computers and virtual machines after the villains and the GNU/Linux computers after the heroes' names). Though I do have my gripes against J.K. Rowling, and particularly her publishers, due to copyright bullying and abuses, see: http://www.stallman.org/harry-potter.html&quot; - Graham L. Wilson.

Specifications

 * Laptop Model: Dell Latitude D600
 * Operating System: Fedora 20 (&quot;Hisenbug&quot;, LXDE) GNU/Linux, Windows XP Professional Service Pack 3
 * Video Card: ATI Radeon 9000
 * Memory: 2 Gb
 * Processor: Intel(R) Pentium(R) M CPU 1.60GHz
 * Hard drive: 320 Gb

History

 * 2007: Graham is increasingly unhappy with his current main computer: Flitwick. Particularity its small hard-drive and ancient Windows 98 SE operating system.
 * February 2008: the refurbished Dell Latitude D600 is purchased from TigerDirect. It arrives running Windows XP and shipped with merely a CD-ROM drive rather then the store promised DVD drive.
 * Flitwick was known as Snape until this point, the name was transferred to the new laptop and the old receives its new name.
 * March 2008: Fedora 8 Linux is installed (set up as dual boot); many Gambas projects from Griffindor are transferred.
 * June-July 2008: computer temporarily out of action due to power cord death. Brought back into action in early July.
 * 2009: A different kind of wireless network card is installed, but was not usable from Fedora until being upgraded to Fedora 12.
 * February 2009: Leo, one of the Piga felines, claws Snape's keyboard, leading to it to be replaced. Old keyboard had loose keys anyway.
 * September 2009: Windows becomes no longer needed for academic work, and is only retained for running stray non-cross platform programs.
 * December 2009: machine is updated to Fedora 12; Windows XP is retained.
 * March 2010: headphones and ear buds become the typical audio peripheral for the laptop.
 * Summer 2010: the computer's system memory is maxed out to the motherboard's capacity.
 * December 2010: a new E-Desk laptop cooling system and desk is purchased.
 * 2011: the machine is upgraded to Fedora 15, set up with GNOME 3 in Fallback mode; GNOME Shell being too intensive.
 * March 2012: Nomad is purchased, quickly replacing Snape as Graham's main computer.
 * July 2012: machine is unusable due to dead power cord until mid 2013.
 * February 2014: Fedora 20 is installed, with LXDE; Windows is still retained.