A medium length answer to: Why?
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What I plan to do with the thing (other than supporting my local utility)
The driving force that is getting me closer to having an active Linux box rather than wistfully thinking that Linux is nice is that a) my daughter is now 2 years old; b) we want to homeschool her; and c) I want to pass on a basis of problem solving skills to her (see aside, below), which I believe to be related to programming ability.
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Aside: Why I think problem solving ~ programming skill
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In the middle of my teaching career, my wife became pregnant. Homeschooling had been an interest for some time, now the concept became real, as it were, and one of the things I began to contemplate was how I obtained my own problem solving skills. Upon reflection, I decided that a possible major differentiation between myself and many of my peers is that I was but a class or two shy of an academic minor in CS. So, I figured that learning to program probably assisted in the development of problem solving skills.
So, in hopes that programming will positively influence problem solving skills, I want my daughter to learn to program. We plan to homeschool, I will be coving the STEM side of the plan, so I need to hone apply the angle grinder to my own programming skills so I will be able to cogently pass them on in a few years.
I know about as much of Linux as does the grapefruit I am now eating... but you mentioned HomeSchooling so I had to weigh in! Your post was in 2014 and it's 2017 end-ish now.
I have 2 points:
1. HomeSchooling rules!
Of my first three children..., all have cleared tertiary (2 with masters) and all hold very different opinions on the validity of HomeSchooling; we still debate the subject and sometimes vehemently.
The Mrs (still an educator after three decades) and I count these results as a success.
I manage to give them some vague grounding in msDOS3.*, HTML, CSS, UI, & UX (
yes, I know... "
grapefruit"). In fact, I learned a lot from the old linux.org... (
my apologies for not being a better student).
My boy picked up more decent IT gobbledegook and he's now doing PR via IT thingamabobs.
I really do understand that this doesn't cut anywhere close to what you're doing with Beowulf... but my point is that even that little bit did help my children to think.
I predict your, now 5 year old, girl will fare far better because of you, mek42!
And she'll be just in time to surf end user parallel processing.
Which brings me to...
2. Beowulf rocks!
So my grapefruit says to me 'make a cluster out of all the old machines (linuxs, macs, and microsofts; oh my!) with, maybe, a couple of new ones thrown in so nobody notices what a waste of effort, time, and money, it will be'.
Thus am I re-registered (2 hours ago) and learning again.
Proposal (for my enlightenment):
A Beowulf Cluster
RAIDed HDDs (
from what I've read, I'll have to buy some so they'll be the same)
Multiple Monitors (
off hand, I'd say, 6 (
I'm thinking Matrix hovercraft))
WaterCooling (
if I'm id-full enough to have 6 monitors (
hey! might as well))
Somewhere in there will be a
Data/Media Server connected to TVs and laptops around the house
and a
Fighter Pilot Rig (
I'm old enough to finally have my very own)
I promise I'll still earn a living off of the cluster with multiple monitors... but the rest is for me to learn and to teach my second batch of three children and to just plain enjoy the thinkering.
Now, mek42, I'm going to see if there's an update on your beowulf cluster!