exhibits

Walk up any time

Three attractions along the north wall, open from the moment the doors open until they close. No sign up, no session to catch, nobody will quiz you.

open all day · no sign up

Distro tasting bar

A distro is one packaged version of Linux. There are hundreds, and the differences that matter are mostly about how the desktop looks and how much it decides for you. Six machines sit on the bar, each running a different one, all of them live from a USB stick so nothing is installed and nothing is saved.

Sit down, open the browser, open a file manager, move some windows around. Ten minutes at each machine tells you more than a week of reading comparisons. Someone at the bar will tell you what the machine in front of you is good at and what it is bad at.

  • Linux Mint, Fedora, Debian, Pop OS, openSUSE and one older machine running a lightweight desktop.
  • Nothing you do at the bar is kept. Turn the machine off and it forgets.
  • Tell us which one you liked and the disc table will hand you that one.
open all day · bring a machine

Old hardware, new life showcase

A table of machines that were given up on, running well enough to use for work. Each one has a card next to it: what year it was made, what was wrong with it, what was spent on it, what it does now. Several of them cost nothing but a memory upgrade.

Bring the laptop in your cupboard that got too slow. Someone will look at it with you and tell you honestly whether it is worth reviving, what it would take, and what to do with it if the answer is no.

  • Diagnosis is free and takes a few minutes.
  • We do not keep your machine. Nothing leaves the table.
  • Responsible recycling information for anything genuinely finished.
open all day · rules below

Hardware swap table

Bring parts you are not using, take parts you need. Memory, drives, cables, adapters, keyboards, single board computers, whole machines if you can carry them. Most of what changes hands here is a cable somebody needed and somebody else had four of.

Wipe your drives before you bring them
Anything with storage in it should be erased first. If you are not sure how, bring it to the table and we will erase it with you before it goes out.
how the table works
01 No money changes hands. This is a swap and a giveaway, not a market. 02 You do not have to bring something to take something. 03 Working, broken or unknown, label it honestly with the card provided. 04 No monitors larger than 24 inches and no printers, for space reasons. 05 Nothing containing a battery that is swollen or damaged. 06 Whatever is left at the end goes to the department's parts store or to recycling.