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Reader Terrapod generously sent me a used laptop a while ago.
Today I finally got around to firing it up and finishing the installation that JT did for me when we put a 2tb drive into it.
I am posting from it now on Ubuntu 26.04.1! I cannot post pics from a URL without manually entering the HTML on this machine either.
Thank you Terrapod!
It's got a cracked corner from when the people he bought it from dropped it, he warned me about this cosmetic damage. I was VERY relieved to find that they had not epoxied in the screw that should be right about where the repair is.
It appears to be running like it should.
JT named it Freebie when he installed the drive and OS.
I'm calling it TANSTAAFL.
You are welcome, and yes, it was I that repaired the dink as best I could working on the separated parts to ensure they would not forever be united . Glad that worked out,
ReplyDeleteI have been keeping the giveaway units with the dinky OEM SSD as those high TB drives are quite pricey.
Just converted one of my older (non upgradable to Win II) Microsoft tablets to Penguin flavor Mint, am quite surprised and pleased with how it works. Who knows, Win II may be the last MS product I ever buy (and I state this with glee). Apache Open Office, Firefox and Thunderbird seem to cover almost all my needs. Cheers.
Things are about to change in a big way for Linux adoption because new things are coming out that will make it a lot easier for people to transition by replacing many expensive commercial packages that often have tied people to proprietary platforms. Check out:
Deletehttps://getartcraft.com/apps
They have 13 apps so far available free for download on Linux, MacOS and Windows. Among these are clones of MS Word, Excel and Powerpoint, several of the Adobe Suite including things like PhotoShop and Acrobat (the full authoring tool, not just the viewer) as well as things like Avid ProTools and AutoCAD.
They are in "alpha" stage and not 100% complete yet but already show tremendous promise and since they are open source lots of people will be able to work on completing and supporting them. They're likely to spawn much further development.
-swj
Another thing to note that when re-purposing old hardware to Linux, there are options other than full Ubuntu which are leaner out of the box. I use Ubuntu on my main boxes with relatively recent processors and decent RAM, but it can be a little slow on hardware originally sold for Windows 8 or older. On those boxes I usually use Lubuntu which is a trimmed version of Ubuntu and on very old hardware like Vista era stuff MX Linux which is also Ubuntu based is even more stripped down.
ReplyDeleteConversely on more modern hardware like that sold with Windows 10 or 11, there are options like Linux Mint and Zorin OS which many people transitioning from Windows or Mac seem to like. I've tried Mint and it is interesting. It's desktop look does seem to be more like Windows but I'm not the best one to ask since I don't do Windows. I've heard Zorin is even more like Windows look and feel but haven't tried it except booting the live distro from a USB stick. That is a good way to check things out BTW.
-swj
Crispy is happily running Ubuntu 26.04 and it shipped with Win7. The i5-2540M is doing fine with 16gb of RAM.
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