I spoke not too long ago about the web server that I built. Not only was that me getting away from Big Google, but it was also my finally venturing into Linux. To further that journey, this past weekend I finally installed a Linux-based operating system on the laptop that I’ve been using for the past 9 years. This was a move partially because the laptop was starting to run slow with the ever increasing updates to and bloat of Windows, as well as me picking up both a Lenovo ThinkCentre M72e on Craigslist, as well as coming across a 2013 21.5″ iMac at a garage sale for $30. (The Lenovo was initially going as a second server/NAS, but I then desided to use it to run Capture One and Affinity applications after seeing how powerful it was compared to what I was expecting. But after coming across the iMac, seeing how well it ran as well as it’s limitation when it came to some of the external hardware I wanted to run on it (my M-Audio Fast Track Ultra 8R), I decided to run Capture One and Affinity application on the iMac and use the Lenovo to run my music equipment through, since Windows still continues to support class compliant USB devices.)
Now that I had two decent computers to run my office and studio, I figured it was a safe time to do something with this laptop; 2015 Lenovo G50-45 (I don’t think it has a cool name like a “ThinkPad”). So I decided to go ahead and install Ubuntu Desktop on it. And I went all in with it, too. Completely wiping Windows 10 from the system and diving all the way into Ubuntu. The little bit of Linux command terminal knowledge that I learned over the past couple of months were a little helpful with certain things, but so far, this is pretty much a straight forward, ordinary operating system. It does run a lot better than Windows has on this system for the past couple of years. I’m also sure that there are a lot of things that I haven’t gotten into inside of the OS being that I’ve only been using it for four days at the time of writing this.
I have my eye on some Linux and Ubuntu books that I’ll be using to dig deeper into both Ubuntu and Linux because I know it’s more useful than just installing servers on computers and using as alternatives to Windows, respectively. (Gotta be book because YouTube videos aren’t really helping me with learning Ubuntu Desktop.) For now, I’m using a laptop for what most people used them for 20+ years ago: sitting at the dining room table, typing up blog posts, sending emails, and tapping into servers via SSH. Things that seem too simple to power up the big computers in the office.