TIL what happens when the thermometer maxes out
monovergent
joined 8 months ago
IMF: Imperialist Monetary Fund
If you want to avoid this judgement, get an Apple silicon Macbook Air or something...
Damn, me over here trying to flex my Chicago95-ass X201T to my classmates
Storytime!
As a physics major, daily driving Linux worked out pretty smoothly. The thing that saved me from trouble the most was making a weekly full system backup (I used Clonezilla and my file server). If anything was truly incompatible, I took care of it on the school's computers.
In my second semester, I began dual-booting on my X201 Tablet and desktop, eventually booting into Windows infrequently enough that I made my X201T Linux-only by the end of my second year.
Around that point, I began using LUKS full-disk encryption on my machines and USB drives. I highly recommend if you don't already, even if just for peace of mind. I have strong ideas about the way things ought to look and work, so being able to customize Linux to my heart's content (with Chicago95 ofc) made doing work on my computer a bit more enjoyable.
Documents
- MS Office: Libreoffice worked 95% of the time. For the other 5%, I used the school computers or my Windows VM.
- Google Docs and GMail: accessed through Chromium, which I only used to access Google and sites linked to my school's SSO system.
- We did a lot of writing in Latex, though it might be a physics thing
- A lot of other small stuff I'm starting to forget, but if I don't mention it, I probably did it through the browser.
Lab
- MATLAB: GNU Octave sufficed 75% of the time, often needing just slight changes to the code. Otherwise I used the lab computers or my desktop with actual MATLAB.
- Proprietary dana analysis software: One had a .deb package for oldoldoldstable so I set up a VM just for that. Otherwise, lab computers it was.
- Lab computers running old and new versions of Windows were available to us, so if there was anything computationally intensive or requiring proprietary software, I would just take care of it in the lab.
Social
- Slack, Discord, Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp: browser client, which I would check on a schedule
Tools
- VPN: NetworkManager, though it was a bit janky. I think it's a lot better nowadays.
- Printing: We had a web print portal to upload docs and pdfs to a printer of our choice.
Graphics
- Mostly prepared my posters, etc in a mix of Libreoffice Draw, GIMP, and Inkscape
- Adobe: Had to use it on one occasion. Used the library computers where it was installed for everyone to use.
- Digital notes: I would use Xournal on my X201 Tablet whenever I forgot to bring my notebook or refill my fountain pen. Managed to impress a few of my iPad-toting classmates when I whipped out the pen and the display around on what they believed to be an ancient clunker.
As for the desktop, I had purchased it with gaming in mind, but it eventually became my SMB file share, media server, and RDP session host so I could make any library desktop like my own. Each thing in its own VM, of course. By the end of it, I was one of about 3 students running a server over the campus LAN. Even in the comp sci department, surprisingly few students used Linux.
Linux also met all of my computing needs while studying abroad in Germany. For five whole months, I had not used Windows once. Though my SSD did give out on me once, a backup saved the day.
A friend once did need to use a rather invasive remote proctoring tool. Highly recommend a separate laptop or at least a fresh SSD for this case.
Mobile privacy, if it's relevant
- I was in the fortunate position where none of my classes or jobs required proprietary mobile apps
- Friends used Venmo or whatever else, I paid back in cash
- SMS and emails sufficed for regular communication
Overall, it was smooth sailing using Linux throughout my college years and no incompatibilities that couldn't be solved in the library or a computer lab.
edit: i used debian btw
I wanted to see if having a dedicated low power writing machine with "emergency" internet access would help with my productivity. Also a bit of nostalgia as it was one of my first laptops. Nothing too remarkable about it as long as I kept to offline office tasks. But between the short battery life and the profound slowness of google docs (have to use it for work, ugh), I went back to using my X230.
Assuming full GUI is preferable over CLI/TUI/tiling WM minimalism, as it was for me while toying with a 2005 Celeron laptop with 2GB RAM
Hardware:
- Use a native PATA SSD
- Take good care of the T42, it's relatively delicate as far as ThinkPads go
OS:
- antiX for more packages and less configuration
- Alpine or Adelie if you are more adventurous
Desktop:
- IceWM (default in antiX), FVWM, and wmaker are all snappy enough
- XFCE is marginal and will eat up a good chunk (~450MB) of your precious RAM
Browser:
- Netsurf is workable but there will be sites that don't work
- Librewolf with Javascript disabled by default (uBlock makes it easy to whitelist as needed) might do, but expect a severe CPU bottleneck
- Security aside, surfing the web on 98 will simply be painful
- I would also remote into my desktop's browser over LAN with either RDP or compressed X forwarding. YMMV if not over LAN
Productivity:
- Modern Libreoffice unfortunately feels a bit sluggish on old hardware. Writing in plain text and making spreadsheets in Gnumeric might be a better experience, as it was for me
Middle mouse click is indispensable but it seems to be first to fail on my mice
Wayland, but I'm patiently waiting for xfce to support it
yt-dlp. Too many options to remember and look up every time, but all useful and missing from GUIs when you just want to dowload audio or 'good enough' quality video in batches without re-encoding.
While nmtui is perfectly fine for the CLI-uninitiated, I sometimes wonder why the nm-connection-editor window doesn't provide the same level of functionality.
A metal 128 GB USB on my keychain next to the U2F key
16 GB Ventoy partition with:
- Clonezilla ('deploying' my system image and backups)
- Mint Debian Edition (everything needed to test and recover my Debian systems)
- Debian netinstall
- Various manuals and reference documents
- Portable CrystalDiskInfo and VeraCrypt for Windows
- Dumping grounds for files that I intended to transfer between machines, particularly the XP retro gaming rig
- An optimistic IF-FOUND.TXT
- KeePass
- Previously Windows, until once upon a time, I booted into WinRE via Ventoy, got confused between X:, C:, and whatever else, and proceeded to nuke my USB instead of another disk. The Windows installer lived on its own USB happily ever after.
And a LUKS encrypted partition in the remaining space with more documents and a backup of almost all of my photos.
The only thing that had broken was one of the rear reflectors, and that’s only because my dad crushed it
After two years of near-daily use, the truck is holding up admirably. I know that fact is going to drive the haters up a wall
Bruh, of all possible criticisms?
view more: next ›
What did it in were the semi-annual mandatory feature updates, which restored the invasive settings and bloat I worked hard to remove. Already being acquainted with Linux at that point, I began dual-booting and later having Windows on an entirely separate machine for a few stubborn programs I needed for work.
What made me acquainted with Linux was looking for alternatives after the loss of theming options and the start menu in Windows 8. That eventually brought me to my present Debian setup with the Chicago 95 theme, which recreates (and even improved) the workflow and stability I had grown to love in Windows 2000.
The first time I ever booted into a Linux iso, however, was to migrate files off of my machine, which was excruciatingly slow to transfer files under XP.