Trader Joe’s registers run Suse.

I’m pretty certain at this point that I’m about to be forced to buy some programming socks.

I kinda love it in winter mornings when I’m a bit chilly and then I kick off a big compile or play something and there is this lovely warmth flowing from my main desktop and then I make a big cup of chai.

I bought two old Thinkpads on eBay for $20 each. They run Debian + i3 great and have become my daily portable drivers.

Edit: a new battery and ssd did bring the total up to $100 for the pair.

Systemd has been a complete, utter, unmitigated success.

I recently picked up a couple of e-waste laptops, Thinkpad x130e’s with an AMD E-300, 4GB RAM and a 320GB spinner. For the pair I paid $60 shipped. These were low-end semi-ruggedized laptops meant for students released around the time that HBO started showing Game of Thrones.

I’ve put Debian on one and it runs great. All the hardware just works, everything is pretty quick after boot, and I love how rugged and portable it is. Email, writing, basic productivity, hobby development and 2D gaming all work great. Web browsing takes a hit if I open too many tabs, the video card is too underpowered for most 3D games that came out after 2010, and large compiles are slow. I’m a bit worried about the aging HDD so I’m going to replace it with a cheap SSD which should help with boot and compile times.

The other one I’m not sure about. I’ve tried HaikuOS and the video and wifi work well and the whole system feels very snappy, but there’s no audio or webcam support. Redox seems interesting but needs a whole lot more hardware support. I’ll probably just end up cloning the first one unless I can get a better suggestion.

All that is to say, Linux is great on old cheap hardware.

Watch out for sharks!

Not at all. Until roughly 150-200 years ago infant and childhood mortality was almost 50% worldwide, which of course massively brings down the average lifespan. If someone made it to 20, they would probably make it to 60 and have a good chance of seeing 70 or more.

Uhh… I just picked up a pair of old Thinkpad x130e and have a put Linux on them. If I run Debian instead of Arch and keep the sticker collection small can I avoid having to find socks like that in my size?