[NTLUG:Discuss] Fwd: A Voice From Garland (Tx)

[Cornelius Keck]

Mini.... in general, anything ever so slightly older tends to be 
supported well by current Linux distributions. I've installed Linux, BSD 
and Solaris on both Dell and HP gear of the trailing-edge-of-technology 
conviction. No issues so far. My current toy at home (it's a bit chunky 
for travel, though it gets to go to https://thelab.ms/ tomorrow for the 
DFWRPI usergroup meeting is a Dell Precision M6500 "mobile" workstation. 
Taking it places qualifies as a work-out. They sure built them sturdy in 
2011. Runs Ubuntu LTS just fine. Sounds, camera, mike, disks .... all 
that works well. Upgrading disks, RAM, fairly easy, because Dell has all 
the service manuals online. As far as HP goes, somebody there decided to 
delete older doumentation, like for Compaq and similar vintage stuff.

Personally I really like Dell's business gear, like the Latitude laptop 
lineup. Rock-solid. Had a few of these starting in 2002(?), and they 
sure lasted a long time each, including international travel. Not the 
lightest devices, just well made. Same appears to go for HP's EliteBook 
line. What I don't like about HP is that they've started to lock down 
consumables, such as printer cartridges and laptop batteries. To the 
point that, should you decide to no longer subscribe to their printer 
ink cartridge replacement offering, your printer stops working. Our 
daughters had nice HP laptops, then the batteries died, and with the 
generic replacement in there the laptops refuse to boot, because the 
battery ain't HP's -- and they have the audacity to state that right 
there on the startup screen. So newer HP gear is quite likely to do that 
across the board.

Lenovo appears to have a decent reputation as far as Linux goes. No 
personal experience with their line-up.

BTW, mini-PC... what's that in case-cubic-inches? Mini-tower, 
desktop-shuttle, credit-card sized like a Pi?

On 2025-01-03 13:13, stuart yarus wrote:
> Subject: A Voice From Garland (Tx)
> 
> Tuesday Afternoon - New Year's Eve
> 31 Dec 2024
> 
> Hello;
> 
> I've got the idea that it's about time that I moved off Windows to LINUX
> but all that I've done is to play around with some distributions ... never
> long enough to become even slightly comfortable.
> 
> One of the things I've learned is that when messing around on a computer
> it should be on a separate machine and not the one depended on for day
> -to-day operations (e-mail, Web surfing, etc).
> 
> I've got it in my head that I'd like to see how practical a mini-PC is but
> have gotten confused over the numerous discussion seen about things
> to watch out for.
> 
> Is there a 'safe' mini PC with a good reputation for being
> well built and 'friendly' to having LINUX installed ?
> 
> - Paul, WB5AGF
> Garland, Tx
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