this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2025
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Trying to unlock and put Linux on a locked, proprietary pc and I need some help (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) by Gullible@sh.itjust.works to c/linux@lemmy.world
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I purchased a Lenovo mini pc online to turn into my second ever Linux machine (whoo), and when I tried booting it up for the first time, I found it asking for a network to sync data from an Amazon employee. I will be frank, fuck Amazon. If someone stole it, I hope the lost money was enough to cause Bezos to shit himself and die, only for a clone to rise in his place to do the same in a never-ending Sisyphean hellscape of skin peeling feculent horror. The fantasy that my holding on to this, and it is likely a fantasy, will affect Amazon is a bonus, not a detriment.

Now, that said, it was probably resold from Amazon’s stock at a decent discount, but not wiped. How can I install Linux on a machine that I don’t actually have full access to? I’m passably tech savvy, and more than willing to learn more to get back on Linux after 10 years of Microsoft pissing me off.

TLDR: How can I install Linux on an Amazon OS machine that I don’t actually have full access to?

Edit: my flash drive is ready, just struggling to get to the boot menu at this point. I can only mash so hard for so long!

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[–] sorghum@sh.itjust.works 3 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

It's up to you. The reason I'm into computers was because I broke the family computer when I was a kid and had to fix it so my parents wouldn't find out that I broke it, lol. From there my curiosity about how they worked and how to upgrade them only took me further. Now I have 8 machines and 1 lenovo mini as a router in my house and none run Windows anymore. Anything from Mint, Fedora, OpenSUSE, OPNSense, Debian, Raspbian, SteamOS, and Arch (btw). My next project will be checking out how Plasma Big Screen is coming along and build a home theater PC. Your new hobby can take you down some rabbit holes for sure. An unwiped corporate SSD is quite a big slip up for their infosec team if it wasn't stolen.

[–] Gullible@sh.itjust.works 2 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago)

That’s a significantly more interesting story than my start (and long stall). “What’s a tracking cookie?” I asked webcrawler. And then my personality became open source freeware for 6 years.

But if you think that there might be anything of interest, I’ll definitely check it out. Others mentioned that it’s likely a distro of red hat so I’ll see if I can somehow dump or sync it to a flash drive. Unfortunately, I don’t have any spare ssds to swap, and while I’d love to sync the OS to a drive, my priority is definitely to get the flip off of windows already.