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I grabbed a few all-in-one desktops from an office that was upgrading to Windows 11.
I loaded it up with a nice 1TB retroarch image with bunch of ROMs and gave them to the nieces and nephews.
Pre-windows 11 hardware is great for repurposing with Linux, there's just so much available thanks to Microsoft.
It's great to see such an article in The Verge, of course. Unreservedly.
But such articles are legion, and Thinkpads are (almost) always good with Linux. But you can install it on almost any laptop out there.
I'm thinking of replacing Chrome OS on an older Chromebook (Acer CB-314) that's been slowing down a lot. I don't know what Google is doing but it feels like planned obsolescence. It's becoming unresponsive even for regular web browsing and VOD. Based on some online guides I think I need to open the device to flip a hardware switch that makes the firmware write protected, so I need to convince my significant other to let me do it, because it's her laptop, but she keeps complaining :)
I was thinking of putting Mint on it, I want it to be super simple.
I would also consider some atomic distro so she can't break it :) Maybe Fedora Silverblue or something like that.
Silverblue is what I'm putting on my partner's older PC, the fact that it atomic is a big plus-point.
Be warned though, some less common non-cli packages are more difficult to install. If your SO needs something along those lines, mint may be better.
For example, nordVPN has a nice GUI interface, but it has no appimage or flatpak, so it won't work on silverblue without modifying the ostree. That's not a good idea, so on my (bazzite) PC I have installed a simple openVPN GUI package, and set it up to use our nordVPN account. It works fine, but it's not a pretty map-based interface, just a giant list of servers.
You can install local RPM files, but you would have to manually update them (by uninstalling the old and installing the new) with each update.
I use Mullvad on Bazzite, and have had no issue just installing the app using rpm-ostree. Works just fine. Dunno if they have the Nord app in the repository.
You might also be able to run it in a Fedora toolbox or Arch distrobox, but I never tried.
I am aware of the limitations. She is a really BASIC user. Just uses the web browser (Chrome, because it's a Chrome OS, well — I'll switch her to Firefox and she won't notice ;) ), she surfs the net, watches YT and VOD (I know the DRM limitations, again, not an issue with her, she's perfectly happy with 720p in a window) and chats Facebook Messenger (sadly). I think an atomic distro can do all that out of the box and there's nothing to install that's not a web app or a Flatpak.
Is rpm-ostree how you get the other packages? I don't know much about it apart from what's on Fedora's website, my understanding is it modifies the local system image so whatever you install from RPM becomes part of it. But, again, she won't need it. She's the compete opposite of a power user.
Yes, that's exactly how RPM works. it's supposed to be a last resort if options like distrobox or homebrew can't deliver what you need. It can break stuff if you are not careful.
Anyway, then I'd definitely go with silverblue.
I had to install Steam through the command line [...] Steam is available in Linux Mint’s default repository, so I could get it with a quick “sudo apt-get install steam” in the terminal.
I've never used Mint before; does it not come with a graphical app store?
And man, I love how so many articles from major websites mentioning Windows 11 are actually about how to avoid it altogether. :D
Mint does have a graphical app store. Steam also has a .deb package on their website to download, which opens by default in the GUI installer when you double click it. Using the CLI is fine, but it's definitely not necessary.
I’ve never used Mint before; does it not come with a graphical app store?
It does, but I think even slightly experienced Linux users will just turn to the CLI for consistency and because it's easier to explain in steps to other people. But he should have mentioned the GUI for new users, agreed.
It does. I installed Steam through the software manager just fine.
Cool, that makes sense. Linux Mint has a reputation for user friendliness, it's got to have one. The author of this article must have missed it.
If they're like many of us, they probably just have apt/yum/pacman-brain and didn't really think about what's friendly to most people.
jesus that's a good laptop you could put bazzite on that
7th gen Intel with integrated graphics isnt going to be able to do much gaming (maybe some very retro emulation and very low spec indie PC games). I certainly wouldn't bother going with Bazzite. If you're looking for something exclusively for gaming then a secondhand Retroid Pocket 5 console (android handheld) is going to do much better for even less money than this.
Bazzite isn't exclusively for gaming
I wholeheartedly agree!
I installed Bazzite because I wanted an easy solution for my laptop with Nvidia GPU - now it's my daily driver and gaming is only a fraction of its job.