Finding a thumbdrive installer I made a while ago for BunsenLab Linux has sent me down a path with this ancient HP laptop I walked away from an old job with. While I didn’t end up sticking with that distro–it’s interesting, but a bit more finicky thanI’m looking for at this point in my life–I’ve ended up putting Mint on this laptop.

TBH it does not seem like all that much different an experience than when I used to run Ubuntu as my main OS fifteen years ago.

I don’t know how long I’ll stick with this OS, and it is hard to imagine using it as my full-time, regular system. For one thing, this laptop, while perfectly serviceable, kind of sucks in that way that all PC-based laptops tend to. Too much plastic, too clunky, and just not that aesthetically pleasing to use. That’s me, though–YMMV.

And while I do enjoy and appreciate Linux, the friction in daily life is just too high. That is not really Linux’s fault; it’s my own fault for being too bought in to Apple’s ecosystem. But it is what it is and while Apple is certainly not without its problems, none of them has risen to the level that it seems worth it to me to overturn years’ worth of configuration and use patterns.

For now, though, and as a secondary around-the-house laptop, this isn’t half bad and I am kind of enjoying it.