Wednesday, 05/11/25 16:04:50
I use Linux on both my PC and my laptop. I love Linux. I was an early adopter in the form of Red Hat 6.1 -> Mandrake -> SuSE -> Ubuntu around 25 years ago. I stuck with Linux up until my PC died and with limited funds I could buy a “gaming” PC from eBay for ~£450.
The specs on the new machine were, on paper, ‘okay’, not great but certainly okay. The only bottle neck was the CPU. Now, my demands are not great. World of Warcraft is the heaviest lifting any of my machines do and this eBay bargain played it just fine. FPS in major cities on retail is a bit dismal and in heavy raid scenarios things can get dire. But, I am a simple WoW player. I like questing; I like levelling professions; I like making money on the Auction House. In other words, my …
Wednesday, 05/11/25 16:04:50
I use Linux on both my PC and my laptop. I love Linux. I was an early adopter in the form of Red Hat 6.1 -> Mandrake -> SuSE -> Ubuntu around 25 years ago. I stuck with Linux up until my PC died and with limited funds I could buy a “gaming” PC from eBay for ~£450.
The specs on the new machine were, on paper, ‘okay’, not great but certainly okay. The only bottle neck was the CPU. Now, my demands are not great. World of Warcraft is the heaviest lifting any of my machines do and this eBay bargain played it just fine. FPS in major cities on retail is a bit dismal and in heavy raid scenarios things can get dire. But, I am a simple WoW player. I like questing; I like levelling professions; I like making money on the Auction House. In other words, my focus is not on heavy demanding end-game scenarios.
Then, around 18 months ago I started getting the occasional blue screen and lock ups.
When I bought the machine, I was told that, if I press F11 on start up, I would be able to reinstall Windows. It didn’t work. So I was stuck with a PC that was becoming more and more unusable as the weeks passed and I didn’t (don’t) have the money to either buy a licence or replace it.
I always knew Linux was an option but now it was becoming a necessity. The last distro I used was Ubuntu so that was my first port of call. However, I remembered preferring KDE over GNOME, and I knew of Kubuntu. So, I downloaded 24.04 not long after release, used Balena Etcher in Windows to create the USB stick and said goodbye to Windows one last time.
I was up and running in no time and since then my usage has been an absolute joy.
As I have said, my demands are not great. In many ways I am an every day user; the apps I have on my taskbar are Brave, Thunderbird, WoW, Shortwave (radio app), Spotify, Only Office, RedNoteBook (journal), PokerStars, Kate, Konsole and Geany.
Not long after, I found out my daughter hadn’t been using a 2014 MacBook Air I had bought her because it had aged and with MacOS it had become unusable. I asked her if I could have it, she said ‘sure’ and I brought it downstairs. i5 CPU, 4GB RAM and 128GB SSD. Instinctively, I knew Xubuntu - Ubuntu’s XFCE variant - would be a good match.
Within an hour I had a perfectly usable laptop by my side. While I play WoW or poker on my desktop, I’ll be watching a stream on the laptop. I also prefer it for social media and I keep my personal journal on it too.
So, now, I have a 9 year old PC and an 11 year old MacBook as my set up. I would dearly love a new computer but, being the eternal pauper, that simply isn’t possible.
I am very happy with my little set up. I want for nothing. Linux gave me that.