Ok, gonna show some of my tech nerdy side. I work with computers all day so you would think, “Gee, how can you find playing around with computers fun when you work with them all day?” I would have to agree with you at first blush. I fully expected this to be a boring affair and was just doing it to earn a certification. But what really got me feeling the fun and joy in this project was the fact that while I am able to recreate my daily workflow on this laptop (the same workflow I would have on my desktop) there are enough differences that force me to do some research and extra steps that get my nerdy juices flowing. For example, the Bambu studio software I use for the 3d printer. On Windows, it’s a simple matter of downloading the software and then clicking on it to start the installation process. A few clicks later and I’m up and running.
For most people that’s all you really want. But for someone like me who does this every day, it does get tedious and mind numbing. Enter the installation process on Ubuntu. Ok, go to the site, download the software and click on it to start the installation. A prompt pops up and I click yes. After a few seconds? Nothing. Do it again. Same result. Third time, same thing. Ok, off to google. A few minutes later and on a reddit post I discover I need something called flathub to be able to flatpak copies of Bambu studio. Huh? What? I tried to read up on it but there’s a ton of info. Ok, let’s just look up how to install it. Find a walkthrough and follow the directions. Hit a few snags and had to look up the errors to figure out what’s happening and how to fix it. An hour later and voila! It’s installed.
Now again, for most people that would not be an ideal situation. It’s probably why more people don’t mess around with Linux; it’s 80% there but why mess with 80 when you can get 100 (ok 95% because it’s Windows and it has it’s own issues) out of the most commonly used OS out there? Ah, but I have that different use case! And the troubleshooting is actually stimulating parts of my work brain that rarely if ever get stimulated without the pressure of deadlines. The kicker is the fact that I was able to get pretty much everything I can do on my desktop to work on this laptop with Ubuntu. That’s the part that really got me. When I messed around with Linux even 5 years ago, I couldn’t get 50% of my daily workflow to work on it. Now? I can do everything (so far) I’ve been driving on this thing for a week now and while everything works generally, the laptop shows it’s age as applications take longer to open and they occasionally freeze here and there. But I could see myself buying another budget laptop that’s maybe 3 years old and absolutely screaming through things.
The real challenge happened this past weekend. While I had installed Steam on this laptop, my initial attempt at playing on this thing really taxed the system. I tried playing Dungeons 3 on it but I guess the game was too much for the laptop as it was really choppy. I gave up on that, satisfied that it was still capable of doing the other things I do. But I had some time this weekend so I took another shot at it. I queued up Pharoah: A New Era on it and the opening movie chopped badly. But once it got to the game, everything loaded up and played pretty well. Still a lot slower than my desktop but hey, it was playable! On a 6 year old laptop!
I was also able to install VirtualBox and started to build up my lab for my Linux+ studies. This is the most important aspect of this project and it went really well. VirtualBox installed with no issues, and works exactly the same way as it does on Windows. I got a copy of Rocky Linux as well as Ubuntu Server and got the VMs of each working. They even run concurrently without killing the CPU too badly. I had both running while watching the Udemy course which is probably the most common scenario and everything just worked. Perfect. What I’m really looking forward to is bringing this thing along on our outings and seeing how it compares to when it was in it’s prime. I used to bring this around with me to the mall where I would find a nice comfortable spot to sit and connect to the mall Wi-Fi and do stuff. There were many a weekend I spent with this thing and I do look forward to doing so again.