Anachostic

It’s been four years since my last attempt at creating a bare minimum Linux Internet machine.  I figured I would give it another try.  All my previous attempts were either failures, or they left me with a laptop that I didn’t know what to do with.

This time, I am creating a travel laptop that is just for Internet.  And for anything else, I’ll connect to my home machine with TeamViewer.  So that limits the installs I have to make down to:

• Web browser – Now that I use Vivaldi for everything, I don’t have to worry about the differences between IE and whatever else I have available on Linux.
• KeePass – I need to log in to websites, of course.  And the KeePass database is held in the cloud, which means I need…
• DropBox – I had the foresight to use DropBox instead of OneDrive when I first set up KeePass.  Although there are OneDrive clients for Linux, none are official MS products.
• IM – A chat client for keeping in touch when I am on the road.
• VLC – For playing music and videos.  Fortunately, it is cross-platform.
• Some image viewer – Still evaluating which one to use…

And that’s all.  I’m pretty much in Netbook territory here, but this is a spare laptop and I should make some use out of it.  It won’t be my bedside laptop, since I need some other software there that isn’t Linux friendly.  But anyway, this post is about Linux Mint.

In my prior adventures with Linux, both Ubuntu and Mint, the install process and compatibility issues were an absolute clusterfuck.  This time around, I blindly installed the latest Mint version on a USB stick and ran with it.  The Mint OS loaded up without a single hiccup and I had sound and network in the Live CD desktop.  That is a very positive sign.  So without any other testing, I chose to install the OS, completely erasing the hard drive.  That’s usually when things go south, but to my amazement, within 15 minutes of starting this whole process, I was on a functional Mint desktop with no strange errors, warnings, or bugs.

I started right away downloading and installing the software I needed, which wasn’t much.  I learned quickly what worked well and what I should not bother investigating further.  Some things I will eventually need to learn more about – the things that Windows makes so easy, like setting a program to launch at startup.  Some things involving permissions were a pain, but I also have an appreciation for security, so it’s ok.

And now, I’m writing this post on my Mint laptop, connected to my Windows desktop via TeamViewer.  It’s been almost pleasant.  And while I still can’t recommend Ubuntu or Mint to a neophyte, because I wouldn’t be able to assist them if they had issues, I applaud the Linux teams for the progress they have made in the four years since I last attempted this experiment.