I keep hearing about people "distro hopping" from one Linux desktop distribution to the next. I never understood this. As a teenager in the 00s, I tried Fedora, but I wasn't ready for Linux (or maybe Linux wasn't ready for such casual users), so I dropped it quickly. I tried Ubuntu for like two seconds in my early 20s, hated the desktop environment, then used only Linux Mint for about the last decade. I recently switched to Linux Mint Debian Edition.

I like the clean feeling of a new install, but I have no desire to keep fiddling with my system and customizing everything over and over. It's tedious. I just want my computer to work. Am I the odd one out here?

#Linux #LinuxMint #Debian #LinuxMintDebianEdition #LinuxMintDE #LMDE #Fedora #DistroHopping #Ubuntu

In 2021 I bought a small Chinese ultrabook, the One Netbook A1. You can find a review at https://liliputing.com/one-netbook-a1-handheld-computer-preview/ and the official site for the company appears to be http://1netbook.com. I wanted a small computer with USB ports so I could teach a hybrid course with a USB webcam pointed at the blackboard.

It was a bit hard to get the One Netbook A1. Despite positive Western reviews, no American company was selling it anymore, and I couldn't order it directly from the the PRC. I had to use a European intermediary in order to obtain it. I would joke that the ultrabook had the PRC's version of our NSA's spyware built in, so I wasn't supposed to have it. In any case, it worked well for my purposes and I had fun using it over the next couple years.

I was letting the machine collect dust for a while, and I finally decided to give it new life by switching it from Linux Mint to Linux Mint Debian Edition. When I did so, I found that (again) the screen wanted to be in tablet mode and I couldn't get it to switch through the Display menu. I had an applet that solved this before, but it was no longer available. I ended up writing my own script for switching screen layouts quickly. In the process, I found https://www.reddit.com/r/GPDPocket/comments/krgijw/linux_on_the_one_netbook_a1/ which says that the Reddit One Netbook community is «banned». Maybe my joke was more right than I thought?

#OneNetbook #ultrabook #OneNetbookA1 #LinuxMint #LinuxMintDebianEdition #LinuxMintDE #NSA #security