Sunday 27 August 2023

Standardising my Linux machines

 I'm well pleased with my latest iteration of a lightweight research machine, that I decided that I would rebuild the old Dell 6320 that I used in the earlier Xubuntu based iteration.

This machine sits in a corner of the outdoor studio, really a converted garage, and has been running the Raspberry Pi X86 desktop.

The machine doesn't need to do much - really all it does is let me look at the weather forecast when I'm working outside in the garden, and perhaps write up the odd gardening note.

In part, this is because the outdoor studio is currently a giant junk pile, but we have plans to clean it out this summer to provide a large painting space for J and provide me with a project bench for playing with old cameras etc.

And that of course means I'll need a machine in there to look up old camera manuals etc.

Even though the Dell's battery is not in the best of health the machine has a decent sized screen and a keyboard that is reasonably nice to type on.

So this afternoon I installed crunchbang linux. The network connection in the studio isn't quite as robust as it could be, and my first attempt at an install failed when the wifi repeater reset itself, but the second time installation just worked giving me a usable machine.

As the machine's not going to see serious use in the first instance it's not quite the same as my more serious lightweight machine -  I decided not to set up deja dup, or add my extra applications (kate, ristretto, notable etc - these can be installed later if need be) as for the moment all I really need is a web browser and a text editor for writing raw markdown if required ...


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