On a whim I installed Linux Mint onto my 2014 Macbook Air 11".

I had resisted using linux as my desktop OS for many many years: my last was a Fedora desktop back in 2008. My last non-work linux desktop was Slackware back in 1996. In part I stayed on MacOS to use commercial photo and music software that wasn’t supported on linux. And in part this was from all of the imaging and twiddly machine maintenance I had to deal with for work. I wanted something that would Just Work for my personal use.

Now that I have more headroom and time to fiddle with things (and other devices I can use if I want to run commercial software), I decided a linux install might refresh this aging laptop.

Firefox, git, vim, Tailscale, Hugo, and Obsidian are all cross-platform and Just Work. The Windows version of Scrivener can run under Wine. There’s a built-in Pomodoro applet. And boom, I have my writing environment set up. Other than some keyboard shortcut differences I’m pretty comfy, and the novelty of it is refreshing.

The bare install is good for focus: not many distractions installed. I may at some point try to install some games on here, but maybe I can hold out for a bit.