I just upgraded the storage on a ~10 year old Asus laptop from HDD to SSD, and installed Linux Mint 21.1. I had Mint 19 on the old HDD. I was prepared for the ass-pain of trying to get all my stuff reinstalled, but unlike 19 everything I wanted just installed with little fuss and only a little troubleshooting. GQRX-SDR, CHIRP, ProtonVPN, LibreWolf & FileZilla were all included in the software manager so I didn't have to go search on a browser. Didn't have to go hunting for drivers or configurations to connect to the SDR. Even HPLIPfor my also ~10 year old printer installed with no problems, which may possibly be the first time I've had HP software run correctly on first install on Linux or Windows. I had a lot of trouble getting stuff to work on 19, but I also have learned more since then, so I wonder how much of that was just newbie incompetence.
I keep this laptop out in the barn and just leave it there to mess with radios or listen to videos while I work, and I had largely written it off as outdated, but this SSD is fast as hell and it boots and opens things almost just as fast as my new laptop. It's amazing how the only thing that's really progressed in consumer electronics is graphics.
I haven't had an account since voat.co and missed the registration to searchvote.co when all that went down. I've mostly just lurked, but that makes me a serial nonparticipating parasite while everyone else is finding good links, sharing opinions, and shitting on each other with the voat immune system. So I'm off my lazy ass and I'll participate. I like to post linux shit, raspberrypi tutorial links that I'll never bother myself to do on my pi, and political shit that everyone already knows about. Also guns, radios, and prepper/guerrilla stuff. Oh, I came here with the MDE crowd from reddit when all that went down. Fun times, even if Sam's a clown.
