I slacked off for most of the past few weeks.

Part of that comes from not knowing where to begin with recent acquisitions. I even had a few more last week from the same guy no less. The other has to do with not having everything together before new acquisitions arrived. Still another was not having multivitamins on hand while waiting for a prescription renewal. A fourth point is getting new tires, then not getting the ones you had ordered, then getting the appropriate ones, across several days’ time. And these are just recent gripes.

With these groove-grinding setbacks, I watched several subscribed channels on YouTube and just chilled. I don’t wish to do this often, but I got swamped with researching something else. There is another reason I’m gung-ho about slacking off: I want to switch my 32-bit Lenovo/IBM T60 ThinkPad’s OS couplet from Ubuntu-MATE/Windows 10 to Windows 10/OpenSUSE (Tumbleweed). The former setup became out of date once Ubuntu “transitioned into exclusive 64-bit mode” as its community of developers are too lazy to maintain 64-bit and 32-bit versions of their precious distro.

While I never used it as often as I wanted, part of that came out of falling out of use, then forgetting the password to get in, then reconsidering the wisdom of having Ubuntu load up by default (but give me a choice between it and Windows 10 when I boot up), and finally wondering if I can find a distro that can run Wine, LibreOffice, Notepad++, and both Brave and Firefox for browsers.

Most of the time, when people consider Linux, it’s to commit suicide because there are way too many options for a clear-cut winner to be decided–no end-all, fit-all solution. However, you choose a Linux OS because A) you can get away with it, and B) you’re desperate. Of course, it is still a dual-boot machine in case something won’t fly with one or the other. I’m not trying to knock Linux in itself–it has several edges in terms of preserving old tech. Yet, there are many dingleberry distros who are abandoning 32-bit because “IT’S SO HARD!”

The real issue for me is CPU use. More than one occasion, I had to rummage through online to figure out why Windows 10 had it set to 100% for no apparent reason. Even after using WinAero Tweaker to nix spyware, it is still a 32-bit system and cannot run 11 even if I wanted it to.

Full disclosure, I still watch lots of Linus Tech Tips after the debacle over them churning the content out too fast to vet information. I subscribed, however, after watching Anthony (the tubby gent who’s into retro media and old tech) demonstrate the marvels of constructing your own net server from scavenged and discarded machinery–a topic close to my heart. It was over one year old. Through their demonstrations about what really clogs a system to bog down, I had considered using AtlasOS, a trim-down suite that prunes features in Windows, including Windows Defender (there’s a debate? You can procure equivalent, competent anti-virus software online).

However, AtlasOS works only on 64-bit machines, once again singling me out for using archaic technology. The program would have made sense on a 32-bit machine that could choose not to use Ethernet or shut off Wifi (the T60 has a neat manual switch for that, too!).

Thus, “Distro”. Linux theoretically uses fewer resources because the project either refrains from peeking at your digital life just to tailor marketing pitches, or refrains from bloating projects with aimless, non-conducive features (most distros interface with servers).

At any rate, if I manage to patch up the T60, I can handle other machines even better. First, I must uninstall Ubuntu. Simple approach: delete it while using Windows 10. However, the Master Boot Record needs fixing afterward so the BIOS can spot the OS and boot the machine. So, I must reinstall Windows 10 using a USB full of tools that address the Master Boot Record. Then, I must redo partitions so there’s a universal “Kiddie” to swap data between the OS’s (one uses NTFS and the other FAT32 or exFAT, so we need something that both sides can detect). Finally, I have to install the new distro without it returning countless errors or niggling reports and freezes.

As I examined the many, many steps needed to take while comparing how many horrible things could go wrong, I froze and panicked. This is a T60 and I do not wish to “BRYHK” the thing. You may counter with, “just buy another laptop”, but then again, this is “Desert Island Gamer”, where I lack immediate resources and hold onto things that wow me. If you know anything about T60’s, they’re wonderful in ways you don’t realize if you are misled by “stats” alone–ruggedness, compactness, straightforwardness, and that odd finger-joystick that people are rarely a fan of until they have no mouse and must otherwise stare down the tiny little touchpad.

Of course, its stats are abysmal, but several aspects can be upgraded. A new CPU, a RAM stick combo totalling 3GB (since the motherboard cannot read more than that), and a drive that is either solid state or partitioned for quicker reading of data, will breathe some life into the T60. It might be a potato, but how much do you need out of a machine to run a browser, watch YouTube videos, use LibreOffice, or type paperwork in a browser app?

Not enough to rule out a T60! So long as it has a reasonable GUI and it has all of the above apps, then I won’t complain about having to learn Linux. At least I know it won’t plod. To this end, I have OpenSUSE’s Tumbleweed in mind. A couple of electronics and computer retailers in the flea market’s indoors section might know about tripping up a T60 with a distro. Maybe I can have them make the changes–sometime after the chaos of Labor Day weekend.

For the other site, I have been asked to update the booth as another flea market is setting up nearby. Freshening up the stock should be nice, as long as the tabs play nice on my printer. I keep forgetting how to load the label paper into the printer so that it specifically prints without being misaligned. It takes several attempts each time. Once I found out that it could happen, I decided not to sell a perfectly fine laser printer. Yes, I considered selling off a laser printer–that kind of frustration.

At least it isn’t some rank-and-file ink-jet cash-eater–toner almost never dries up. I do have lots of label paper, so I’m not itching over economy, but the procedure snags me. Most of the time, the things that are somehow crucial to the hobby you don’t do every day winds up being the most melodramatic experience because you don’t do it often enough for it to ingrain its particulars into your active recall. So, I forget the positions of the label paper. This is still technically new to me.

But then, of course, you’ll berate me for chilling to some YouTube. Is it something you should do as often as I? Well, it depends on your workload–gotta chill at some point since things go sour if you never do. To break the cycle of chilling, you just need some quality work time to rekindle a forward momentum.

I will do so tomorrow, when I go to the weekly booth and figure out what to bring home, what to leave there, what I should rearrange, and whether I can help the other vendors in preparation for Labor Day Weekend.