It's story time ladies, gentlemen, and non-binary friends!

Back in college almost 15 years ago I used Linux exclusively except for at work where I was required to use Windows, but my first actual dive into Linux was some 10 years earlier when I started running my own webservers and couldn't afford the licensing for Windows so I was forced to learn Linux. I was still in high school living with my parents so it was very much a self-guided experience with a few people online that would assist me when I hit snags and relying a lot on the tech support from the data centers when I was in real trouble. I really enjoyed it, so when netbooks first hit the scene I realized that Linux was the best solution for these low powered devices.

KuJoe from many years ago sitting at a table with a HP 2133 Mini-Note, probably still running Windows on it at the time.

With the many netbooks that followed my first one (an HP 2133 Mini-Note with a VIA C7-M ULV CPU), I always threw Linux on them and continued to use Linux for many years until I got burned by an unfortunate event. I won't go into details, but in the early 2010s the Linux communities could be... less than nice to people who needed help. I'll leave it at that.

Fast forward to today and I'm still using Linux as my primary server OS, a mix of RHEL and Ubuntu distros. I've tried many times in the past to switch back to Linux but those attempts usually only last a week before it became too much extra work and I'd switch back to the comfort and stability (🤨) of Windows. My most recent attempt was in 2022, but it didn't pan out because I wasn't able to use it for gaming, content creation, or streaming (my video about it here: NVIDIA dropped the ball with Linux!).

So here we are, in 2025 and I have Linux Mint installed on my Lenovo Yoga 7 14" with things mostly working fine. It's been less than 12 hours though so I'm not going to jinx it, but so far so good.

I'm going to start using this blog to document my journey since I don't want to flood social media with these potentially lengthy updates. I guess with all of the backstory out of the way here's time for some details about the start of this journey.

Choosing an OS

I picked Linux Mint for 2 main reasons: 1) I've had the best experience with it in the past. 2) It's based on Ubuntu which is a requirement since some of the software I cannot live without only has installs for Ubuntu.

In the past my go-to options were Fedora and Arch Linux, neither of which are options anymore so hopefully this is more successful. The fact that I won't be gaming on my laptop gives it a big advantage since that's what made me stop using it in 2022 and I have a more positive outlook for this attempt because of that.

Installation

Installation of Linux Mint went relatively smooth. I did get an error the first time I booted into the OS, but a quick search showed it was related to Secure Boot so I disabled that in the BIOS and did a clean install for good measure and it went away. Everythings worked out of the box so far except the fingerprint reader which I will miss, but maybe one day it'll be supported by libfprint. The IGP, bluetooth, wireless, touchscreen, camera, microphone, and docking station (and everything attached) all work as expected. I did experience an issue when I closed the screen while it was on and then opened it later, but I haven't dug into that much to see if it's fixable or if it's even consistent or not. I also had to adjust the resolution for the laptop display because everything was entirely too small for the default resolution and scaling was things entirely too big.

Software

Here's a list of the software I've installed that I use daily and how they're working out for me.

  1. Synology Active Backup - The install went smoothly and it's able to backup the laptop without any issue. Haven't tested the restore process yet, but that'll be for a later date.
  2. Synology Drive Client - This also installed without a problem and is currently syncing up my files from my NAS to it's own partition. Partitioning the drive was a bit of extra work, but I didn't plan ahead so that made more work for me. Thankfully the Live CD for Linux Mint includes GParted so that make life easier.
  3. Discord - Installed the Flatpak version and everything appears to be working as expected without any slowness.
  4. Synergy - The install went mostly fine. There was a permission error that popped up even with using sudo, but it doesn't appear to be affecting anything. The performance is really good when the NIC isn't being saturated with syncing and backups.
  5. BitWarden - Just like Discord, I installed the Flatpak version and it works as expected. I plan on switching back to KeePass in the near future, but for now this works.
  6. Remmina - Also installed the Flatpak version and RDPing into Windows works great without any performance or stability problems. This'll be useful for work related jumpboxes.
  7. OBS - I installed both the Flatpak and System Package versions for this to see how they compared. The Flatpak version is newer so it has more features, but it has some trouble with the built in camera sometimes. I'll continue to play around with both versions, but at least they appear to both work.

These are all of the apps I've installed so far since I spent more time than I had planned to setting up the Synology apps, but I will provide more updates as I explore and install new things.

What's next?

Well next up I plan to install Linux Mint on multiple other devices that don't support Windows 11 so they'll be EOS soon. Eventually I'll get my gaming PC switched over, but probably not Linux Mint. That'll be a whole separate project.

As for the laptop:

  1. Find a decent IDE that I am comfortable coding in.
  2. Update all of my SSH keys for my servers.
  3. Setup OBS scenes and profiles for recordings.
  4. Setup NFS on my NAS for proper network storage.
  5. Install a music playing app of some sort, probably Spotify for now.
  6. Give cloud gaming a try.
  7. Learn git via the CLI so I can keep maintaining my GitHub projects.

I'm sure there's stuff I'm forgetting, but I feel like this is a decent first post and will hopefully document more things as I move along this journey. I also plan to provide some general education posts such as guides, information, and other helpful things as I progress, maybe even some scripts here and there. I hope this year is really the year I embrace Linux!

If you want to know what inspired me to make the change this time, here's a good video for you to watch: Breaking Point: Why I've 100% ditched Windows by EposVox

Go out and do good things! 👍
-KuJoe