I’m comfortable doing the Linux swap on an old dell, but I guess what I’m looking for is a recommendation of a device that is known to work well for that purpose.
Are there any “gotchas” that I should be looking out for in the hunt?
Looks interesting! Seems it pantheon is built on top of GNOME, so wouldn’t that make it a bit heavy for my 2GB RAM beater? Or is there really not that much difference between the different DEs with regard to resource usage?
Nice. That’s the move. I am finding it more and more difficult to find smaller laptops/chromebooks these days. If I want a big screen, I’ll sit down at my desktop!
Yeah, you don’t have to remove it (I didn’t when I tried this 10 years ago) but if you don’t you always have to hit ctrl+l when it boots, or it could get stuck looking for ChromeOS. The hardware is so old now, I don’t really care if I brick it. I’m just learning about linux by goofin.
Dang, that’s a nice deal. I think I want something with a bit more juice, as I would like to play Minecraft from time to time. I’m leaning towards used thinkpad
Thanks for the resources. I think this could be the way forward. I’ll do some research first, as I need something super stable, since I won’t be the final user. So if it breaks, I’m on the hook.
Do you have any suggestions on possible candidate Chromebooks?
Ah, that’s what I was looking for. Thank you. I am not sure if an MQTT signal works well for dimming, but I guess I’ll give it a try, because otherwise I end up with two switches controlling the same set of lights in the same location… not idea.
Interesting! Looks pretty slick. Might be a nice stepping stone into that world. This chromebook is so old that it could be a perfect playground for this sorta thing. I don’t have any important files/apps or anything on it that I’m afraid of damaging or being without. Thanks for the suggestion.
After some serious googling, it looks like gestures is a feature that really only exists in the “luxury” DEs. There is something called Touchegg and Touche that can add them to others, but I’m not far along enough to know if it will do what I want it to.
I just tried debian with Xfce, and it’s pretty fast, but I REALLY love using gestures! It makes my tiny screen feel way bigger.