It’s a cold and rainy day in Florida, so I’m indoors puttering around the little computers, updating and installing into virtual machines. First up is a twelve-year-old Samsung R580 running Fedora 36.

I’m amazed that the Samsung, which is twelve years old, going on thirteen, is still fully functional. By that I mean everything, from audio to WiFi to Bluetooth to the Blue-ray drive this machine was sold with.

Here, in no particular order, are my observations.

• Even though it still is running with Fedora 36 (Fedora 37 having been released 15 November 2022), the Linux kernel is at version 6.0.8, the same version as Fedora 37. And it boots and operates just fine. When I first installed Fedora 36 on this machine it was running with kernel 5.17.
• The general performance is quite good. While it “only” has an Intel i5-430M, all the Linux distributions and software still work just fine on this processor which was first released January 2010. If you want an example of processor sufficiency, you need look no further than here.
• The Samsung R580 was also released at the same time as the i5. After all this time the only repairs I’ve had to make on this notebook computer is the keyboard and the barrel jack on the side used to power and charge the computer. I upgraded the machine with a Samsung 1TB SSD back in late 2013, and it’s still going just fine itself. I spent $700 at a local Office Depot (which has since gone out of business) for my oldest daughter. When she “broke” it in 2013 I got it back and installed Ubuntu on it to recover usability. It’s been around the country, and at one point it went on a cruise with my wife and I on our 30th wedding anniversary so I could process photos taken with my Olympus E-M5. I’d say I’ve gotten my money’s worth.
• Early next year I’m going to convert it into a testing IoT hub for home automation.

I got a wild hair and installed Alma Linus 9.1 as another KVM/QEMU virtual machine on my Linux Mint mini box. I wanted to see if it was even possible (it was obviously) and I wanted to see if I could mount the host’s Shared folder, and I did. I have thus been able to do quickly and painlessly what I can’t do with the latest version of Parallels on my MacBook Pro running macOS 16.2 (and yes, there’s a 16.2.1 update waiting in the wings at this point). I have a Parallels VM with Alma Linux 9.1 running, and the Parallels tools will not build and install on that instance. Yet when I use a free virtualization system on Linux itself, Alma Linux just installed and ran without having to do any installation of special tools within the Alma Linux 9.1 virtual instance. It’s faster and easier using KVM/QEMU/Virtual Machine Manger than it is under Parallels on macOS. A lot easier and faster. And the Alma Linux VM runs quite nicely with all its tools.

I’ve already walked away from Microsoft Windows, not because I consider Microsoft “evil,” but because I’m way tired of the advertising and other shenanigans that Microsoft practices with Windows. Microsoft’s attitude that I don’t actually own Windows but just purchased a license to use it has become anathema to me. There are many rumors that Microsoft is getting ready to pull Windows into their Azure cloud, and you will just run an instance and pay them a monthly fee for the privilege. Nope. All I will ever need to do I can do on Linux, and do it as good if not better. And if there’s an application that won’t run on Linux, then I didn’t really need that application to begin with.

I keep hanging onto Apple because the underpinnings of macOS are “real” Unix, and I’ve been enamored with Apple Silicon and consider Apple Silicon far superior to Intel/AMD processors. All of that appeals to my inner geek. But I can see a point in the near future where I wipe macOS off and install Linux on all my remaining Macs, just like I’ve removed Windows from those machines it initially came installed on.