I was a fairly "happy" Windows user (if that even exists) previously minus a short dabble in MacOS back when Microsoft tried to convince us that Windows 8 wasn't a kafkaesque nightmare. Windows 8. Ugh. I still get high blood pressure.
I bought a Mac Mini back in 2011 and it was...fine. I had an iPhone back then when Jobs was still alive - anyting seemed possible. I decided to try out the "ecosystem" experience. It was one of the last Apple computers built that both cost less than a small car and was moderately user-upgradeable. I had worked with Macs before in my imaging and graphics jobs. The ones I encountered were a far cry from "it just works". The spinning beachball of death seemed to appear way more than the BSOD in my experience and always when you were trying to save the final output of a project. The mini was ok for light photoshop, email, web browsing. Definitely not powerful enough for large projects or video editing. The ecosystem paradise soon turned out to be a walled garden of limitations so the mac got used less and less. Eventually even Apple jettisoned that hardware from their stable of acceptable hardware. Obsolete.
So back to Windows I went. Microsoft was so embarrassed by Windows 8 they skipped a whole digit and went Straight to Windows10. Was it any better than Vista? Not really. I decided to build my own rig - I updated the license I had from my old Win8 machine to Win10 and I was off and running. Multiple monitors, gaming was amazing, lots of third party compatibility. I felt like my workstation was mine again and less like it was on loan from Apple. Good times.
Then the management shakeup at Microsoft happened. They saw all the cash Apple was raking in with their app store and iTunes and wanted a piece of that pie. Suddenly Windows is all about the services. Windows Store, OneDrive, Office, Edge, Surface, PhoneLink, etc. Logins. Accounts. Tracking. Advertising. You felt like you were no longer the customer but the product. Windows 11 was announced in their typical clumsy / flashy fashion and it was apparent. Windows is moving in a different direction. More locked down. More integrated. More like Apple. Windows 10 dies in Oct2025 so get on board. Oh, your hardware needs upgraded to so it's compatible with our AI tracker - uh - assistant. We need your computer to be able to take a screenshot of your desktop every second. No - for YOUR security, not our tracking. Oh, we won't say in public that's what it's for but wink wink - you know.
So now that the dystopia is fully in swing I figure I need to get off my backside and figure out this Linux thing once and for all. Is it awesome? Is it horrible? Only one way to find out.
I had a feeling that 14 year old Mac Mini might have some use left. Before Apple made it obsolete I had upgraded the ram to 16gb so other than being a bit boring it was serviceable. It had space to add an SSD drive which should boost it's performance as well. I took it apart, added a 240gb SSD drive I had spare (no small feat) and wiped the old spinning rust HDD it came with. I installed Ubuntu and was off to the races. Everything worked! Bluetooth worked. Wifi worked. Multiple displays worked. Docking station worked. USB ports worked. Nice! And it was fast to boot. I had my old "Mac" back better than ever. No spinning beach ball. Web browsing, email, networking, FTP, phone integration, multimedia playback, gaming, customizable desktop. Windows managment. Easy security and backups. WOW. Very nice! Good job Ubuntu! The only thing I haven't gotten working is a USB fingerprint reader. To be fair, it didn't work on the Mac and barely worked on a PC. I still have hope with a little persistence I can get it operational. Mac Mini is now reborn as Ubuntu Mini!