

I use Oracle Linux for all my Oracle software, but I’ll use any Linux distro for non-Oracle stuff.If you asked any die-hard Apple user a few years back about the "ideal" MacBook Pro, he or she would have insisted on a 17-inch display, non-glare of course.

I’m not even that partisan about my Linux distros these days. I spent a few years with macOS as my daily driver. I used Red Hat Linux, then Fedora as my main desktop for 10+ years. I know people become fanboys/fangirls/fanpeople of their operating system of choice, but I really can’t be bothered with all that anymore. I believe in operating system diversity… 🙂

My main workstation is a Dell XPS laptop running Windows 11.So my current operating system landscape looks like this: It’s working really well, and saved me having to think about what to replace the old laptop with. I installed KeePassXC and DropBox to get access to my passwords, and that’s about it. If I had read the installer pages properly, I could have loaded the proprietary drivers as part of the install, but randomly clicking the “Continue” button without reading is the way I roll. I installed a suitable driver for my wifi card, did an update and I was ready to go. The first problem was I didn’t have wifi access, so I had to plug directly into my router to get internet access. A few questions later and I had a running Ubuntu Mate installation.The live version of Ubuntu Mate started and I clicked the install icon.

Restarted the MBP and held down the “alt” key to give me the boot menu, and picked the USB stick.Used the Portable Apps version of Rufus to burn it onto a USB stick.I downloaded the ISO to my Windows 11 desktop.I figured I wanted Ubuntu, and I wanted to run a simple window manager, so I picked Ubuntu Mate. I would like to say I did a lot of research to decide the best OS for it, but that would be a lie. It’s got a Core 2 Duo processor, 8G RAM and a 500G SSD, so it’s not great, but it’s more than capable of doing what I need it to do… It stopped getting OS updates a while ago, and more recently it doesn’t want to play Prime videos, so I figured it was time to take action. I use it for watching films and streaming rain sounds while I sleep. I’ve got an old MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2009) that sits next to my bed.
