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My Build of a Linux Mint machine to replace Windows 10 PC
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So welcome to this journey into the unknown for me, forced on me by microsoft retiring Win 10 (end of support to be 14th Oct 2025) and the PC i use for radio not being compatible with microsoft new advertising / AI BullS**t filled Windows 11 It was time to take the plunge into the world of Linux and open source software, my experience of linux is limited to playing with raspberry Pi's intermitently over the years first thing was to look at my software stack and determin if there are suitable software is available My software stack includes software for FT* modes, JS8Call, WSPR, PSK, Olivia, Wefax, SSTV (digital and analogue), satellite tracking and doppler correction, and comms software for SSH, SFTP, SCP for uploads to the Web pages you are reading now |
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Deciding on the Linux Distribution |
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| This was a fun bit, there are 10's if not hundreds of distributions (Distro's) After reading a number of pages on the web about the different distro's and buying a linux magazine (happened to have a Linux Mint Live CD on the cover) i decided to have a go Now what's a "LIVE CD" i hear you say? put simply its a bootable CD of the relevant distro, so you can test it without having to install it, which is pretty neat, it means its easy to test out a number of distro's quickly and easilly There is one drawback to these live CD's, as they boot from CD and everything is held in ram any changes you make or programs you install will be lost when you reboot or turn off the PC I was also talking to other hams on social media and email about the Linux distro's they used Pretty much all of the hams were using Linux Mint, Cinnamon edition which is known as a easy to learn for those who are migrating from windows, as the desktop is easy to use, software manager provides a GUI for selcting and installing applications |
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Deciding on computer specification |
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| Due to the very low spec of my test laptop I became aware of just how intensive some of my applications i run for digital mode
activities, so i definitely need more the a 12 year old dual core pentium with 6gb of ram according to Linux Mint FAQ the minimum spec is 2GB RAM (4GB recommended for a comfortable usage). 20GB of disk space (100GB recommended). 1024×768 resolution (on lower resolutions, press ALT to drag windows with the mouse if they don’t fit in the screen). its interesting there is no specific processor specification? looking around there is information recommending minimum dual core 64 bit processors I run 2 radios (Xiegu G90 and Yaesu FT-991a), both radios run 24/7 when i am not operating they are running RX operations, WSPR on the G90 and either wspr, SSTV or QRSS for the FT991a so two concurrent session of WSJT-x running FFS(fast fourier transformation) is pretty resource intensive, so clearly the base specification will be insufficient for my environment If i was going to buy a new machine i wanted a computer with a life of 4-5 years minimum, so yes it will start over spec'ed compared to my current 8 year old win10 PC (intel i5 4460t, 8gb ram 256GB SSD) i decided my minimum spec would be :- a current 14th generation intel i5 processor, minimum 16GB ram, ideally a 512GB SSD, i wanted a minimum 2 displays (HDMI or Display port), minimum of 4 USB 3 ports at the rear, 2 USB ports at the from idealy USB C for OS installation and easy access for mouse and keyboard, no pre-loaded OS (Operating System(win11)) This is where it starts to get technical and geeky, so a quick search on the web revealed very few computer manufacturers supply computers without windows pre-install, Dell and Lenovo are the main ones unless you go to a builder who builds a custom PC for you So the search was on, looking at Lenovo and Dell websites the array of i5 processors was wild, from 12th to 14 generation and lots of different numbers and suffix's on them, so first was to find out what the numbers and suffix's meant after the "i5", it didn't take long, basically the last 3 digits are just identifiers, and the 1 or 2 digits before them are the generation (current generation at time of writing this was 14th gen), the suffix was the interesting bit, the main suffix's i was seeing were "T" and "vPro" |
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Peter
M0PWX Previous callsigns Intermediate 2E0PWX, Foundation M7PGW |
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