T490S
Today I met with a lady from Facebook marketplace and purchased an old Thinkpad T490S from 2019. It has 16GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD, an Intel i7 processor and the iconic red nipple in the middle of the keyboard.
When I got home from the mornings purchase, I immediately began researching which Linux distro I should install on my new machine.
I thought about using Arch but instead decided to go with the much more simple Mint. This is was mostly because I didn't want to get caught up in optimization hell and wanted to get straight into using the computer.
Downloading the .ISO file and flashing it to a USB to re-image the Thinkpad was very enjoyable. It felt empowering taking my control back from the machine. Especially because I've always loved doing things like jailbreaking my devices and unlocking the features most users wouldn't ever care about.
Something else I like about my new computer is that because it was so cheap and is already a little scuffed up, I don't have to be precious with it. I can throw it in a bag with no case and take it wherever I want without worry.
Which is kind of the reason I bought the thing in the first place, to use it as a digital typewriter that could come with me anywhere, and even if it broke, I could very easily get it fixed, or recover my files.
I'm hoping this reduction of friction between me and the tool can bring me closer to my work.