PC

On eBay, I found a HP 800 G2 mini¹ for A$209. It arrived promptly. The last time I set Windows up was in 2005. So I needed a plan for a clean-install, and then purge the unwanted off of it. It turned out to be surprisingly easy:

1. Create installation media for Windows
2. Power it up (staying offline), set USB drive to boot first in BIOS
3. Nuke all partitions
4. Install Windows 11 Pro with the USB
   • Skip setting up a Microsoft account
   • Hit ShiftF10 and run OOBE\BYPASSNRO in the console
   • The computer will reboot; the process restarts. Set up local account
5. Login to your local account, and connect Ethernet cable
6. Run WinUtil with irm "https://christitus.com/win" | iex in a console
   • From Winutil’s Tweaks (tab), select Standard
   • Click on Add and Activate Ultimate Performance Profile
   • Hit Run Tweaks. This should make it snappy, and crud-free
7. Run Windows update to get security patches + updates
8. Set-up some login security options, incl. PIN, security key, etc.

And so after turning on a few switches in the BIOS — for Hyper-V + Virtualisation, I installed WSL with wsl --install. Post a reboot, I ran:

wsl --install -d Debian

And followed it up by installing some more tools, and a few Windows specific software. The PC also has an M.2 NVMe slot, which I could turn it into a linux PC with one switch.