PC

Last year when I travelled to be with my father, I left the work computer behind, and instead carried MacBook Air M1 — my silent and super-efficient road warrior. With the exception of access to network-mapped drives, it worked like a champ.

That experience gave me an idea, because there is no joy in hauling a work-provided laptop home and back on my (bus + train) commute everyday, especially if it’s a corp. spyware-laden brick; an insult to my labour. What if I sourced a cheap hardware, set it up to be nimble, fast, and shackles-free?

The only reason I’d consider a PC with Windows today would be because it now offers WSL as an optional feature, and because I can scrub the shit off of it, thanks to community efforts. Bear in mind, WSL is slow as hell on NTFS partition; linux flies on EXT4 file system; it’s a compromise.

Hopping on eBay, I found a HP 800 G2 mini (with 6 gen. i7 intel CPU, 16 GB, 500 GB SSD, with Windows 11 Pro pre-loaded) for A$209. It arrived promptly.

The last time I set Windows up was back in 2005, and was on ubuntu by 07, never looking back. So I needed a strategy to clean-install Windows, and then purge the unwanted off of it. It turned out to be surprisingly easy; here’s how.

  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.

Credits to Redmond for enabling all of the above; brickbats for not making a clean install the default for its users!1

Debian, with its two year cycle of updates, is my other silent rogue. 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

Installed the following from my Debian console:

sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade
sudo apt install bat detox fd-find fzf git gpg neovim \ 
 pngquant ripgrep rsync

After getting my linux console (Debian) in Windows, I proceeded to install a few Windows-specific software:

With this set-up, I can now work from home (when I do) without the need for the work computer at hand. The PC also has a slot for an M.2 NVMe SSD to turn this into a linux PC with one switch.

I could have gotten a Mac mini last year, but the fruit co. with its infinite wisdom decided to take a dump, call it Tahoe, and distribute it as the next best thing. Me: no thanks; until they get their act together, I’m out.

  1. And for opening the door to [ad,c(or|ra)p]ware, for empowering corp. creeps around the world to surveil their users. ↩