New Old Laptop

Some context:

• I have never owned a laptop computer. ¹
• My family members use laptop computers exclusively.
• My family members have old laptops that they no longer use.

Excerpt from a recent conversation with a family member:

Me: “Hey, do you still use your old laptop?”

Them: “Yeah I still use it for zoom and stuff, but you can use it if you want” ²

This was a first-time-ever request. There was a possibility that I would need to give a demo/presentation in a public space. My PC tower case is bulky, heavy, and lacks a handle. It isn’t a convenient option. The main issue is the lack of built-in screen, making troubleshooting awkward. Don’t really want to be fiddling around with stuff on a giant screen in front of the audience.

A couple of weeks later, I took possession of a Toshiba Satellite laptop manufactured around 2009.

Look at the strength of your chassis, the desire in your ROM. I gave you this! Such a waste.

-Thulsa Doom

The laptop was running a version of Windows (Vista if the sticker is to be believed). I have no intention of running any version of windows. Also did not want to wipe the hard drive, “just in case” the previous owner forgot about an important piece of data on it. ³

Is it safe to say that the laptop is no longer under warranty? Eventually, I’ll do a complete disassembly and replace the thermal paste. For now I’ll settle for just cleaning the visible surfaces. The keyboard had some grime, as was expected. Used some alcohol to loosen the dirt. A small amount of compressed air was used to some effect. The spacebar was stuck on one side and I gently nudged it loose. Some keys had to be coaxed into registering a keystroke and were cleaned as their issues were discovered. There were only a couple like this. I’m not a keyboard snob so I found the laptop keyboard more than satisfactory.

Not even one day into being a laptop owner and the “missing charging cord problem” manifested. The battery was of course dead, so I couldn’t proceed until it was found. ⁴ In the meantime I took care of some housekeeping tasks:

• Writing down the stickered MAC addresses for the two network cards.
• Researching an appropriate operating system.
• Removing an HDD from my desktop to be used in the laptop.

The disk swap was an upgrade from a 320GB Hitachi drive to a 1TB Western Digital drive. Same RPM, just more space, and presumably less wear and tear. I don’t want to commit to using an SSD just yet because there aren’t any extra drives lying around.

Operating System

I really wanted to try out a BSD, but I wasn’t confident in the level of performance/compatibility present with this hardware. Ended up choosing Linux Mint 22.3 “Zena don’t call me Xena”.

Some thoughts regarding Linux Mint:

I haven’t installed mint on a machine in several years, but I have used it once or twice randomly as a live USB/CD in emergencies. Considered Debian, but the options on the Debian website confused me. Chose the Cinnamon desktop, which I prefer over the other two options. I don’t plan on using the graphical desktop, but just in case I do it’s there. Installation to an HDD took a little over 20 minutes. The installer required mouse clicks. Mint graphical setup isn’t keyboard-only-friendly? I realized the setup wizard was installing a number of programs/packages that I had no intention of using. This adds to the install time no doubt, but it also means having to mess around with the package manager to remove them later.

“Please remove the installation medium, then press ENTER:”

This is a familiar shutdown prompt for Mint enjoyers. It means everything went well.

             ...-:::::-...                 user@mint
          .-MMMMMMMMMMMMMMM-.              -----------
      .-MMMM`..-:::::::-..`MMMM-.          OS: Linux Mint 22.3 x86_64
    .:MMMM.:MMMMMMMMMMMMMMM:.MMMM:.        Host: Satellite L305
   -MMM-M---MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.MMM-       Kernel: 6.14.0-37-generic
 `:MMM:MM`  :MMMM:....::-...-MMMM:MMM:`    Packages: 1999 (dpkg)
 :MMM:MMM`  :MM:`  ``    ``  `:MMM:MMM:    Resolution: 1280x800
.MMM.MMMM`  :MM.  -MM.  .MM-  `MMMM.MMM.   CPU: Intel Pentium Dual T3400 (2) @ 2.166GHz
:MMM:MMMM`  :MM.  -MM-  .MM:  `MMMM-MMM:   Memory: 282MiB / 3787MiB
:MMM:MMMM`  :MM.  -MM-  .MM:  `MMMM:MMM:
:MMM:MMMM`  :MM.  -MM-  .MM:  `MMMM-MMM:
.MMM.MMMM`  :MM:--:MM:--:MM:  `MMMM.MMM.
 :MMM:MMM-  `-MMMMMMMMMMMM-`  -MMM-MMM:
  :MMM:MMM:`                `:MMM:MMM:
   .MMM.MMMM:--------------:MMMM.MMM.
     '-MMMM.-MMMMMMMMMMMMMMM-.MMMM-'
       '.-MMMM``--:::::--``MMMM-.'
            '-MMMMMMMMMMMMM-'
               ``-:::::-``

Software Installation

Setting up this system from scratch manually wasn’t painful. It was not exactly fun though, either. The more system installs I have to do, the more likely that I can be convinced the people obsessed with reproducible builds are the only sane people in tech.

My problem is not having an efficient way to transfer dotfiles and install software from multiple sources. I’m accustomed to a rolling release arch-based-distribution. Software library names are often different between pacman and apt, so I can’t easily modify the scripts I have for my arch-based system to make this process faster. It also doesn’t help that I don’t really remember most of the commands for apt. Unlike my main machine, I need to compile more programs myself due to Mint offering significantly older versions.

Package: tmux
Version: 3.4-lubuntu0.1
Priority: optional
Section: admin
Origin: Ubuntu

During this process I learned:

• To apt-get update first before doing anything else.
• The difference between apt remove and apt purge.
• dpkg is the lower level way to manage packages.
• I have a bunch of bash scripts I should delete because I have never used them
• cat /var/log/apt/history.log is super helpful!
• Of all the pre-installed packages, git is not among them.

Usage

This might seem silly to some people. I’m still figuring out my preferred method for physically using this laptop. I have enough desk space to accommodate the laptop. I could probably re-arrange my monitor stand, or even mount the laptop on it, but I’m not quite committed yet.

Do I use the laptop open on my desk as one would traditionally? Do I opt to use a wireless keyboard and an external monitor so I can use the laptop while it is closed and tucked away? Or do I just ssh into the thing? I’m not using the graphical environment and the physical screen is tiny anyway. I suppose I try all three methods and find the one I dislike the least.

It didn’t take me long to figure out that I didn’t like the default power button behavior. Nor did I like that the machine suspended when the lid was closed. I’m sure the Mint gui has settings to configure all of this. But I don’t really plan on booting to graphical.target again.

[Login]
HandlePowerKey=suspend
HandlePowerKeyLongPress=poweroff
HandleLidSwitch=ignore

This machine got hot when I compiled neovim. Thermals aren’t something I’m used to having to worry about. The temperature monitor said 80 degrees Celsius. I’ve never had a desktop machine get anywhere close to that. Needless to say, I’m not going to compile large software projects on this machine if I can avoid it.

I plugged in a usb Bluetooth dongle and connected to my headphones to listen to music. A bash script from my main machine took care of this without issue.

Speaking of dongles, I had to use another one for wifi. The built-in wireless network card is unacceptable. The Qualcomm 802.11b/g interface was so bad it was noticeably slow browsing text-only webpages. It’s nice that there’s a physical external switch to turn off the built-in interface along with an indicator LED. It leaves no doubt that the bad wifi has been put out to pasture.

Hubris made me think I’d be OK with a mechanical HDD. I was wrong. I made the necessary sacrifices and installed an SSD. There is no going back. Random programs with databases do not like a spinning drive. Also, HDDs are just more fragile in a mobile platform, and I’d like to avoid accidental breakage.

Lastly, the most important modification of all, “the sticker”. Though not a laptop user, I’ve seen many in the wild. People seem to enjoy placing a sticker(s) on the lid of their machine. Is this for easy identification at a distance? I never considered this before, but in a corporate or academic setting where everyone is issued the same model laptop, how do they not grab the wrong unit on accident? Ha! The sticker. Similarly, everyone is rocking a device manufactured by brand “x” or “z”. You shamefully are using one from brand “y”. Your peers incessantly ask you “why” and you’re tired of indulging them… The sticker strikes again!

No sticker for me though. Primarily because I don’t plan on being out in public with it often. Perhaps more interestingly because Toshiba no longer makes laptops. This machine is now a “classic”.

Reflection

The BSDs aren’t for me at this time. I installed openBSD on the laptop, used it for a few hours and moved on. Yeah, I could have tried freeBSD, netBSD, etc. It’s just too much work for me to do for low-priority machine. I entirely expect to make the move to a BSD in the future. But the relative level of difficulty to setup compared to linux (mint, arch, rpi os) is a tad too high. Installing BSD may be “easy” for some users at present. If that is the case, great! But I found the guidance is this will be hardware, application, and free-time dependent. I’ll need a block of time to read a large amount of documentation before committing. The security features alone make openBSD an attractive option, janky install wizard and all.

Poor battery life had me looking into how to rebuild a laptop battery. It lasts for just over an hour and fifteen minutes doing light work in the terminal. The proposition of investing additional funds into a battery for an old laptop is awkward. Battery replacement would now be high on my list of things to care about if I were to purchase a new laptop. Today I was introduced to an aspect of tech that I had not previously considered. I now realize that effective laptop battery life probably dictates many user’s computing habits! That’s unfortunate.

Volume is controlled by a wheel. If I move and release the wheel the volume control will continually adjust unless it rests on certain positions. Even without searching for the issue online, I’m confident there will be a number of reports of similar behavior from other users. Frankly, I don’t care that it may be broken. I intend to “perma-mute” the speakers. But it can be disconcerting the first time you accidentally bump the wheel and stuff starts going crazy on screen. Tying this back to my experiment with BSD, the terminal bell is on by default, as is the laptop volume. Bad choice by me to test at 3am.

keyboard.bell.volume=0

Other Random Thoughts

• Changing the boot splash screen was more involved than it should be, but simultaneously less involved than I expected?

• My habit of physically labelling hard drives for easy identification saved me some time here.

• I never knew usb port colors can be used to distinguish speed, but are not part of the official spec.

• The USB slot on the right side boots first.

• I learned cat /sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/capacity returns the remaining percentage.

• It’s been so long since this model was relevant that many of the forums that were home to discussions regarding its hardware may now be defunct. Search engine summaries did an OK job answering basic hardware questions.

• The machine uses a VGA dsub for external monitor connectivity. I rummaged through an old box of cables to find one. What are the chances the projector I present on has a VGA input and not just HDMI?

• I sometimes have to power cycle the machine to get my wifi interface to initialize. Changed a setting in /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/default-wifi-powersave-on.conf to remedy the issue.

• If I use the small laptop screen for an extended period, going back to my regular monitor feels weird. It seems huge.

• I wonder how prevalent/expensive laptop beverage spills are.

• Why does ssh accept -p for port and sftp accept capital -P for port!?!!?!