Free Computing for Solopreneurs? - 12. Completing The Challenge

Linux Mint 20.1 Screen - My original install of Linux Mint has had several smaller upgrades and also this major upgrade to 20.1, but it still works beautifully.

A year ago, I was presented with a challenge to find a low-cost, or preferably free computing solution for solopreneurs. This resulted in a collection of 12 blogs I called the series Free Computing for Solopreneurs? I think I succeeded with the first part of the challenge which was to find a low-cost solution for someone who really doesn’t have any funds to spare for a computer. As a matter of fact, I was able to do this without incurring any costs. More impressively, I ended up with three computers, two desktop computers and a laptop.

The hardware: finding computers

The first part of the challenge was to find free computers. While I struggled with this initially, once I really put some effort into it, I succeeded in securing several computers, boxes of parts, two good monitors, and even a laptop. As I found out, businesses typically have to pay to dispose of old equipment, so taking it off their hands for free actually saved them money.

Not everything I received functioned properly. I also made it a point not to receive hard drives because I didn’t want to be responsible for anyone else’s files. That said, I still ended up with a whole stack of them although most of them were not good. That said, it was enough for the two desktop computers.

I also did not expect to find any monitors, but that was actually not a problem and ended up with several older monitors. One needed some soldering to repair a spotty connection, but that was about the extent of the “hard work” I had to do to get decent monitors for the desktop computers.

The laptop was a stroke of good luck. I received two that were officially “dead” but with a little troubleshooting, I was able to get one good one out of both. I did have to swap parts between them and they were quite dirty inside, but that was easy enough to deal with.

The software: no windows

I have to admit this was a hurdle. I had hoped that at least one computer would have a valid Windows license sticker that I could repurpose to install Windows, but that was not the case. While I could have found a license code online and hacked my way to doing this, I wanted to keep it all above-board and legal.

So I took the plunge with Linux and learned quite a bit about Open Source and what it really means when they say it is free. I have dabbled with Linux for years - we always had different distributions of Linux to play with when I worked in a large organization, everything from Suse to Red Hat to Debian. As a result, I never gave much thought to licensing it properly, but now that I was doing this on my own, I made it a point to do this properly.

That is how I stumbled onto Linux Mint and after a lot of reading I concluded it was the best version for this project. That has certainly been proven true. I installed Linux Mint on the first working computer (an 12-year-old Dell Optiplex) last summer and it has been running perfectly fine ever since. As a matter of fact, I have had problems with several of our Windows and Mac computers several times in the same time period, but the Dell has just been humming along without complaints.

I will say that it was a learning process to get things working. For example, connecting the Linux Mint computer to our network so that it can see the Windows servers, the printers and the other computers took a little fiddling under the hood. That said, it was nothing too hard to figure out and all the steps were easily found online.

One final hurdle was giving up on Photoshop and MS Office. That was the hardest part. Linux Mint comes with free alternatives, but they just aren’t that easy to learn quickly and that proved to be too disruptive to our workflow. I certainly didn‘t want to burden our employees with this, so this was my own cross to bear. As I mention below, this were we fell short on the challenge.

That said, I ended up using the Linux Mint computer primarily for online work. That was not problem at all. It connected to all our cloud services without issue, including Google Suite, our Wix, Wordpress and SquareSpace sites, and graphics and video were no issue online.

Ultimately, the most pleasant surprise was how sprite that old Dell computer was at these tasks. Not once did I feel like I was being held back using that old computer. For all online use, the old Dell running Linux Mint was just as nimble as our faster Windows & Mac computers. Perhaps watching video was a bit slower, but we hardly ever do that anyhow.

Conclusion: where do we go from here?

There is a third part to this challenge that I have not addressed, and that is how well will this work over time. One of the criteria was that it should not impact our existing business workflow and since the software is so different, it does. So on that front, perhaps the challenge wasn’t met, at least not in just one year.

This is because software has to be learned over time. Had I spent my whole career working with Linux instead of Windows, I probably would not have struggled with this problem. I know long-time Linux users who have completely moved away from Windows/Mac, but that takes time and I did not have that here.

This was fun and also very educational. There is much more to explore of course, so I’m planning a new series to explore how to better integrate a Linux computer into a Windows environment. Not sure what I’ll call this series yet, but I’m eager to get started. Stay tuned.