The CyberGeek Nano J1 Linux Mini PC at Five Months

I might have waited until the six-month mark for an update, but it occurred to me today and I might not remember if I don't get to it. My first post from this machine was on August 14, so a little over five months ago.

The cheap but loaded (16Gb of RAM, 4-core Celeron at 2 Gz -- I think it's 128Gb of SSD storage, but it may be 256 ... I use so little storage that I don't bother thinking about it much) machine is still ticking right along. PSensor reports normal CPU temperatures, with the lowest amount of free memory in this session at 33% and the highest CPU usage at 90%.

One of my goals this past year has been to get away from Google.

I started by replacing Chrome with Firefox, but ended up settling on Microsoft Edge. Yes, it's built on Chromium. Yes, Microsoft probably spies on me at least as much as Google did. But I like the way it performs (other than sometimes giving me annoying "high memory usage" warnings when I have lots of tabs open, even though PSensor tells me I've got lots of RAM to spare). I've also got Falkon installed for a few side uses (such as keeping the RRND Twitter account open instead of having to log out of my personal account to log into that one on Edge).

My default search engine for some time has been Bing, but when I search using Bing in Edge, I get extra "rewards points," which means I'm up to somewhere around $10 a month in Amazon gift cards just for using Microsoft's browser and search engine.

Totally abandoning Gmail is a long-term process, since I got that address in (IIRC) 2004. Lots of people I don't correspond with often enough to notify of an address change have that address. Lots of list subscriptions, etc. that I'm moving over to my new provider (Proton Mail -- yes, that is an affiliate link) very slowly. If I check Gmail (as I do several times a day) and realize I just haven't missed something, it gets unsubscribed from rather than moved. I think I'll get there eventually.

Yes, this is an inexpensive "mini PC," but frankly it's even more computer than I need. I seldom open any applications other than Edge, Geany, and Falkon, and the latter two only for a little while each day. Running Lubuntu 22.xx, I hardly ever experience a slowdown severe enough to actually notice.

So, I'm happy. Maybe this year I'll revisit my browser choices, wean myself off Gmail even more, etc., but unless it actually lies down and dies, I doubt I'll be thinking "time for a new computer" in 2024.