Bootable thumb drive

2025-11-26

Since deciding to move to Linux I spent much of the day listening to YouTube videos about Linux while I worked. I covered a lot of ground. I learned about the various distros and more starter information. This led me to a video about installing Linux Mint on a USB thumb drive and booting it up over top of Windows. Whoa. I immediately tried this and in less than a half hour was running Linux on an old laptop. I was geeked out!

I poked around a little bit and decided to wipe Windows entirely and directly load Linux to this laptop.

The problem is that I got my cords mixed up since I stopped using this laptop. I probably shouldn’t have been using the one I was using. Something about the watts being too low. Either way, it’s an easy fix and I’m waiting on a new one to arrive from Amazon.

I keep watching videos about Linux and can’t wait to get this laptop converted over and being exploring and figuring things out. I do think that after I get this laptop squared away with Mint that I’ll hand it over to my kids for them to use. My plan is to load PopOS or Fedora on my work computer. However, I am not close to make a decision about that yet. I’m first dealing with Mint on this laptop before messing with my work computer.

Ultimately, my plan is to build a new work computer anyways. My existing work computer will eventually become a homelab project.

More tomorrow when this new cord arrives and I get Mint running on the laptop.