This little thing is about the size of a PB&J sandwich. I plugged it in,
booted up to Windows 11, got a fershlugginer Microsoft account, opted out of
all the options, disabled fast boot and hibernation, made sure ShitLocker
was disabled, and used the Windows Disk Management to shrink the 500 Gb down
to about 120 Gb.

Then I booted to the Debian Live ISO for Xfce. That took awhile because
Windows put up a GUI showing all the boot options, but the USB entry didn't
do squat. Typical Microsoft half-assery. I had to get to the UEFI screen and
change the boot order there.

The Debian install was pretty smooth using the Calamares installer.
Installed a lot of software including Fluxbox. Copied over a number of setup
files from the aged ASUS laptop, and finally got LightDM to login to the
xsession (instead of Xfce). The only real issue right now is that I cannot
SSH from the mini PC to the other computers, though I can go the opposite
way. Got the mini PC to use git SSH to clone some of my projects and build
them.

On the Windows side, I had no trouble installing and using Git Bash (not a
fan of Powershell), but getting Meson, Ninja, and Qt Creator installed has
been more problematic than it was in my Win 10 VM. I bagged on that for the
moment, but will figure it all out. My main purpose is to build my
cross-platform projects.

Other notes about Windows: The task bar brings up this godawful large panel
full of news and advertising. Bleh. Windows took only 5 characters from my
name to generate a username; odd. It also requires only a PIN to login;
again, odd. Getting to system configuration is also odd... do ya go via
System / Settings versus the other path, Settings / System. Microsoft Edge
is obviously now a lot like Chromium; I added Dark Reader and Vimium from
the "Microsoft" store.

Overall, the performance of the mini PC has been quite satisfactory for both
boots.

--
Romance, like alcohol, should be enjoyed, but should not be allowed to
become necessary.
-- Edgar Friedenberg

Chris Ahlstrom wrote this post; take it under advisement:

> This little thing is about the size of a PB&J sandwich. I plugged it in,
> booted up to Windows 11, got a fershlugginer Microsoft account, opted out of
> all the options, disabled fast boot and hibernation, made sure ShitLocker
> was disabled, and used the Windows Disk Management to shrink the 500 Gb down
> to about 120 Gb.
>
> Then I booted to the Debian Live ISO for Xfce. That took awhile because
> Windows put up a GUI showing all the boot options, but the USB entry didn't
> do squat. Typical Microsoft half-assery. I had to get to the UEFI screen and
> change the boot order there.
>
> The Debian install was pretty smooth using the Calamares installer.
> Installed a lot of software including Fluxbox. Copied over a number of setup
> files from the aged ASUS laptop, and finally got LightDM to login to the
> xsession (instead of Xfce). The only real issue right now is that I cannot
> SSH from the mini PC to the other computers, though I can go the opposite
> way. Got the mini PC to use git SSH to clone some of my projects and build
> them.
>
> On the Windows side, I had no trouble installing and using Git Bash (not a
> fan of Powershell), but getting Meson, Ninja, and Qt Creator installed has
> been more problematic than it was in my Win 10 VM. I bagged on that for the
> moment, but will figure it all out. My main purpose is to build my
> cross-platform projects.
>
> Other notes about Windows: The task bar brings up this godawful large panel
> full of news and advertising. Bleh. Windows took only 5 characters from my
> name to generate a username; odd. It also requires only a PIN to login;
> again, odd. Getting to system configuration is also odd... do ya go via
> System / Settings versus the other path, Settings / System. Microsoft Edge
> is obviously now a lot like Chromium; I added Dark Reader and Vimium from
> the "Microsoft" store.
>
> Overall, the performance of the mini PC has been quite satisfactory for both
> boots.

I ended up removing Git Bash in favor of MSYS2; it uses the Arch Linux
pacman installer, and supports a lot of stuff (tmux) that Git Bash does not.

I added VLC (aka video lan client) and copied my SomaFM playlists so that I
can listen to streams while working on getting stuff to compile on Windows.

--
Today, THREE WINOS from DETROIT sold me a framed photo of TAB HUNTER
before his MAKEOVER!