System76 Meerkat

For the past four years, I've been using a linux box for my primary "at home" computer. That year, I taught a class on building a computer with the kids at North Star. When North Star didn't want to use it, I reclaimed it and set it up at home. It's been a great little computer. But it was always underpowered -- I never really intended to run it with a graphical operating system. And it has been getting long in the tooth.

I decided to buy a System 76 Meerkat. It's based on the Intel NUC. I thought about trying put one together myself, then I looked them up at NewEgg. Ugh. It was nice to just flip among a handful of options with System76 and get a device with Ubuntu already installed and know that someone else had taken care of whether or not things would be supported.

So far, I'm very happy. The unboxing experience was pleasant. The setup was smooth. The switch from Ubuntu LTS 12.04 to 16.04 has been seamless.

The big test was migrating my wife's account.

migrated wife's account to awesome new computer — wife says, "It's fine."

HUGE VICTORY!!!

— Steven D. Brewer (@limako) December 15, 2016

I still have to migrate my own data. And TT-RSS. And then do the networking jiggery pokery to have the new server take over for the old one. But so far, so good.