I have never heard of Aukey before purchasing these. I was looking for a cheap and cheerful pair of Bluetooth earphones to use at night while charging my phone, as I have a Pixel 2XL with no 3.5mm jack. Here lies the big flaw in taking it away-you can either charge your phone, or use the USB-C to 3.5mm adapter and use your headphones but not both. I also wanted a pair to go the gym with, and not to get tangled in a web of headphone cables.

Let me tell you a story, it started around September 2018 ,before I begin a bit of background information.

I have been a Windows user since I built my first computer at 9. Back then it was Windows 95, since then I have used all versions of Windows following 95, apart from 8 & 8.1 ( they don’t really count ) so 98, ME , XP ( RIP ) , Vista , Windows 7 , Windows 10.

Hi 🤗

This is the blog to compliment my channel, or my channel to compliment blog, not quite decided the direction this is going yet.

There is going to be a small delay in the videos ,but it is coming, I can’t get the quality i would like to post so to start i will have a few blog posts and play catch up with the videos.

Anyway this is my introduction to the channel, if you want the TLDR then here it is:

If you missed my last post where I go through the tipping point for taking the plunge into Linux, you can find it here.

Do you remember that feeling when you were a child and you had to pick only one sweet from the shop? We’ll that’s what it was like picking the operating system that I would be using to replace Windows, this was both exciting and terrifying.

So many options, and I didn’t know where to start. I didn’t want to pick the wrong one and lose everything. I definitely didn’t want to replace Windows with something that I didn’t enjoy , couldn’t get to grips with and customise to my needs.

In the last post I Showed Windows the door in my first steps into Linux. I messed around with a few distributions and their respective flavours and settled on Linux Mint.

This time I get ‘A breath of Mint’y fresh Air’ (thanks @BigDaddyLinux for that one). I began with my trusty USB stick, any will do but i got this San Disk (Amazon Affiliate Link ) for a bargain. I then proceeded to burn the Linux Mint ISO I downloaded previously to the USB stick using Etcher ( Which i walked through last post ). Shortly after I had a bootable Linux Mint USB stick, I could proceed. I could get rid of Windows finally.

After a good holiday I’m back to share part 2 of my Minty adventures. Feel free to jump back to Part 1 for a refresher.

New SSD installed. USB in. Boot into live. Run the installer. Reboot.

Upon reboot it was such a refreshing sound to hear. A chime that wasn’t the Windows chime. The Desktop wasn’t just “there” , it faded from nothing into a familiar looking desktop, but it wasn’t Windows.

Have you ever heard of Juno Computers? I hadn’t either. If you have been following me for the past few episodes you would know that I am a recent Linux convert. During this phase I started listening to some podcasts and some of them have sponsors for their shows, and three brands come up all the time:

• System76
• Purism
• Entroware

These three companies all ship Hardware with Linux pre-installed. Like System76 have a wide range of laptops ranging from $899 (or £710-ish in real money) for their Galago Pro and they pre-load that with Pop!_OS it’s in house distribution or Ubuntu.

Today we talk about something that means more to the Linux community than the kernel.

Community, This is one of the biggest driving force for desktop Linux. This comes if all forms, from Telegram groups, IRC channels, Discord, forums, podcasts, GitHub, YouTube the lost goes on.

These are ways for people in the community to share their knowledge, enjoyment, news about Linux and all things tech. It’s these channels of communication that keeps me in Linux. I truly believe without the Linux community I would be back on Windows.

What do you get when you get when you put a hand full of people in front of a microphone every fortnight, who enjoy Linux Mint?

Introducing mintCast , a collection of individuals from all walks of life, with a common passion for technology, Linux and generally geeking out. mintCast is a long running podcast. It started out with Rob and Isaac who carried the touch for 300 ish Episodes before passing it on to the current hosts.

Juno Computers

Its been a long time coming , but here it is. My review of Juno Computers high end Linux laptop. The Gemini 15 a Laptop starting at around £770 ( $969 US, €878 ) for a 8th gen i5 8265U, 8GB DDR4 RAM ,128GB SSD, available in Silver or Red, and your choice of OS, from Elementary OS to Ubuntu 18.04, 19.04 or a DIY option so you can install what you please. On first un-boxing we get, the laptop , power brick and plug, nothing standoutish here, apart from how light it felt. Which is not surprising when the laptop only weights 1.7KG which is 3.74lbs for our friends over the pond.