thoth's Journal: SSD Update, Win8

I received the SSD and that night, had my screwdrivers out and replaced the drive in my Sager. I ended up installing Win8 after all, and then added Google Chrome (set as default browser), Steam, various Steam Games, and Guild Wars 2. That's it.

I have ~120 GB left free, so I could setup a VM... but for right now, I'm not adding anything extra. I want to be totally fascist about keeping this windows install as clean as possible, to the point of considering flash and acrobat as unwanted extras that go into a VM install, along with misc utilities and software development tools in general (compilers, editors, languages, debuggers, etc. - all in a VM). So essentially other than games, the only extra software that will go on is Virtual Box, which will possibly host a future Win 7 VM where all the uncontained stuff will go.

I use Win8 from the desktop mode, and it's fine. I have no Metro-style apps that didn't come with the install. I opted to use a local account and not tie a hotmail email address to this computer (I don't have another Win8 machine, don't plan on getting one, and don't use it as my main system so the auto-syncing and all that don't really interest me).

In related news, a friend's netbook died and they needed a computer. I offered over my System 76 (that had Qubes) after restalling the Win7 home premium 32 bit version I bought for it. I'll miss having that system around to play with linux distros on, but I went to help my friend. VM's are again the answer - unfortunately Qubes in particular won't run in one, since it is based on the Xen hypervisor.

Oh well, that's OK. I will potentially pickup my parent's old Mac Mini this Christmas, since I'm getting them a new one. They have a 2005-era system and its a PowerPC Mac Mini. Maybe I can turn it into a linux system. Or perhaps it won't be worth the trouble since I'm sort of trying to simplify my home computer inventory.