Ubuntu 16.04 on an Intel NUC

| ubuntu | linux | hardware |

I have too many computers.

The other day I installed Ubuntu on my Alienware PC because I needed to get some work done and I got tired of fighting with Vagrant on Windows. Everything was perfect until I rebooted. The screen did not come back on, and I got tired of fighting with Nvidia drivers.

Next, I pulled my Mac Mini from the closet and started hacking on that. I was encrypting the hard drive, and since it was a spinny disk it took upwards of 22 hours to get it done. This made me sad. Recently, I discovered that I can be a lazy recluse in my apartment thanks to Amazon Prime Now.

In the time that it took for the Mac Mini to finish encrypting the disk, I ordered, received, configured, installed, and encrypted Ubuntu 16.04 LTS on an Intel NUC. I could not be happier with this computer. Its small, quiet, cheap and fast.

I now have a stack of computers on my desk. If I ever get around to writing an electron app, I am golden will three computers with a dedicated OS.

Thank you for reading! Share your thoughts with me on bluesky, mastodon, or via email.

Check out some more stuff to read down below.

Most popular posts this month

Recent Favorite Blog Posts

This is a collection of the last 8 posts that I bookmarked.

Articles from blogs I follow around the net

Highlights from my conversation about agentic engineering on Lenny's Podcast

I was a guest on Lenny Rachitsky's podcast, in a new episode titled An AI state of the union: We've passed the inflection point, dark factories are coming, and automation timelines. It's available on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. Here …

via Simon Willison's Weblog: Entries April 2, 2026

Flood Fill vs the Magic Circle

Musings from Robin Sloan: Most olive oil production at medium-or-greater scale depends on machines of this kind [over-the-row olive harvester]; they trundle over trees planted in long rows, almost like continuous hedges, and collect the fruit with vibratin…

via Information Overload April 2, 2026

The Blandness of Systematic Rules vs. The Delight of Localized Sensitivity

Marcin Wichary brings attention to this lovely dialog in ClarisWorks from 1997: He quips: this breaks the rule of button copy being fully comprehensible without having to read the surrounding strings first, perhaps most well-known as the “avoid «click here»…

via Jim Nielsen’s Blog April 2, 2026

Generated by openring