Friday, 24 October 2025

Defining the M.C.M. and why it'll all be ok with Linux

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When I'm not killing\wasting time replaying ancient computer games, my main computer use-case is as a Media Consumption Machine (MCM; a completely made-up term). This means I use it mainly for online video-watching, offline video-watching with VLC, and offline music-listening with Winamp.


As far as I can tell, this is a perfect use-case for Linux: there's nothing taxing there for me to have to figure out, just basic functionality. Sure, I'll have to find something other than Winamp (I'll miss its amazingly-green interface after the 25 years we've had together…) but I've already tried Youtube + ublock + sponsor block and that works fine.


The majority thing I need to try is power-management: will those ol’ T410s behave the same way under Linux, i.e. will they wake-up when the lid is opened, and sleep when the lid is closed? That's the next thing to test…