RM One 320 All in One PC

Morgan has been selling these RM One computers at a very low price, I bought one before Christmas 23 and set it up for one of my nephews to use for photography work. This is what I did. Took out the hard hard and replaced it with a SSD drive, just use double sided tape the spongy type to fit the new drive in the space were the Hard disc had been. Amazon is selling these two SSD drives I used the 500gig one for £30 https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08BCPJKY8/ref=sspa_dk_detail_6?psc=1&pf_rd_p=84ea1bf1-65a8-4363-b8f5-f0df58cbb686&pf_rd_r=DPKST0M46S2M96BATBDR&pd_rd_wg=VYE06&pd_rd_w=rey7f&content-id=amzn1.sym.84ea1bf1-65a8-4363-b8f5-f0df58cbb686&pd_rd_r=2e3f9fcb-cc70-403c-9a43-623787d10281&s=electronics&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9kZXRhaWw https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fanxiang-S101-Internal-Compatible-Desktops/dp/B0B5CH6B2L/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?crid=2O0AIDQ3AQKUW&keywords=ssd+drive&qid=1706370130&s=electronics&sprefix=ssd+drive%2Celectronics%2C111&sr=1-1-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9hdGY&psc=1 You will also need this Wifi Dongle from Amazon if your planning to connect with WIFI, a cable connection is better if its available. https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08G5BL8QY/ref=pe_27063361_485629781_TE_item_image I then downloaded a copy of Linux Mint v21 Cinnamon Edition and burned it to a USB Dongle (4gig dongle is big enough) Plug the Dongle, keyboard & mouse into the USB slots on the front (Lower Right) of the RM 1 and turn on. There is a power on/off switch next to were the power cable goes in it will be initially Off. Press the silver on/off button (lower Left) to turn the RM1 ON and then keep pressing F10 to get into the Boot Menu. If this fails first time you can do a Ctrl+Alt+Del key combination to reboot then press F10 repeatedly again, once your in the boot menu use the Up/Down arrow keys to select the Dongle and press enter to Boot Linux. The RM1 should boot and after a while The Linux desktop will appear on which is an ICON that says “Install Linux”. Double click this Icon and the Linux install will start. It will take a while to complete during which answer yes to every question. At the end of install remove the dongle and reboot. Use the F10 key again during start up and this time select the SATA drive to boot from. After another reboot Linux will appear with the welcome screen displayed. Now plug in the WiFi dongle and let Linux install the drivers just like windows. When finished connect to your WiFi just as you would with any windows computer, tablet or phone. Now you are all done, Linux comes with FireFox and LibreOffice installed. FireFox will just work but I recommend changing the search bar to use DuckDuckgo rather than Google and in settings under Privacy turn on delete cookies when Firefox closes. LibreOffice replaces using Word & Excel plus a bunch of other stuff, you could download Gimp as a photo editor. Download “Thunder Bird” for emails, I have “Whatsapp” working linked to my phone. DropBox works and I have had a lot of success getting old Windows applications (32bit) to work using an app called “Wine” also with “DOSBOX” you can run really old DOS applications I have some stuff I wrote in 1985 working just fine graphics included. When installing apps use the “Software Manager” under Administration. Why Linux Mint: well its a very similar experience to using Windows but without the problems and crashes. I have been using Linux now on an old laptop for 8 years and the only time it has locked was due to the FireFox browser and even that happening seems to have gone away. Updates come at you sensibly and get installed at your request in small chunks, so simple. Background tasks are minimal so your applications response is much crisper, just watch the hard disk light it does not flash all day indicating that the operating system is doing stuff. The RM 1 hardware spec whilst reasonable would struggle to run Windows 10/11 but with Linux it performs admirably especially with an SSD drive. Leon Smith Jan 24