Why one needs a dVD drive in his laptop after all, haha.

I went to a computer store in 2022. I bought a used Dell and they let me sit in their work room and install Linux on it.

In the showroom, there was a bunch of stuff. Computers, components, peripherals, etc.

Look up MicroCenter, and see if there is one near. I think it's USA only.

One can't always tell but Cindy lives in the USA.

How??

Actually, most can't even accept an optical drive OR second HDD - and a large percentage don't even have a removeable battery anymore - or any I/O other than USB (in many cases ONLY USBC) ans possibly microphone/headphone-speaker - but often only bluetooth for that too. Business class "desktop replacement" laptops are the rare exception

Actually on MOST laptops that still have an optical drive it's less than a 10 minute job to change - often involving only ONE SCREW - if you can figure out which one it is -- -On some desktops they are a royal pain - requiring total dissassembly of the case to get the screws out of the far side of the rack (those that don't use quickmount rails) On my Acer it's a 5 minute job if I have everything at hand - but adding a second drive involves porocuring the proper side rails - and they changed them every couple years - - - (even worse on an HP/Compaq)

How did I find 18TB WD drives for $225/each? The major online retailers were running a big sale, but I happened to check the official WD Store at wdc.com and they had an even better deal going on, plus there was another discount for new customers. I guess I was just lucky.

It was this place:

There were two or three guys on hand every time I went in there. Definitely old-school computer nerds, although I was surprised that they didn't have anybody who was comfortable installing Linux. No matter; I was.

Is the new drive a standard part that's easy to get? If not, it's still harder to change the DVD drive in a laptop.

On my Lenovos it's just a matter of pushing a button ... that bay is where the 500 Gb hdd resides in my laptop .

Good to know about this. That's what I'll look for, Business class "desktop replacement". I'll try to remember that.

I'm impressed. I've been trying to get Linux (Mint is what I use normally) on our Dell laptop and failing. After hours of googling I see many people having the same problem.

DELL usually has very good linux support, in my experience. Ubuntu loads seemlessly.

I can order and get the proper drive for just about any laptop next day. A lot of desktops are now also using the low profile laptop style drives so they are not as "universal" as they once were. ANd by the way, I worked for what was at the time the largest wholesale distributor of CD ROM drives in Canada - and the first major didtributor of Hitachi drives in Canada. I put CD ROM "libraries" - towers with up to 16 drives - into libraries, universities,and hospitals from coast to coast - on UNIX, Novel, and Banyan Vines networks as well as DOS and Windows apps before CD was supported by any of them natively. That was 5 years of my life.

Unless they've changed in the last 3 years DELL and SUPPORT are never found on the same page - - - But I know what you are saying - their products are COMPATIBLE with Linux. So are just about every other manufacturer's PC products. Might be more accurate to say Linux supports DELL and most other hardware.

I installed Fedora. That's what we used on Dells at my workplace. Piece of cake.

Dell offers systems pre-loaded with linux. No other major PC manufacture does that. That's what I call very good linux support (which means they upstream all the appropriate drivers).

I've a mix, Ubuntu on my Dell laptop (since fedora wasn't, at the time, very laptop friendly). Fedora on my home desktop (an HP) and Scientific Linux 6 (clone of RHEL6) on my work Dell workstation; our cluster systems are running CentOS.

All were a piece of cake to install.

I've got an older Dell Inspiron that I'm going to bump to 16GB and put a SSD in. I got pissed at RedHat about twenty years ago when they broke gcc and Python but I thought I'd give Fedora a try since the rest of my machines have Debian or Debian derivatives.

I was impressed by the app on the Fedora site that allows you to select an iso and creates a bootable USB drive. They say it works better than rufus. I like KDE but OpenSUSE is too woke for me so I'll try the KDE 'spin'.

Besides, Torvalds uses Fedora so how can it go wrong? He says Debian is too hard to install but admits he hasn't tried it lately.