Geeking Out on Prime Day 2026

Prime Day isn’t quite the keyboard gripping mad dash for deals it was the heady days of the mid-2010’s. Back then, Amazon had hour by hour changes to the “decor,” musical performances and — my personal favorite — an emphasis on lightning deals that were extremely good, but limited and appearing throughout. With a four earth days to one Prime Day exchange rate and similar Big Spring Sale, Prime Big Deal Days, Black Friday, Cyber Monday and the competitors’ answers — phew — it feels like less of a standout event each year, but there are still some genuinely good deals if you look. Here are a few of my favorite TestyTim-approved options.

Trying Ubuntu

I've always liked Debian GNU/Linux distributions, but I've never gotten around to trying Ubuntu. Given my appreciation for GNOME and simplicity on top of the aforementioned appreciation for Debian, I decided it was time to give it a whirl.

Presently Ubuntu is installing itself on my Shuttle XPC which I have just given the new name of guildenstern (I'm tired of my Dilbert derived naming scheme for computers). I'll post in the coming days what I think. This will be the first entirely new distribution I've tried in quite some time.