Swapping my SSD

I have a Dell Precision 5530, which I really like, except for its storage capacity. I had been hesitating to take it to a service center for an SSD upgrade until a friend told me it was actually very easy because the SSD is easily accessible. So I bought a 2 TB SSD and did the upgrade myself, following this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGS9QDnsxP0. It really was easy and took less than 10 minutes, even for someone inexperienced like me.

Main setup

After the upgrade, I installed Ubuntu 25.10 and set up the machine. Over the years, I’ve installed macOS, then Debian, and now Ubuntu, and I used to maintain long setup scripts. I no longer do that, mainly because there are only a few steps I really need to take, and once my files and dotfiles are in place, about 90% of the work is done. If I ever need a fully reproducible installation process, I use a tool like Ansible. Otherwise, I’ve become very comfortable with Ubuntu installations, so for the remaining 10%, I just install things as needed.

Below are the tools I frequently use

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sudo apt-get install \
    duf fonts-firacode gh htop hugo hunspell hunspell-fr hunspell-en inxi \
    imagemagick npm pass python3-venv nextcloud-desktop pandoc taskwarrior xournal zsh 

There are several applications that I install via apt.

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apt-get install gimp xournal inkscape vlc calibre okular libreoffice nextcloud-dektop 

Others are installed via snap.

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snap install dbeaver-ce brave discord picard slack thunderbird zotero

Advanced setup

There are a few tools that require a bit more setup:

• r2u: https://github.com/eddelbuettel/r2u
• Docker: https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/ubuntu/
• VS Code: https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/setup/linux
• Positron: https://positron.posit.co/download.html
• Quarto: https://quarto.org/docs/download/

Once everything is installed, the last steps are:

• Set up Nextcloud
• Copy/paste my dotfiles
• Create a virtual environment at the root of my home directory: python3 -m venv .venv
• Install my R, Python, and Node packages

Two notes:

• A very effective shortcut for installing R and many packages I commonly use is to install sf via apt: sudo apt-get install r-cran-sf. This one-liner pulls in R itself plus a large dependency stack.

• Since I use two different computers, symbolic links (ln) combined with cloud-synced files are extremely useful. The real file/directory is sync on Nextcloud and I point to this sync file from the location where it is required. Simple and very effective.