Back in the days before the SIG 365, SIG wanted to make a dedicated CCW gun that could wear big boy pants. They took the 229/228 and said, “We can make this smaller”. And they did. They called it the P224. And it was fantastic.
The 224 was available in 3 calibers. 9mm of course, and also .40 and .357 SIG. Making for a very versatile platform. I know police officers that carried a 224 as a Backup Gun for a good long while. The 224’s only sin was that of bad timing. As the 224 was scrambling for traction in the Market, Consumer Tastes shifted to Polymer framed guns for reduced weight. Also, the 224 never got the full production numbers to really get them out into the market. It was almost like an Experimental piece. Today it’s a Collector Piece. And one that I would very much like to acquire myself, if anyone is willing to make a trade. For the DA/SA Decocker version… not the DAO version.
When the HK USP came out, I was an early adopter. So much so that holsters were hard to find. I did patrol work at the time and I needed a Low Ride – Jacket Slot rig. And at the time, no such rig existed for the USP. So I had to use a holster from one company, and the drop shank from another manufacturer (Safariland) and fit them together. It worked perfectly for about 8 months before a commercial offering was available.
The USP was a total pussycat to shoot, and extremely accurate. The trigger wasn’t the best, but it was perfectly adequate due to it being very consistent.
After I relocated about 2800 miles away, I sold the pistol to my eventual great regret. I’ve never replaced it with another one… and I probably never will… But I would like to, one day.
For the last 12 years I’ve been running MAC OS and Windows. I’ll be honest, I hated MAC OS, but I did see why some people like. I just wasn’t one of those persons. I’ve been running Windows because primarily I liked to Game and PC gaming meant Windows by default. These days I don’t game nearly as much as I used to… But once in awhile I will still play for a few minutes… So I’ve been stuck in the MS Eco System, just because of Games. And that was fine… for awhile. But with every Update, Windows became more and more uncomfortable. I noticed it when I went from Windows 10, to Windows 11 on my Alienware laptop (Rest in Peace) and all my games instantly started lagging. Updating Drivers and changing setting didn’t help much. Win 11 was a Resource Hog like we’ve just never seen before. This brings me to my MS Surface.
Because my Alienware was just too freaking big and heavy, it wasn’t mobile at all. I couldn’t take it anywhere. So I went on a bit of a journey to find a Portable content generation solution. Chromebooks and various Netbooks and Micro Laptops… None of them felt worth while and all of them irritated me beyond my capacity for tolerance. This is where the MS Surface came in. I decided to give it a shot, and it worked well… Until later Windows Updates butted heads with my full Silvershot Manuscript and suddenly I was typing full sentences before the characters appeared on the screen. Windows 11 was no longer working for me and my Surface Pro 7+ was no longer being used at all, for anything. Something had to be done.
After playing around with a number of Linux Distros, I decided Linux Mint was the way to go. It’s Ubuntu based, which itself is based on Debian, so it’s a rock solid foundation. Mint has a desktop environment called “Cinnamon”, which is simple and doesn’t guzzle resources. And it’s easily customizable to operate just how you want it to operate. Now, when I was living in Utah, I was running Linux as my daily driver and it worked great. Imagine to my surprise all the advances Linux has made between then and now. STEAM is now readily available for Linux and most games seem to work just fine on it. Multi-Player games with 3rd Party Anti-Cheat software do not work at all, but I don’t play League of Legends anyway.
Installing Linux Mint and getting all the hardware drivers to work was a process, but not too difficult as all the resources are available online. So in less time than it takes to install Windows 11 and Configure it, my MS Surface was already up and running. And running very well indeed. It no longer struggles to do the simple tasks like it used to. In fact, it’s running better than it did when it was brand new. Limited Hardware Resources are where Linux absolutely shines compared to Windows. The main differences is that Microsoft thinks your system exists just to run Windows so MS can feed you Advertisements. Linux isn’t like that at all. Linux sets your computer free.
