ITLog #6 The Headless Laptop Lives

I have a headless Toshiba Satellite L640 lying around. I've gutted the screen for to replace my father's broken laptop and for a long while, I've removed the most the screws and use them for other stuff. However, since this laptop is still very much capable, especially with Linux as the glue that keeps it together, I decided to keep it and make a headless laptop or a laptop-to-desktop conversion.

I've ran Live USB on it while it's connected to a VGA monitor, but you can only go so far with a live USB.

AntiX feels so damn snappy on this thing.
But alas my spare HDD isn't OS-worthy anymore
and really can't install OSes.

I needed a proper hard drive for use, and I finally had a free hard drive. I received a 120gb SSD, freeing up my main hard drive. While it kinda sounds weird to use my main hard drive for a headless laptop, I'm just wondering if I can get something like this working.

Lo and behold, putting my old work HDD in this thing works like a wonderful charm! Linux Lite 4.8 boots, I assume because the HDD doesn't have a bad sector and it's easy to detect the boot drive. This HDD actually dual boots Windows 10 and Linux Lite 4.8 but I've never opened Windows the past few weeks.

Imagine my surprise and happiness
when I realized I don't have to install another distro.

Linux Lite is snappy, responsive, and oh so fluid. I think this still can be used if all someone ever does is surf the net and use office software. For sure. However, I intend to turn this into an arcade machine for sorts: perhaps keep Linux Lite but autostart Retroarch and have a USB gamepad connected to it for the gaming experience.

I'll see if I can actually make a proper enclosure for this thing.
There are plywood lying around my parent's house.