What are you using at the moment?

[FalonTowers]

May I recommend that you try Mint Linux (Debian branch) on that old Lenovo laptop, I was surprised how well it runs on an old Acer of mine, and thus far it's been a lot better and more stable than Ubuntu Mint or any other flavour of Ubuntu.

I have a big old iMac sitting in it's box, sadly unloved and unused because the graphics card expired (seems to be a running thing with me, my main gaming PC graphics card went splat too). Hmm, someone somewhere probably knows how to get around this problem with the iMac assuming there's onboard Intel graphics available as well, I shall have to investigate!

I used Mint on my desktop back at my old address, but since I started writing books and sending work in to magazine editors, I have found that online publishers mostly want manuscripts using Word and and Mac docs

[billsstamps]

i use a reconditioned computer that I specified myself, so much cheaper, but it has 32Gb ram, and 4Tb memory with flash memory also built in for speed. Runs on Windows 11 pro. 26" monitor, with HP duplex printer which is so useful for printing two sides of packing slips. Laptop is Lenova also high spec windows 11 pro.
I can use linux, but prefer to avoid the hassle for the sake of the range of windows apps that do the job more intuitively. Have used other people's Mac, mostly with Pagemaker, or graphics apps, but the cost is so ridiculous I stick with Windows when I am buying.

[SeasonedGeek]

I have sooooo many machines. I'm actually going to be listing 4 of them on here for sale along with a bunch of parts. One I'm currently typing on is an HP Z2-G4 with 32GB of RAM and 9TB directly connected to it running Debian 12. I do a lot of embedded systems development so I tend to have beefed up machines. I wouldn't consider this one beefed up. The i7-8700 only has 6-core. My Yocto build machines all have 20-core or more.

When writing The Minimum You Need to Know book series I have been using Linux Mint with LibreOffice. Latest book will be the last using that. I will be using either Debian or OpenSuSE for future writing. Abandoning LibreOffice (too unstable) for either SoftMaker or OnlyOffice for all future books. I did buy SoftMaker (TextMaker) but I have some issues with it. I have some issues with OnlyOffice too. Both sets of issues combined are tiny compared the the issues I have had with LibreOffice over the past decade or so and the product is __NOT__ getting better.

Over the next few days/weeks one of the machines I will be listing is my all-time-favorite book writing machine. It's an ancient HP small form factor i5-gen3 with an LS-120 SuperFloppy drive. I'm going to have to cobble one of those up to my newer machine(s). You can read some fond waxing about them here: https://www.logikalsolutions.com/wor...till-survives/

If you don't have a zillion pictures in your book, 120MEG is still enough to hold the "current state" of most books. There is a label you can write on with a pen. Disk fits in your shirt pocket so you can take home or wherever when you want to have your end-of-day backup in "off site storage" in case something happens to your office.

As others have stated, I like a real keyboard. I also like two monitors.

Here is a free tip for writers/authors with a real desktop. Keep a stack of "different" keyboards lying around for whenever your writing isn't going well. Swap keyboard. Open an editor and learn your new keyboard via some free typing. Herein is where "different" matters. Different technology - mechanical/membrane/so-stiff-your-knuckles-hurt/etc. Different keyboard layout. Different size/shape return key, arrangement of the navigation keys, etc. Just that bit of a tweak can really juice your writing. You can find used keyboards on here for not a lot. Some of mine I got for free from client sites because it saved them the electronics disposal fee. Up until a few years ago I even had an original IBM PS/2 keyboard in the rotation. Somebody I was working for really wanted one so I let them have it.