Tuxedo Computers can get you a very good dev laptop for ~1500⏠(64GB RAM, AMD/Intel CPU, NVIDIA/AMD graphics card). If you will be working in AI, I imagine youâll need CUDA (?) aka NVIDIA.
If you donât go for anything on linuxpreloaded (which I wouldnât recommend), itâs good to check whether what youâre buying has linux hardware support by checking the Linux Hardware DB. Even if you donât look, itâll probably work, but better safe than sorry if youâre going to dump 1/3 or 1/2 of your months salary into something (depending on where you are).
For a distro, I dunno what level you are, but Distro Chooser can help you out with making a choice. My recommendations:
linux beginner
Linux mint. nice desktop environment, looks like a mashup between windows and mac, still missing advanced options, but quite customisable. comes with suitable standard software and cloud integrations (you can connect to a bunch of clouds), relatively up to date
Ubuntu is well-known, some proprietary companies even consider it âthe linuxâ and only make linux versions for it. Itâs quite stable. However, it isnât my first recommendation anymore as they are going down a proprietary route. Iâm not sure if they have ads yet, but wouldnât surprise me if they started.
desktop environment
This is the desktop suite, a bundle of packages that work well together on any distro, with its own look and feel. There are basically 3 camps:
windows look n feel
KDE: is the most known, is very customisable, has an abundant amount of themes, icon sets, login screens, fonts, and a well-sized userbase. They prefix many app names with âKâ. Ubuntu even has a distro version called âKubuntuâ with KDE on it
Cinnamon: main user is Linux Mint
LXDE and XFCE: look closer to windows 95 and windows XP, consume minimal resources. configuration is through the interface, advanced configuration through files
mac look n feel
Gnome: they are well known and source of flame wars (gnome vs KDE). windows donât have title bars, things are very rounded, not very configurable, heavily mac inspired
tiling window managers
these arenât desktop environments, but sit more in the middle, they manage windows. best to watch a video about tiling window managers. they are very geeky and perfect if you love using nothing but your keyboard
Bad track record with their privacy invasion via their Amazon shenanigans (which Richard Stallman called the Ubuntu Spyware), the shilling of Ubuntu One cloud and now Ubuntu Pro subscriptions that are reminiscent of Microsoftâs shilling of Microsoft accounts and OneDrive, Snap telemetryâŠ
Fair enough. I guess it depends how you look at it. I was thinking in terms of UX, in which case itâd be Mint Cinnamon or anything running KDE Plasma thatâd be the Windows of the Linux world.
To be frank I went away from Gentoo for much the same reason. And the constant compilation. I only used it once after that for a small project where I needed to minimise what actually lands in the OS.
Just the little things, really. App compatibility, xbps not having too many packages, issues with Musl, GRUB not loading on the LiveUSB, desktop/WM selection, and also I donât like the way Runit works. I could make it work if I needed to, but overall it just seems like too much effort.
As an Arch User who keeps hearing about OpenSUSE being a more stable rolling releaseâŠmind going into it a bit more? Iâm happy on my system, mind, but idk, could be Iâm missing out on something big for not making the jump. If nothing else, Iâll know my options
My daughter wanted to do something trivial with windows, but did not know how. Online help referred to a button that did not exist in the application. I know at least three ways to accomplish the same action on Linux, and I know they just work.
I use NextDNS and itâs good for my devices, but Google sponsored links wonât work with it. Sometimes I have to turn it off temporarily to get something done.
Also, my wife works from home in social media. I canât really block ads network-wide because she needs to see them.
What I ended up doing - I set her laptop with a static IP and added TCP and UDP routes for port 53 (the one used for DNS queries) to 8.8.8.8 - no complaints since ;) I use a cheap Mikrotik router between my ISP one and the actual network (well, a NAS and a Unifi AP, the rest is wireless) so doing it was easy ;)
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