Those machines are very, very good to run Linux. Stable, everything is supported out of the most, very reliable. About calling home, they don’t, however some models, like most machines, have Intel ME baked into the CPU and that can be remotely accessed. The good thing is that you can disable the Intel ME features on the UEFI and there’s a toggle to completely disable the network card before an OS is loaded.
I started using Linux more last year due to work, so the exodus from Reddit to FOSS land has been perfectly timed for me. I think I have 4 different distros in VMs right now.
The distro I came here to mention has been hated on already. My dislike goes to the distros that start off fine, and somehow screw it up.
Honestly, I remember using Manjaro ages ago. It had an official Openbox spin (not a community thing). I had already used Arch but I didn’t even check to see what it was based on when I tried. I thought, “green is nice” and it was. It very quickly became less nice. I didn’t use it after that, but I’ve heard plenty of hate since then.
I’m going to put another one out there just for fun.
Distrowatch’s n°1… MX Linux
Nothing wrong with it, but the fact that it is number 1 (I know their ranking is just for fun and based on page hits) and doesn’t deserve it is the issue. It works great, when I used it I didn’t like how there was a second application for installating certain software. I think I used the Xfce setup. Again, it’s fine, but if a first-time Linux desktop user sat down and installed that, it might not be the best initiation.
Popular and highly ranked distros give Desktop Linux a bad name sometimes is what I’m saying.
Before you can fix a bootloader, you first need to learn how to install and set up a bootloader. I think most people learn that part when they try Arch
Sweet, welcome! :) I know the feeling. I just finished reinstalling Nobara after being dumb and goofing up patching. Then I tried to fix it and made the system totally unusable and I gave up.
A while ago I jacked my grub config and decided to try to fix it manually. I managed to stumble through it and learned some stuff, though I am still fuzzy on some details.
I mostly want to just use the computer without a lot of headache and both Mint and Nobara have been great for coding (various), electronics design, 3d modeling and printing, graphics, photo editing, and such.
This is why I gave up on fixing it yesterday lol. I spent a few days setting it up, I didn’t wanna spend a few more days to try to figure out exactly what the issue was when I could just give in and then actually use it
Totally valid! Theoretically with more experience it may be easier / faster to fix but…idk
See this is why I keep /home on a separate partition (or drive in some cases). I can reinstall or switch distros anytime without worrying about all my files (they’re backed up, anyway but doing a restore is a pita).
Meh, idk tf he says he understands. Like “make [ported adobe CC] popos-exclusive”: sure, big brain, how’s that supposed to work, exactly? Or “there are 3 desktops ppl GAF about”: riiiight, me along with other wm users aren’t ppl anymore, apparently.
The whole video pretty much boils down to “I don’t need X, hence nobody [«meaning the vast majority of ppl»] needs x”. By the same logic, the “vast majority” doesn’t need CC either, it’s mostly necessary for professional designers, etc 🤷
I mean it’s probably possible to choose the windows route and go “we make one steaming pile of garbage that kinda works everyone but perfectly - for nobody”, yet linux distros so far have been pro-choice and pro-customization. You want “just works”? Sure, go with X, Y, and Z distros. Wanna something specifically tailored for your workflow? You may start with the same and replace/modify stuff, but also I, J, and K are a great base to build your future setup from the ground up and avoid banging your head against the wall while figuring out what drugs their devs were on. And the same goes for DEs/WMs: gnome is, gnome also works, yet if you want to change it significantly, you’ll either have to mess with extensions or maintain a fork of a huge codebase you don’t fully understand and most of which you don’t exactly need. So, building from scratch may just be an easier solution.
Technically, you can also PR, yet it can easily be rejected, and then you’re back to forks.
I don’t really have a least favorite distribution. I mean, I guess between Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian, Mint, openSUSE, Manjaro, and Gentoo, the least appealing choices to me are Manjaro and Gentoo. Manjaro is just Arch but worse, because the packages are old and likely to cause incompatibilities with AUR packages that need really up-to-date system packages, and I…don’t trust the maintainers to have configured everything better than I could have myself. Just based on history.
Debian has ancient packages. That’s the only reason. I’d just end up using Flatpak packages or compiling from source.
Any other distribution I could use, including Gentoo, but Arch is the sweet spot for me.
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