If your employer requests it, they’ll pay for it. If you need to pay yourself, it’s likely a scam.

How do you connect them? Via SATA? Do you have a drive enclosure?

Having just a single drive doesn’t really provide a lot of security. I’d want at least two drives in a RAID config.

On the other hand, having one home server that does it all has its advantages. I have a mini PC with an N100 processor and two HDD drive bays. It hosts my Docker containers and holds my data. As long as you install all the software on the internal drive and keep only the data on the HDDs in RAID, you should be pretty safe. I hope. So far I’ve managed not to fuck it up.

There is no right answer. There are many distros to choose from and each has its pros and cons. My suggestion would be to try a few things in VMs before fully making the jump. Personally I use Mint. It just works and takes a minimal amount of hassle to install and run. If that’s a priority to you, I’d suggest checking it out.

That he prefers Edge’s mother’s cooking.

Yesterday I spent five hours cleaning out 247 MB on my $50, 1TB SSD. I am very efficient.

Yes. I use Mint. Please help me cross the road.

Thanks.

I have an old convertible that I want to - erm - convert to Linux once Windows 10 goes EOL. Can I use any distro with KDE to use the mobile version or which ones support it? I use Mint right now and I’d like to stay as close to that as possible.

That’s a perfectly legitimate approach. Switching your OS is always a hassle. I can understand that people like to stick with what works for them.

Greetings, fellow geezer! And yes, I’ve been there too. My first foray on the web was with Lynx, a text based browser. Left me pretty underwhelmed. But once I actually tried Mosaic, I was instantly converted.

So in what way is that better than Lemmy?

If you get a Synology or the like, it’ll work fine as a NAS but be limited as a home server. These things are pretty limited in terms of processing power and they’re ARM based, so that limits what you can run on them. So either you’d have to get a separate server in addition to the NAS or build a server that’ll also work as a NAS.

Certainly a worthwhile endeavour. But I’d recommend doing it in a VM or a secondary machine before jumping right in on your main computer.

Most people I know have zero Windows skills that wouldn’t transfer to Linux. They can start a browser and click on a bookmark, but that’s as far as it goes.

But that goes for Windows as well.

Installing Linux is definitely not something, the average computer user ever wants to do. The same goes for Windows. Unfortunately you can’t just buy a Linux computer at your local electronics store. Until that changes, Linux will remain in a niche.

I did that once and it wasn’t a nice experience. Windows will always find ways to screw things up and you’ll constantly be dealing with their shitfuckery. Outside of gaming there aren’t really many reasons to stick with Windows and even gaming works great except on titles where it is explicitly sabotaged by the publishers. If you’re dealing with an older laptop, this likely isn’t a consideration anyway. If you’re unsure whether Linux is for you, my advice would be to install it in a VM first and see if it works for you. Chances are, you won’t miss Windows at all.

On a Z80?