deadcatbounce

Upvoted with caveats

I choose clean OSs with minimal additional code and settings added by distro maintainers. Fedora is fairly good. ArchLinux is excellent.

ArchLinux actually makes quite a good first distro if you’re willing to learn GNU/Linux. If you grew up with the early non-NT (DOS) Windows then you’re more than used to trying to squeeze the most out of Windows by learning how it works. That was a long time ago now.

I moved from Windows to Linux just after the turn of the century because Microsoft were making it more difficult to use your own OS on your own machine.

After Fedora Core 4+ I ended up using ArchLinux for the longest time. It’s early adoption of systemd was a factor, as was the rolling nature.

Fedora seems favourite as you’ve used it. There’s a new version due toward the end of March so you may want to hang on, to avoid legacy stuff being upgraded. Maybe they’ll remove the x11 drivers. Fedora has changed a lot but you’ll want to install the other repos first thing and there’s also a large move towards flatpak (which works very well).

There’s also the inst.sdboot install flag to avoid the legacy grub install.

I don’t find the install very easy to understand, compared to things like Debian but it’s worth the fiddle.

ArchLinux is the other alternative.

Do it as two separate commands to learn which is causing you the issues.

Is debootstrap the latest and greatest? It’s on Fedora so you can’t always guarantee it’s up-to-date wrt Debian.

Curiously enough I tried to use the rpm/dnf packages on ArchLinux, to create a new Fedora with Ansible, with less than stellar results. It happens that way sometimes.

X11.

How quaint.

Doesn’t really matter to be honest, you won’t stick with it. You’ll try others. We all do.

Pick a distro in the top part of distrowatch.com and install it.

I’ll wait.

Sometimes: a laughing hyena.

If you don’t have tested backups, you don’t have a backup.

If you haven’t tested your backups, you ain’t got a backup.

systemd seems to like mounting stuff on /media. However, I would consult the Linux filesystem hierarchy documents around (eg. Wikipedia and then follow the references) for the most compatible place.

/srv /mnt tend to suggest themselves. /home is for your personal stuff not shared user wide stuff.

Don’t put stuff in local directories, leave it in a NAS location and mount it where you need it using fstab or auto/mount units and the appropriate filesystem. Maybe I’ve misunderstood something you wrote to think of this last bit.

Fedora. It just works. I use it for work and it doesn’t let me down. Semi annual upgrading it is easy and it seems to be moving slowly, because gnome/LibreOffice is, to flatpaks. It’s slow to change and stable because of it, they still include Grub when it became a relic since systemd included gummyboot (systemd-boot) many years ago.

Contrast that with ArchLinux which is ‘cleaner’ and a rolling distro which I prefer; Fedora isn’t. I use it for a Rescue USB. I used to use it for work but, and this is long ago, I managed to break it quite easily by ‘fixing it’ too much! ArchLinux doesn’t let me down but I don’t have a gui or Window manager on it, console only, and I know my way around Linux reasonably well.

Debian is still confused about systemd. Run a combination of testing and unstable branches on the desktop and you’ve got a great system but this is before the systemd days where they moved all the systemd defaults to the old/odd places that make no sense. As you say, snap appears to be another mad experiment by Ubuntu, like mir when everyone went to wayland.

If you’re going to use your PC for games, I think there may be better distros than these. I’m not a gamer so I can’t advise.

I’m not a huge fan of derivative distros, like Ubuntu (based on Debian decreasingly) or so on. I’m not one to mess about with screen savers etc and aesthetics though. To me derivatives add bloat and unexpected changes.

Source distros are a rabbit hole I’ve been down. They were fun but I couldn’t get myself to do any work when I had them.

I’ve never tried SUSE, it’s alternative rpm style distro which can be stable as a rolling.

Distrowatch.com is always worth a visit. Find a/several forum that is your intended use and find out which district they use there; if you have issues they’ll know how to fix it.

Microsoft own half of OpenAI. (Corrections?)

They don’t need you. They own 50% of your 20 (currency unit) monthly sub to ChatGPT.

There’s a change detection add-on for Firefox I use for websites which don’t have RSS feeds. Might work on that other thing.

SiteDelta Watch.

Syncthing is fast. I have an IPv6 setup too which seems to help.

I have my downloads directory on my desktop linked to a downloads directory on my Android; you can’t link to the real Android downloads directory anymore so I use another.

When the file is removed from the desktop downloads directory it disappears from mobile.

I tried using Bluetooth between them but it’s more fiddly than Syncthing with my config. Switch Bluetooth on on desktop, connect to desktop, send file, disconnect, move file. Whereas Syncthing is always on.

However, before I started using Obsidian notes I used to transfer URLs using Signal’s Note-to-self thing. Signal on both desktop and mobile.

Obviously, I sync between mobile and desktop Obsidian using Syncthing.

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Do you use Netflix or other services/products with DRM?

That’s your answer.

There’s a priority mechanism in Fedora/flatpak but when I tried to give priority to flathub it was ignored.

Maybe it works now.

Ah. I didn’t imply the ‘man’ in there.

Thank-you.

Don’t understand. Check it out where?

Don’t fill copy-on-write fs more that about 80%, it really slows down and struggles because new data is written to a new place before the old stuff is returned to the pool. Just sayin’.

I wouldn’t worry if you’re backed up. The SMART values and daemon will tell you if one is about to die.

… and your reply.