I’d heard of Framework, Tuxedo, and system76, but not the others. Thanks for the pointers!

raspberry pi and an HDD with family (remote)

Is this the way to go for off-site backups w/ family? In terms of low power draw, uptime, etc.

Thanks for the tip about JetKVM. Does the JetKVM device itself require an ethernet connection to the router or can it connect over wifi? (from what I can tell, it’s the former)

Thanks for confirming. Your understanding is correct, I just want a way to grab some “clean” screenshots or videos of the laptop while it’s in boot or BIOS parts of the system. I have a video capture card in my “cart” but thought I’d put this out there to the lemmyverse before I smash that “Buy” button.

EDIT: I ordered this video capture card, we’ll see how it goes!

It just can’t. This candle is burning fast at both ends.

I hope you’re right b/c right now feels like the classic “market can stay irrational longer than we can stay liquid” type situation.

you can use one of a million Jitsi instances (Element has a publicly available one)

Is there a list of public Jitsi instances? I know about https://meet.jit.si/, but otherwise I’m stumped. Searching DDG for jitsi instances returns a bunch of results about self hosting.

Extremely. I’ve tried KDE flavors of various distros and one thing that trips me up every single time is the workflow for connecting to my hidden WiFi network. On Gnome and Cinnamon I can do this in a few clicks from the network icon in the task bar. On KDE I always have to spend several minutes fumbling my way around the network settings before I can start using it. Every. Single. Time. I don’t know why, it’s like my brain just works a certain way and because this is such an early and crucial step in setting up a fresh install, I’ve never been able to stick w/ KDE despite all the rave reviews it receives in these types of posts.

Did you run into any issues setting up dropbear or did you get it working on the first try?

I’m attempting to follow the same guide that you linked to, the only difference being that I haven’t configured a static IP (I don’t think this step is required). Every other instruction, I believe I’ve followed to the letter (for the new version).

Where I’m stuck is after copying the client’s public key to the server, updating initrd, rebooting, waiting for the disk encryption prompt, and issuing ping <server-ip> on the client (replacing <server-ip> and <port-number> with the actual IP and port number):

myuser@client:~$ ping <server-ip>
PING <server-ip> (<server-ip>) 56(84) bytes of data.
From <server-ip> icmp_seq=10 Destination Host Unreachable
From <server-ip> icmp_seq=11 Destination Host Unreachable

Unsurprisingly, I’m unable to ssh in from the client:

myuser@client:~$ ssh -i ~/.ssh/dropbear -p <port-number> -o "HostKeyAlgorithms ssh-rsa" root@<server-ip>
ssh: connect to host <server-ip> port <port-number>: No route to host

Since the server is a laptop, I can physically enter the decryption key on the server itself, and then go back to the client and ping the server successfully.

I have not attempted the steps described on the Debian wiki (networking setup or converting the public keys to PEM). Should I add IP=:::::eth0:dhcp to initramfs.conf? Any pointers on what I should check?

EDIT: I’m attempting all of this over wifi, in case that matters (I have a feeling it matters, but I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do differently).

EDIT 2: I found a guide from 2017 by Marc Fargas (Enable Wireless networks in Debian Initramfs). Also found this thread from 2021 on StackExchange (How can I enable wireless for a dropbear-initramfs), wherein somebody links to this GH gist (Sample files to enable wireless on Debian initramfs ). I’ll attempt to follow these guides and report back.

One of the great things about Linux is that if the user is still undecided after reading the paragraphs and looking at the screenshots, they can boot into the live environments and see for themselves which one is right for them.

Have you actually visited the download page that you linked? Because it has screenshots, explanations, whole nine yards.

True, although it’s not unusual for me to think I know all my options, and then discover new ideas by reading how other people do it. (I mean in general, not specific to copying files from one machine to another)

Gotcha. I don’t have a home server yet, but that is in my backlog of projects for 2026. In your case, are you more often pulling from your mini server to update existing setups as your configs change over time or are you usually pulling your dotfiles onto a new setup?

Thanks for sharing your workflow. How often do you use this workflow? And are you more often cloning your dotfiles for a new setup or just keeping them updated across existing setups over time?

Yeah, so far I’m leaning toward setting up a USB thumb drive that I always keep up to date so that I can plug it in when I do a fresh install.

In your case, are you more often pulling from GitHub to update existing setups as your configs change over time or are you usually pulling your dotfiles onto a new setup?

A new setup is as simple as installing chezmoi, logging in to Bitwarden, downloading my Gitea SSH key, and cloning.

Thanks for sharing your workflow. I might be getting into the weeds a little bit, but for a new setup do you install your apps first and then clone your dotfiles or vice versa?

This is for the occasional install in a home environment on some extra laptops I have around the house. I updated the OP to clarify my use case. Thanks!

uBlue

Are these the folks behind Bazzite?

Rebooted, still have the same issue.

No errors or output from the add?

No errors or output when I run the command in my OP, but when I remove the --if-not-exists option (flatpak remote-add flathub https://dl.flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo), then it returns error: Remote flathub already exists. Yet, issuing flatpak remotes still only lists fedora.

I haven’t tried adding it just at my user level yet, but the fact that it says, “Remote flathub already exists,” does that yield any clues as to what I should try next? I’d like to do this at the system level if I figure out how. Thanks!

EDIT: On second thought, maybe I’m not supposed to be able to configure this at the machine level because that’s the point of immutable distros–they’re difficult to break—so I should just configure this at the user level and call it a day? This approach will probably work well enough for my purposes anyway. Thanks for chiming in w/ the idea to use the --user option.

You mean write a script with something like find followed by stow --target=/path/to/profile/folder firefox?