Mastodawn

Hi friends, I could use your input!
My mom has asked me to install Linux on her laptop, which distro should I pick?

- Dell Latitude 7320 Intel Core i7-Gen 11 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD
- Has to be stable, good hardware support
- Sysadmin tasks will be performed (remotely) by me, so doesn't have to be "beginner friendly" per se in that area (she won't be added to the wheel group 😅)
- Support for Xfce desktop (I guess most distros have that)
- Ideally support for encrypted root on ZFS

No: Ubuntu, Fedora, RHEL (or derivatives) please.

Given my recent fascination, I'd go with FreeBSD, but I'm afraid the hardware support isn't quite there yet. Voting and boosts are appreciated!

What should I pick?

#Linux #LaptopLinux #Poll #Debian #VoidLinux #AlpineLinux #ArchLinux

	Debian
	Void Linux
	Alpine Linux
	Arch Linux
	Something else (comment)

Poll ends at Apr 6 at 2:37pm.

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Ruben 13h ago

Thanks everyone for voting and the super helpful advice!

This is my current game plan for Saturday:
- Debian root on ZFS with xfce
- She'll be a regular user with no privileges, but can install Flatpaks via the Warehouse app (https://flathub.org/en/apps/io.github.flattool.Warehouse )

Some open points:
- I'm not sure whether I'll use grub (using the openzfs guide https://openzfs.github.io/openzfs-docs/Getting%20Started/Debian/Debian%20Trixie%20Root%20on%20ZFS.html ) or zfsbootmenu (https://docs.zfsbootmenu.org/en/v3.1.x/guides/debian/uefi.html )
- Related to ZFS DKMS: to unattended upgrades or not? I don't know how high the risk is of breaking the system via a botched kernel upgrade.
- On another SSD, she'll keep Windows. I'm a bit hesitant if I should synchronise files two ways somehow between windows<->zfs, or just provide the windows share in Linux (so she can just copy files she'd need incidentally in Windows)

As much as I'd like to experiment with NixOS or e.g. Chimera Linux, it's a bit too risky for this project, since I have no experience with those yet.

Anyway, just for the fun of it, here's a follow up poll re: my open questions. Voting/boosting/commenting with feedback is highly appreciated!

#Debian #Xfce #ZFS #ZFSbootMenu #poll

	Boot: use grub with ZFS
	Boot: use ZFSBootMenu
	Debian unattended upgrades work fine with ZFS
	Debian unattended upgrades are dangerous with ZFS
	Sync Windows/Linux files (same laptop) via: ....

Poll ends at Apr 5 at 9:49am.

Install Warehouse on Linux | Flathub

Manage all things Flatpak

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Charles Castleberry

@ruben For syncing, I’ve been using Dropbox for… 20 years? on Windows and Mac and now Linux, and it’s worked seemlessly for me, transparently and without any need for attention. I can also access those files via iOS, and I do a lot of writing via my iPad on a Collabra LibreOffice app that reads those Dropbox files, so I’m a big fan.

It is, of course, a US-based company, so if you feel you need to avoid that then you’d need another solution. 🙏

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Ruben 11h ago

@MythingPerson thank you! Yes, she'd like to avoid big tech, it's the reason why she'd like to try Linux. I could either setup Syncthing via my server (but then it's for a subset of the data, because she has a lot of it), not provide any automatic syncing, find a 3rd party EU cloud service, or cook something via rsync locally using a cronjob. I'm still not sure what would be best..