ChojinDSL

You can either describe what you want, or show a picture of a haircut that you like.

Dude, this is the kind of red flag, where you really should get the police involved, or at least consult with them.

You can also self host it via docker.

If you want to learn more about computers by using Linux, I suggest something like Gentoo. Don’t know if it’s still the case, but I started with Gentoo back in 2003 and it took me 3 days until I even had a GUI. Learned a ton in the process about Linux under the hood and how it all works together. Thanks to Gentoo I have a well paid career as a Senior Linux System Administrator.

That being said, i should mention that I grew up with DOS, so I didn’t have the same apprehension as some people, when it comes to the command line and editing config files.

This is probably true of most distros.

Did you encrypt your swap as well? I used to use hibernation back in the day but without LUKS encryption. Ever since I’ve started using LUKS encryption, I never bothered with hibernation again, allthough I would like to.

How long did you run the memtest for? Ideally it should run a couple of times, since just a single pass might not detect any errors.

But it’s weird that it happens when you try to update. Could it maybe be related to your network hardware, either LAN or WiFi? If you’re using WiFi, try LAN, or vice versa. Perhaps even a USB dongle, and disable the onboard network hardware completely.

Check out dattobd sometime. It’s a tool that allows you to make a snapshot of a block device for backups, while the OS is running. Useful if your filesystem doesn’t support snapshots.

If the immutability in OS is well designed, then there shouldn’t be really an downsides or loss in comfort. That is, unless you’re a linux expert and like to tinker under the hood.

The general idea is, the core of the OS if read-only, and everything else that needs to be modified is mounted writeable. Ideally, protecting the core of the OS from writes, should for example prevent malware from installing a modified kernel or boot loader. Or maybe preventing the user from accidentally borking something so that their system becomes unbootable. How much of an advantage that is practice is dependent on use case. In the case of Steam OS on the steam deck, it’s perfect, since boot issues on the steam deck could potentially be tricky to fix as opposed to a standard PC.

Another advantage of immutable could theoretically be wear and tear of certain storage devices. e.g. Think of a raspberry PI and SDcards. If you could have most of the important stuff of the OS as read only on the SD card, and everything else on a usb disk or even an NFS mount, then the SD card should last much longer since no writes are happening on it.

As far as true security benefit is concerned… I can’t really say. It depends on how updates and eventual writes are actually handled to the immutable part of the OS. Obviously at some point, changes do happen. Like during a system update. In the case of Steam OS, The system portion is wiped and replaced the new version. Chimera OS, did something similar (I don’t know if they still use the same method). They had a read-only BTRFS partition, where they would then provide a new snapshot during an update, which would be downloaded and applied at the next reboot. This approach would hinder automated crypto malware for example (at least for system files).

Immutable in this context refers to an OS that can’t be changed while running. Steam deck does something like that. Basically the all of the OS system files are read only, so that the user or some malware can’t Bork the system. The only parts that are writable are the users profile directory and the logs.

You can still receive updates and install apps. It’s just that that’s handled a bit differently than with a standard OS.

E.g. it could be that the OS provider only issues complete updates, and then you either have to reboot. This is the case with steam os on the steam deck. The System portion of the OS is mounted read only during use.

I’d say PS2. The sheer amount of unforgettable classics and the fact that it was the best selling console of all time.

Not a place in particular, but if you’re driving, avoid any border crossings during peak holiday seasons. Specifically when you’re crossing from the EU into non-EU countries or crossing from Schengen into non-Schengen area. During peak times you might be waiting at the border for hours.

What if they ask him to bring watermelon and chicken to the cookout? ;-)

Stop fingering your mom. 😉 (Sorry, couldn’t resist)

Windows, in the past has been known to sometimes overwrite the Linux boot loader after a windows update, so be careful with that, since windows assumes no other os exists in the universe. Depending on your windows version, it might not be a bad idea to backup the license key. Recent versions store your computer’s information in the cloud, so unless you change a lot of components, it should reinstall without much hassle. But it doesn’t hurt to extract the key just in case. Microsoft gonna Microsoft. There are tools for this. E.g. jellybean key finder (or something like that).

Depending on the distro, it might help to disable secure boot in the uefi bios.

That being said, take it one step at a time. Don’t try to recreate everything you were doing in windows right off the bat. Get comfortable with the desktop first. Try different apps for certain tasks. If you have an Nvidia GPU, the experience can vary greatly between different distros. As others have mentioned, most distros have a “live environment” on the installation cd, which you can test to see if your hardware is recognised straight away. That being said, don’t feel like you’re married to a specific distro. Most Linux users will distro hop quite a bit, before they settle on one that just feels right. And even then they might change again after a while, if they get bored.

If you don’t know, or aren’t sure. Backup everything if you have the space. Once you’ve hit a couple of disaster scenarios, it will become apparent what stuff is really important.

Obviously, the stuff you can’t recreate otherwise is most important. But apart from that, even the stuff you can recreate from other sources might be worth backing up because of time savings. E.g. faster to restore from backup than to recreate.

Back when I was still using Gentoo, configuring your own kernel was a rite of passage. It was kind of fun to try and configure it as minimalist as possible to cut down on the kernel compile time. Also, understanding all the different options and possibilities. And thanks to use flags, you had access to all these different patch sets for the kernel, which took a lot of the pain out of trying things like experimental schedulers or filesystems.

There is also the Hurd kernel, which has been in development for aeons.

Around 2003-2004. I was still a bit of a Linux noob, just getting to grips with Gentoo.

Had two no-name WiFi adapters that weren’t directly supported under Linux. Found some obscure forum thread that mentioned them, along with which lines in which source code driver to change to make these adapters work.

PC Games.