Arch w/ KDE gamer here. I have generally had a good experience with it. I think everything you said is generally accurate. In terms of customization, lack of bloat, and a good wiki, Arch is generally considered to be all of those things. A rolling distro like Arch I believe will also be getting the latest proton updates, which may help with sooner game compatibility/optimization updates on more recent releases.
I say go for it.
I am having a hard time following everything happening here. What is all this about hotspots and your neighbor’s router? Do you not own a wifi router? Most wifi routers will also have ethernet connections on the back. I apologize for not understanding. Edit: I am guessing by “I do not have a lan line” you mean that you do not have a working internet connection at all at home? I am confused as to how you intend to run a server permanently over a phone hotspot.
My one thought is: have you gone into your router and reserved a static internal IP on your LAN? (e.g. 192.168.0.##)? Often servers and things will lose communication if their internal IP changes and your devices cannot find them.
Also, if you are porting out onto the public internet, are you using something like a dynamic DNS so that your devices can route to your public IP? your public IP will be constantly changing, so you need some way for your devices to find it.
Because either AUR helper is going to be pulling from the same AUR repository. Whether you use yay or paru, it is fetching the same files from the AUR. I am sure there are minor differences between the various AUR helpers, but all that I mean to say is that for your purposes it is probably not critical and you should use whichever AUR helper you prefer.
+1 in favor of using proton-vpn-gtk-app. That’s what I use.
I use yay with regular Arch, but any AUR helper on CachyOS should be the same thing.
I would say that there is not much of a “culture” around green tea specifically, as there tends to be a much stronger culture of black tea, at least where I am on the east coast (Hot black tea in the Northeast/New England, iced/sweetened black tea in the Southeast).
As others have stated, most Americans would be familiar with it in teabags or bottled green tea, and so many who do end up trying it don’t enjoy it because they end up trying a bitter, lesser-quality version of it. Others may be familiar with it in Japanese or Chinese restaurants, where the quality is hopefully better, but this probably cannot be rightly called American green tea culture.
In my experience, it is the sort of thing where the green teabags might be the only ones left in an office meeting room because, while someone thought to stock the meeting room with green tea in the first place, all the others have been used up first and then someone has forgotten to refill them.
I don’t know much about gnome, sorry!
The main issues to watch out for are driver issues related to certain peripherals like fingerprint scanners, SD card readers, and certain oddball wifi chipsets. Hybrid graphics with both integrated CPU graphics and a dedicated GPU can lead to poor battery life in some systems such as many gaming laptops. In my experience, Linux runs fine on every laptop which I have tried it with, including 2 with hybrid Nvidia graphics. I’m also 2 for 2 on SD card readers and 3/3 on wifi cards as well, despite no prior research on my part.
Arch Linux sounds like it would be the closest to what you are describing. Or try out one of the more preconfigured versions like Endeavour OS or Arcolinux, as the install process for Arch can be a bit involved for someone new to Linux.
Usually not difficult so long as something is not a hard dependency for some other piece of software. Running something as root in Linux is as simple as typing “sudo” before a command and entering your root password
No. Per the above, elevated user privileges are permitted as a normal part of using Linux and do not require you to hack or bypass the OS’s security mechanisms like in Android or iOS.
If you install more than one, depending on your login manager it is usually as simple as a dropdown menu to select which DE you want to use when logging in.
Wayland is a window manager/GUI system used in Linux. It has been getting a lot of discussion lately because the Linux community is gradually shifting from the longstanding but now unmaintained X11 system to Wayland. You probably don’t need to worry about it.
A mix of factors for me. Firstly, privacy concerns, settings reverting themselves after updates, and the looming threat of Windows 11 were I to get a new PC. Stuttery performance on my already 3 year old laptop at the time (I still use the same laptop. It is now 6 years old and still runs great with Linux). General bloat, driver problems, and instability issues.
I did not make the switch all at once, but thankfully my laptop has two NVMe slots, which made dual booting easier while I got more used to using Linux as my daily driver. Within about a year, I was booting into Windows less and less, and eventually hardly ever once I found ways to use Linux for everything I needed.
Daily Arch user here. The process of configuring an Arch install is perhaps not as difficult or mystical as you are imagining. I would say it is more like your first analogy: picking what off-the-shelf parts you want for a system and then putting them into a case. I think what you are describing is more like Linux from Scratch.
Installing Arch is effectively taking the steps performed by the installer .iso disks which every distro uses and instead doing it manually with CLI commands. You use CLI commands to partition the drive, create a filesystem, install a basic set of packages, then chroot into your system and use the package manager to install the rest of the packages you want. Aside from editing a couple config files, there is zero coding involved. The exact steps vary from guide to guide, but a basic outline of what I do is as follows:
First, I download the Arch iso and write it to a USB.
Once I boot up the install USB, I use iwctl to connect to my wifi for the packages I will need to download,
then I use fdisk to partition the drive I want to install to with an EFI and linux filesystem partition (You might also make a swap partition at this step but I typically use a swap file on my filesystem partition).
then you use mkfs to create filesystems on the EFI and linux filesystem partitions.
Then I use genfstab to make the /etc/fstab file
Then, I use pacstrap to install the base packages like pacman. Then I mount the filesystem and chroot into the new partition.
From there, I basically use pacman to install all the packages I need, including the linux kernel (I use linux-zen), the DE (I use KDE), the boot manager (I use Refind), and everything else. There are a few cleanup steps like setting the locales and time zones, etc. but that is about it.
I suggest watching a guide on youtube, which was how I learned, or installing something like Arcolinux or Endeavour, which simplifies the installer into a series of checkboxes to select what DE you want, etc.
I am only a few pages in, but speaking as a Linux user in the 2020s, I am skeptical of the claim that Linux in 1999 would “never, ever break down.”
I would say that looseleaf green tea would be a big step up from teabags. A strainer basket that goes in a mug is a very low-fuss way to make looseleaf tea, as they are easy to clean and reusable. Looseleaf Japanese sencha was a game-changer for what I thought green tea could be.
I am personally not a huge fan of the mesh balls as tea tends to escape out from the gap along the middle, and for green tea especially, too much particulate can be bitter.
I also have a teapot with a strainer which functions much the same way, but for when I want to brew more than one cup.
No problem! Glad I could be of help, and best of luck on your project.
I am using lftp and mirror. One server functions as the “main” server, which mirrors the backup server to itself once per day at a specific time (they both run 24/7 so I set it to run very early in the morning when it is unlikely to be accessed).
In my crontab I have:
# * * * /usr/bin/lftp -e "mirror -eRv [folder path on main server] [folder path on backup server]; quit;" sftp://[user]@[address of backup server]:[port number]
Two old HP thin client PCs configured as 4TB SFTP file servers using vsftpd on Debian. Each one uses software RAID 1 with both an NVMe and SATA SSD internally, and are in two separate locations with a cron job which syncs one to the other every 24 hours.
People who actually know what they are doing will probably find this silly, but I had fun and learned a lot setting it up.
I am not sure, then. If you are on a laptop, you might try one or the other of those utilities regardless simply because they can improve battery life, but that is a separate issue.
Interesting. Do you use Powertop or TLP, by any chance? Some power utilities will turn on USB power saving if there is no activity on a USB port for a while, which can cause issues with USB mice. Generally I turn off that specific setting, or I believe there might be some way to whitelist certain USB devices to not have this sleep behavior.
Are there mice which are not supported in Linux? Everything I have used from a junky unbranded wireless mouse to a high end Logitech gaming mouse have all been plug and play for me. Even the RGB settings can be configured in openRGB.
Comfort should always be an important factor in a mouse for any OS, I would think. In terms of build quality, I have had the rubber on some mice start to degrade over time, but that is about it. Even the cheapest mice that are hard plastic can last for decades with no problem.
I would say that switchable DPI would be a must-have feature for me with modern displays. As someone with a 4k monitor, some junky office mice do not have enough sensitivity for me on high resolution monitors even with the setting cranked to max in the settings menu.
For wireless mice, I prefer AA battery mice over USB rechargeable mice, but that is a matter of personal preference. If my mouse battery dies in a AA mouse, I can swap the rechargeable NiMH battery in a minute and continue using it. However, if a USB rechargeable mouse is dead, I either have to use it on a tether for a while or remember to constantly keep recharging it. Also, having an integrated li-ion battery will give any mouse a limited lifespan unless you are willing to open up and solder in a new battery when it wears out, whereas I have some AA-powered mice which are going strong probably a decade later, so long I have had to open them up and re-solder them with new microswitches instead of new batteries.
I think you would need to provide more detail to know what you have. Does it have a model number on it anywhere?
I cannot say that I have done extensive testing, but the Acer Swift 315-51G and Gigabyte Aero WV8 that I have both worked fine with Linux with zero prior research on my part. No issues with any drivers, even the SD card readers, although I have not checked the fingerprint sensor on the Acer. Maybe I have just been lucky.
Both have hybrid Nvidia graphics, though, and 10-series and prior hybrid graphics especially, as I understand, have issues with high idle power usage unless you manually disable the dGPU when not gaming, which I had to do using envycontrol and nearly doubled my battery life on both. I might avoid hybrid dGPUs and especially older ones unless you need that.
Used laptop-wise, I agree with others that a used business laptop like a Dell would probably be your best bet.
No problem! Mint XFCE sounds perfect to me.
A chamomile blend by Tealyra called “Tranquil Nights”