I did this for several months. If you check out the Alpine community you’ll see that many people do this. So, it is not a dumb idea. Alpine is a “generalist” distro and comes packed with all the DEs and WMs you want. They also accept package requests and are usually pretty fast about it.

I would recommend using the Edge branch just to have access to the newest packages, but keep an eye on the issue tracker before hitting update. Also, get on their Matrix and other accounts to follow different discussions.

Many have surprised me for different reasons.

The most recent that did is Alpine. I decided for some reason to install it for regular desktop use on an RPI400.

First surprise, the ISO was so small. Second surprise, everything installed so fast when I used the install scripts. Third surprise was the up-to-date repos. The final surprise was the community: it handled noob questions and complicated questions so well, walked users through click by click and one command at a time. Awesome and totally an acceptable option for a desktop which is why I immediately installed it on my main laptop and used it for a number of months.

(just gonna be annoying and note that the 404 Media article isn’t a true “paywall”, they addressed this on their blog: https://www.404media.co/why-404-media-needs-your-email-address/. If you create an account you don’t need to pay and they email the published articles in full every day.)

Step in the right direction, which is appreciated…

But: https://fosstodon.org/@link2xt/111965597727225353

Server can look up account identifier (username) and also phone number by username.

My current personal laptop is a ThinkPad 13 2nd Gen. I believe it was released in 2017. It was my work laptop for 4 years and was gifted to me by the employer. During those 4 years as a work laptop it proved its worth—9 hours of teaching per day plugged into a projector. Once it was mine I slapped Linux on it. Today, the battery still lasts 10 hours.

So, definitely look into getting something used. You probably don’t need the best of the best. If I had to choose right now I would rank my needs and try to get something close enough.

An i3 or equivalent might be fine, and i7 might be overkill. Something with an i5, perhaps? Lots of people say 8GB is the minimum for RAM, my computer has 6GB and works. But, if I were going to buy today I might take 16GB just as future-proofing. I would also need that USB-C.

Browse around sites like https://linux-hardware.org/ before purchasing to make sure you don’t get any surprises.

Speaking of surprises, I would take anything with Nvidia just in case, and whatever model I take would need to be reparable or upgradable.

If you decide on buying new, you might as well take a look at the vendors mentioned by other users. System76, Slimbook, Framework, StarBook, and so on will hurt your wallet a bit, but at least you know the hardware won’t result in time lost troubleshooting.

Oh it certainly can! I haven’t done it like this in a long time. My hopping days are all but over and the main things I need to backup are music, photos, and books. As long as I have them on some external drive I just wipe it all and start over. Still, though, the option is there.

Partitions.

Many distros will partition your disk as /, /home, and swap.

If you want to, when installing a different distro, you can manually format and install the system to / and not format /home but flag it to be mounted as home.

The distro I came here to mention has been hated on already. My dislike goes to the distros that start off fine, and somehow screw it up.

Honestly, I remember using Manjaro ages ago. It had an official Openbox spin (not a community thing). I had already used Arch but I didn’t even check to see what it was based on when I tried. I thought, “green is nice” and it was. It very quickly became less nice. I didn’t use it after that, but I’ve heard plenty of hate since then.

I’m going to put another one out there just for fun.

Distrowatch’s n°1… MX Linux

Nothing wrong with it, but the fact that it is number 1 (I know their ranking is just for fun and based on page hits) and doesn’t deserve it is the issue. It works great, when I used it I didn’t like how there was a second application for installating certain software. I think I used the Xfce setup. Again, it’s fine, but if a first-time Linux desktop user sat down and installed that, it might not be the best initiation.

Popular and highly ranked distros give Desktop Linux a bad name sometimes is what I’m saying.

This sounds like a privacy concern. Maybe one of the privacy communities will have a better answer.

You’re worried that the bios will ping hp and hand over info, is this something that you have info on?

No. You’re right. I should have added a bold warning that it will reset gnome back to defaults too.

For Gnome settings? I suppose you could backup everything. It isn’t removing all dconf settings, just gnome, which is broken in this case.

Yikes. Something is missing. Is this Debian? You could swing by their forums or IRC and get sorted out fast. I’m sure there is a dpkg command that fixes this up. As for the icons, there is definitely a missing package related to adwaita or some lingering config file needs to be reset to defaults.

Somehow it might be possible the adwaita-icon-theme package was removed and not reinstalled.

You could also try running dconf reset -f /org/gnome/ and rebooting to see if that helps.

Which way is GNOME going? I’m out of the loop.

Yep. I have never had to use Discord. Or, I suppose I should say I haven’t had to use it yet. But when I see that a project uses Discord and not a forum or even Discourse, Matrix or IRC, I just hope I never have to ask for help.

Went full Linux in the early 2000s. Never went back. Started with Debian and Ubuntu. Tried many distros for varying amounts of time. I always come back to Debian.

I’m just a regular desktop Linux user. It’s great.

Anki

That’s the basis of Bloom’s taxonomy: knowledge or memorization

Spaced repetition apps, like Anki and Duolingo help a lot with the base, the rest needs guided learning with regular activities.

Amazing that I can live in the country and hear nothing about this. I’ve just read the Guardian article and I guess not living in Paris or another major city might be one of the reasons.

ah zdnet, a waste of CO2 if there ever was

Is this your blog?