Just had a conversation at work about using Linux full time. Coworkers asking me what issues I have and what games I can play.

I mean it’s not all sunshine and rainbows…but I told them my Start Menu opens every time I need it. I don’t have explorer.exe randomly crashing. I can search in my Start Menu for things and they actually come up properly. Oh and with btrfs snapshots I can update whenever and if it breaks I just rollback and wait for a fix. Which has happened…once in the last 5 months of using Cachy+Plasma.

I feel like I can actually use my computer now. With Windows I dreaded doing updates. With Linux I update whenever I want and it doesn’t fucking bother me at all.

Using Mediawiki here.

I have obsidian and tried using it, but my personal workflow for my homelab just doesn’t…work with it? Idk, it’s just easier to throw it into a private wiki.

I still use obsidian but for personal life stuff.

Depends on weight, but usually 6 months or older. Around the 12lb or ~5.4kg mark.

If they get sick before that…just have to keep fluids up, deal with the crying, and if the fever goes over a specific temp you gotta take them to the hospital.

Our 4 month old got a bad fever and we called the nurse hotline for our hospital to see the next steps and they said “we don’t have any appointments open, take him to the ER” and we were flabbergasted because that’s the LAST place you should take a sick baby. We pushed but they wouldn’t budge.

So we took our kid to the ER, the ER nurse and doc flipped their shit and said why we brought him there, told them so-and-so nurse on the hotline said to and that there weren’t any appointments. They took the baby immediately just to get him out of the ER and did whatever they could(I was at work, momma was at home still on maternity leave, so don’t have details), but the ER doc asked for the name of the nurse on the hotline and we’re guessing he said some shit up the chain.

So yeah, fun times!

This is what I was looking into recently. I just want to replace my shitty Spectrum router.

I was looking at Topton N150s on AliExpress, but $250+(tax/shipping) is terrible, with no RAM.

I saw people using the Lenovo m720q/m920q with a pcie 4 port, so I’m leaning towards that.

We’re about to get fiber in the next year or two, so I want to get something that can handle 1g up and down.

There’s a lot of options, none perfect, but none terrible.

Look man do whatever you want, it’s not my money, just trying to help

You signed a contract. So if you cancel your card and ignore their letters/emails/calls, they’ll keep charging you and then send it to collections, which will then garnish your wages unless you fight it in court.

There’s been numerous examples of this happening. Please get a copy of your contract and read how to cancel it and do it properly.

It’s stupid and extortion, but you gotta play the game.

Program doesn’t open all of sudden?

I guessed Windows update immediately, glad my IT skills are still sharp.

If all you needed was admin access to, I presume, finish an installation of something or permissions got messed with, then IT should’ve been able to remote in and fix it within 5 minutes.

Also, have you tried restarting your PC yet?

Oh beyond, but it’s going to be completely out of your control.

Funding never being available, requests taking forever to get approved that people forget you even asked, and nobody taking ownership of anything and stuff just gets passed around until people stop talking about it.

Oh and this super important project that somehow affects the smallest workgroup in the building? Drop everything! You need to get this done NOW! And then that workgroup comes in after it’s done and they tell you thanks but they didn’t need the project done for another 2 months. Oh and in 2 months that project you got finished needs to be moved to a completely different location now and it’s due tomorrow.

But everyone is mostly chill and for 90% of the job it’s not stressful. Pay and benefits are…average, but you get bank holidays off now.

I feel like this would be my mindset. Like you’re bummed out or disappointed that a certain action wasn’t successful, but you’re not upset with the person just the event in general.

My kids are still quite young but I’ve already had to catch myself mid-sentence and reword or rethink how I say certain things. It’s hard because at work we’re all cursing like sailors but at home we don’t want anything like that around the kids…to the best of our abilities.

The average user trying to switch to Linux? YES, they would.

The average user like my mom? No, because she sure as shit doesn’t even know what Linux is nor how to make a bootable USB drive.

I’m sick and tired of this cop out answer of the “average” user.

This is like someone buying a car. Do you want to get a lemon? Sure, buy whatever “looks good” OR you do some RESEARCH and figure out what car to get from reliability reports.

Do you think a Mac user wanting to switch to Windows won’t do any research?

Supposedly Linus switched to Kubuntu, but we’ll have to wait for part 2 to see how that turned out. But from the WAN show I don’t think it went well.

My biggest issue is that there is zero information of what everyone is actually running.

“I’m running Kubuntu”, cool, what version? LTS or STS? What kernel? What version of Mesa drivers? How did you even install the OS? Ext4? Manual partitioning? Are you using swap? Is steam installed via flatpak, snap, or the deb?

But nope it’s “lol I installed pop again, shits still broken, Linux sucks! I’m cursed!”

It’s all down to your use case. I’ve been using CachyOS on my desktop and laptop because I game, but for my homelab? Debian all the way(well Proxmox on bare metal, Debian containers).

But I don’t understand what you’re saying about Desktop Environments here? You can install most DEs on pretty much any distro…I get you probably like the Out-Of-Box experience, but I wouldn’t let that be the limiting factor in your distro choice.

I do love Plasma though and it’s my defacto DE choice with any distro I use.

Yup, I just bought a Framework and bought their 240w charger.

Granted I bought the 13 not the 16, so it can’t use all of it, but it exists!

I ended up just pushing everything behind my tailnet and only leave my game server ports open(which are non-standard ports).

Honestly if you’re running the latest Mint, then you’re on 6.14, which is barely a year old…but it’s still a year old kernel.

Probably fine for mom’s laptop that is 5 years old, but if you bought something that came out in the last 6 months or you’re building a new gaming PC, then you’re really gambling on Mint being “stable” for your system.

This is what I got blindsided by when I tried out Mint a decade ago. OS is up to date and pretty, but kernel/drivers? Old, or “stable”.

And it’s weird seeing all of these recommendations for Mint on YouTube/social media this past year. And then watching the videos everyone is just gawking about Cinnamon…which you can install on any other distro too.

Lots of normies hopping on the Linux train and have no idea what they’re getting into lol

You can check out MediaStack: https://github.com/geekau/mediastack

Here is their “full vpn” compose file here(all of *arr goes through vpn): https://github.com/geekau/mediastack/blob/master/full-download-vpn/docker-compose.yaml

And their “mini vpn” compose(only torrenting goes through vpn): https://github.com/geekau/mediastack/blob/master/mini-download-vpn/docker-compose.yaml

Probably something there will give you the right push towards fixing your setup? Best of luck! I am actually going to be attempting this soon(gluetun+qbit), but with ProtonVPN.

but we’re all running essentially the same Linux Kernel

Uh, yes and no. If you’re on Linux Mint 22.2+ you’re on 6.14. If you’re on Linux Mint 22.1 you’re on 6.8.

If you’re running Arch or equivalent, you’re either on 6.17 or 6.18 at the moment.

Now that doesn’t seem like a huge gap, but 6.8 came out March 2024. 6.14 is from March 2025. Debian 13.3 I think is on 6.12 which is November 2024.

These all seem recent, but Linux moves at such a fast pace that if you’re gaming you really should be on the latest kernel for the best possible performance for gaming, especially if you have newer hardware.

Of course use whatever you like, but I would tell people to evaluate what would be the best option for their environment. For me I run my own websites and game servers. They’re all on Debian containers.

If my mom came up to me and said she wanted to try “Linux” on her laptop, I’d just throw Ubuntu 24.04(or 26.04 for the next LTS) on it because I know she just needs something to surf the web.

And for me I recently went all in on CachyOS for my laptop and gaming desktop. I’m not running the latest and greatest hardware(Ryzen 3000 and 5000 series, Nvidia 3000 series), but this is my first attempt at a Arch based distro(well except my Steam Deck) and it’s been pretty rock solid.

Pretty much how AMP by CubeCoders works. It’s all docker containers

Install Tailscale on all devices.

Then ssh into whatever you need.

If you need desktop remote access the Windows RDP should work for Windows to Windows machines.

For Linux host to Windows client I’ve had good experiences with Remmina Desktop.