Truscape

As someone with an IT background who has spent countless hours helping family members, you end up with users (mainly children) who copy and paste random crap from the internet and break something, even if there’s safety glass over the self-destruct button (sudo). I’d rather have the extra peace of mind to know they can’t fuck it up.

That’s a reasonable point of view - I’ve just had plenty of negative experiences with immutable distros that completely undo any customizations I’ve performed (SteamOS mostly), but that does somewhat come down to nitpick territory.

A better way to put it is enthusiasts don’t need an immutable distro, but can use one well. However elderly, very young children, and the tech illiterate likely require an immutable distro to prevent accidental (or misguided) mishaps, unless there’s special circumstances that require something else.

It’s what you would recommend for people you can’t trust even with having glass over the self-destruct button. Immutable distros are the equivalent of pouring a concrete shell.

The elderly, very young children, and the tech illiterate (who have no desire to learn) would be appropriate candidates. Enthusiasts, students, programmers, and those who tinker/create probably don’t need that level of safety.

That’s TS5, but I believe that’s paywalled for self-hosting compared to TS3.

I mean, if what we’re using is pulled from a chipset on the motherboard whose storage space isn’t rewritable from the OS interface, wouldn’t that be called firmware? You are using a flash chip to boot after all.

4GB RAM? That’s a whole vanilla Minecraft Java edition server right there, for free! :)

I’m currently in the inverse situation - was an active Mint user, but I’m running into gaming-related roadblocks due to Mint’s update philosophy, so I might be jumping to CatchyOS.

Nah, Ubuntu is perfect for a Mac user - they love the abusive, arbitrary decisions made by their OS designers lol

Holy shit voyager dude. Could I get a virtual autograph? Love your app!

Like 9limmer mentioned, Bazzite would be a good gaming focused choice for a beginner. There are alternatives like CatchyOS, but those are geared towards more experienced users.

I guess a good question would be what software you plan on using. If it’s something more reliant on frequent updates and feature releases like gaming, the choice would be a bit different compared to something like office work or common browsing, where stability would be prioritized (at the cost of slower updates).

Mint, for example, is a great jumping off point for Windows users because of the familiar User Interface and a focus on stability and lack of prior knowledge required - but it lags behind when it comes to cutting edge stuff for things like gaming.

When I was working as an IT contractor for a California High School district, I remember replacing the windows 10 machines myself with newer prebuilts that met the windows 11 requirements. My boss told me to throw them all into a pile, and when I asked him if there would be upcoming auction or liquidation of the spare parts, he gave me a weird look.

He then told me, “Yeah, I know it’s a lot of e-waste, but these were bought with public money, so it’s straight to ‘reclamation’. No one can sell, buy, or take these. The IT department would be in trouble.”

Talk about easy targets for ransomware gangs and info-stealers. I wonder what’ll be listing all over the .onion sites within a month.

Most of my gaming friends have been asking me about linux setup (or win10 LTSC), so it seems that crowd is ready.

I’d rather install win10 LTSC than use an MS account for the OS lol

eBay would be the most obvious place (often where computers sold from government auctions or business liquidations end up), but also e-waste recycling centers, actual auctions held by the companies themselves (this is where having a guy on the inside willing to give you a date of liquidation would be perfect), or just simple donations and giveaways that are “as-is”.

Do note you can’t take all machines that are being removed - in the US at least, computers bought with public money (most often schools), must be sent to e-waste or scrap reclamation due to compliance with government accounting mandates. There are exceptions to this (auctions), but those are usually never at schools or libraries.

Steve shouted his channel out too, so hopefully this ends up being a “separate sides of the coin” for the audience to enjoy (if one is curious about what the other distro is like)

WINE’s gotten a lot better since that statement was first made years ago. Thank the Valve money.

I decided to move to FreeCAD from Autodesk Inventor as I figured it would be easier and more beneficial to make the switch earlier in my engineering career, and I really like the experience so far - lots of good documentation and tutorials.

I’d imagine a pirate’s license will work too.