Alpine on Pi4.
LMDE on recycled AMD systems (phenoms, opterons, FM2 APUs, oh and a recently dead bulldozer fx-8150).
TrueNAS, OPNsense on dedicated hardware.
VMware ESXi on my older workstations (currently transitioning toward LXD/Incus and XPG-ng XCP-ng with Xen Orchestra).
Like most others have stated here, I’ll also add my recommendations for Linux Mint.
I have helped most of my family, relatives and several friends move and familiarize themselves with Linux Mint, especially those that do almost everything within the web browser (shopping/email/Facebook/youtube/travel reservation/etc…). Since I already was their goto tech support, I showed them around on Linux Mint and they pretty easily got going as everything was intuitively similar to Windows. All was point and click (after my initial setup with their network, peripherals, printer and some basic automatic updates configuration), no terminal voodoo magic for them.
For the younger ones I typically set them up with Pop!OS and Steam and they are ready to jump without me having to explain much. Sometimes, I had to install and help setup a server (Minecraft) so they can play with their friends.
Personally, I use a mix of LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition), Alpine Linux, TrueNAS Scale, OPNsense and VMware ESXi/Workstation/vSphere for virtual machines.
Mind you, I would not recommend VMware as I am currently evaluating my transition options toward XCP-ng with Xen Orchestra or LXD/Incus or something else entirely.
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I regularly “deep freeze” or make read-only systems from Raspberry Pi, Ubuntu, Linux Mint LMDE and others Linux Distros whereas I disable automatic updates everywhere (except for some obvious config/network/hardware/subsystem changes I control separately).
I have had systems running 24/7 (no internet, WiFi) for 2-3 years before I got around to update/upgrade them. Almost never had an issue. I always expected some serious issues but the Linux package management and upgrade system is surprisingly robust. Obviously, I don’t install new software on a old system before updating/upgrading (learned that early on empirically).
Automatic updates are generally beneficial and helps avoid future compatibility/dependency issues on active systems with frequent user interaction.
However, on embedded/single purpose/long distance/dedicated or ephemeral application, (unsupervised) automatic updates may break how the custom/main software may interact with the platform. Causing irreversible issues with the purpose it was built for or negatively impact other parts of closed circuit systems (for example: longitudinal environmental monitoring, fauna and flora observation studies, climate monitoring stations, etc.)
Generally, any kind of update imply some level of supervision and testing, otherwise things could break silently without anyone noticing. Until a critical situation arises and everything break loose and it is too late/too demanding/too costly to try to fix or recover within a impossibly short window of time.
I attempted to try Garuda Linux (cinnamon) on a mini PC (Ryzen 5800H based APU), but graphic artefacting was a constant issue as soon as the install started.
After several tries I had to abandon ship and wait till a new release to maybe try again, if I remember. Not exactly “Nope, this one’s not for me” as I had yet to properly try it.
Otherwise, I tried Crunchbangplusplus and just gave up for being a bit too minimalist or not yet ready for prime time as I kept geting issues after issues and did not have the patience to wrangle the whole OS for everything from getting network working to audio and screen issues on my system.
Anyways, it is always fun to try new systems/apps/protocols and see where thing are headed towards.
I have a single windows 11 system while everything else is on some form of Linux distro.
That windows system has never been connected to the internet, and it has been great without ever causing any of the typical update issues (although I update applications/components manually over an isolated NAS link).
It’s sad to see that everyday users have gotten habituated to these constant workflow braking updates. No wonder many people I know are jumping to the Apple ecosystem after getting a taste with a M2.
That reminds me, some time ago I tried installing Garuda on a Ryzen 5800H based mini PC but there where so many issues (namely worrisome graphical artefacting, which has never occurred with other distros on the same mini PC) I had to abort and abandon trying it until maybe the next or a future release.
I simply wanted to check out Garuda (arch based, if I recall well). I used the Cinnamon iso with Ventoy (not sure where the issue arose from).
In Canada, Apple is taking most of the increase, I wish Linux was more prevalent but I’m happy to see the downward slope for Windows:
Would you recommend a particular Beelink model?
I have been interested after seeing some reviews, but I’m not sure what would be the best deal.
Hence would greatly appreciate some recommendations.
Yes, 😅. Thank you for letting me know.
I typed correctly I’m pretty sure, but typing it again now it autocorrects to “C - C - P” now 🫤. Even more confused.
I’ll edit my original post.