I set up a bazzite HTPC specifically because of its immutability and smoother user experience. The steam deck also locks down the package manager because this yields a more predictable environment.

Ahh, that might be it. I run TrueNAS too. IMO that should be the default behavior, and you should have to explicitly pass a flag if you want mount to silently mask off part of your filesystem. That seems like almost entirely a tool to shoot yourself in the foot.

I think I would have expected/preferred mount to complain that you’re trying to mount to a directory that’s not empty. I feel like I’ve run into that error before, is that not a thing?

It has a File Browser tab on the left that lets you view thumbnails of all the images in a folder. From there you can select multiple images to do batch operations on, or pick a single image to open in the editor. Not sure if that’s what you mean.

Simplex is the first platform I’ve heard of that doesn’t use IDs (which doesn’t make much sense to me, practically, but sure). So would you say everything is less secure than simplex?

What makes session less secure? This is the first I’ve heard of it.

4. Linux phone. Only a goof option for a tinkering device right now imo.

Honestly not sure if you mean “good” or actually meant “goof” there lol

But we’re talking about the supply chain for a GPU that is compatible with this new RISC-V main board that is also good enough to compete with another laptop at the same price point (looks like it’s an IMG BXE-2-32).

That’s what I’m saying, we’re on the right path, but we’re not going to get there over night. If you want a working viable daily driver today, there are some compromises that have to be made still.

Don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good.

If the product doesn’t fit your needs, don’t buy it. But we’re not going to get a completely open source laptop that competes with mass market options at the same price over night.

I would just tell them, “look, Microsoft, the people who made this software, are telling us to never connect it to the internet again because it’s insecure and will get viruses. Our only options are to either pay for new licenses for their latest OS for each machine (which probably isn’t even compatible with the old hardware) or install a completely free OS that is open source and will promote tech literacy with our students.”

I mean, any modern Linux distro will be more secure out of the box than win 7/8 which are several years past their end of life.

Ah, I haven’t seen this as an option in any installer I’ve used. I guess Debian has it?

The only way I know of to fix the bios time issue when dual booting with windows is using the cmdline on Linux, or regedit on windows.

It’s normal for it to heat up under load, but it’s not normal for it to be under load 24/7 indefinitely.

I have seen a lot of people say they moved from Manjaro to Endeavour (including myself), but I don’t think the two are trying to solve the same thing. Manjaro wanted to create a more stable version of arch (and had some shortcomings that ended up being deal breakers for many people), but endeavour just wants to be a more convenient way to install arch.

I would recommend Fedora, Debian, or Mint. I’ve also heard good things about OpenSUSE.

Also, alternative to running in a VM, put ventoy on a USB drive, then drop isos for all distros on it, and live boot them one after the other to see how you like them.

Nice, indeed it looks like it does! Wonder if that installer could be packaged and licensed in a way that more distros could use it.

Something I’ve never checked for but…are there any linux installers that run from within windows? Shrink the windows partition, create a linux partition, populate it, install grub, and tell the user to reboot and choose linux? I think general lack of good ext4 fs support in windows might make things difficult, but you don’t actually need to do that part from within windows. There could be a second installer that’s triggered the first time they boot from grub.

I feel like a well supported installer like that would dramatically lower the barrier to entry. It could make dual booting windows a breeze for anyone who knows how to run an installer and reboot, which is what people actually want.

Yeah, I’d say ideally you should be able to run mint and just figure out what you need to do with minimal difficulty.

My partner started using mint recently and the two biggest annoyances for her are having to enter her password all the time to update anything, and minor windowing differences, especially going in and out of fullscreen games. I think both of those are just a matter of getting used to how it’s done differently outside of windows.

IMO the thing that could use some attention is their package manager. There are several warnings and failures that I think have been unnecessary.

ex 1. Almost every update will ask if she’s sure she wants to resolve some package conflict in some default way. This is not a question a normal user is equipped to answer, and only makes the user uneasy about what’s happening.

ex 2. When she initially installed, the welcome wizard had her run a speed test to rank her repo sources, and she picked a nearby university that seemed like a good choice. Then a few days ago at random, it became inaccessible I guess, and now her package update fails to update Firefox specifically. I need to help her sort that out, haven’t had time.

These are the kinds of errors I expect to see on arch occasionally, but on mint I feel like it should always figure out what the best option is for the user and just do it. If it needs to let the user know it did something, fine, but don’t present it ominously. Just put the system in a good state so that it’ll keep working, that’s all a normal mint user wants you to do.

I mean, they clearly already know how to do a fresh image of a live OS on a USB key. But the number of keys involved sounds like they don’t know you only need one.

Sounds like somebody’s mommy needs to take their phone away.