No mate. I wrote it all by myself pressing every key on my phone. Entirely my own opinion too.

I enjoyed your post and glad you have a balanced view of llm use. I totally agree llm’s are a useful tool and will inevitably be used in all and every field they can be

However I feel like it will go down like a lead balloon in this community as there is a lot of hate for llm’s, and I even expect my comment to be slatted by “them”.

I use it on all my machines. Debian, arch and void Linux. I have an efibootmgr script on each machine with my setup in, so if I ever need to change a setting, I update and run the script. In void, I have a hook for dracut to call it so everything stays working whenever I have a kernel update. It’s very simple and easy once you get the hang of it.

Efistub is the simplest and best solution, but agree it could do with some basic manager.

Unfortunately, you do what everybody else does. You use your reading, patience and time to research test and try various options over the course of weeks, months and years until you get experienced and knowledgeable about Linux and the ever changing options and configurations. There is no ultimate manual that tells you everything there is to know about Linux.

The only questions you really need to ask when picking a distro are which one aligns best with your effort, skill and preferences. To begin with prior to using any distro, those are very low and basic, so you want to start with a low effort quick and easy introduction to Linux. Start with a live distro to play around with. Then decide how much hand holding you need from there to choose which distro you actually want to commit to at the start. Then after weeks or months on that first distro, you will figure out what you like and dislike, which will guide your choices to move to the next distro. To begin with is all about learning and experimenting.

Yeah podman and docker both run on it no problem.

Yeah, again though, that’s a free choice you control. Something you chose to setup.

I personally backup my entire root filesystem to a nas, and update it reasonably regularly. And keep all personal and data files on the nas. Then have a regular automated backup process for the nas.

Many ways to skin a cat as they say. None better than any others, just choices and options. The beauty of Linux 👍

The whole point of Linux to me is I have complete freedom, choice and control of my pc.

The price you pay is the same though, you have the freedom, choice and control of everything your pc does, and if you do something wrong you can break it.

Windows protects you from yourself by giving you almost no freedom, choice and control. That way you can’t break it.

It is just a very simple clean stable unopinionated rolling release distro. It doesn’t try to be bleeding edge, or force you down any particular path. Its not a derivative of another distro. It uses runit for its init process, no systemd and is just really nice and clean to use. I’ve been on it about 12 months after swapping from arch which I had used for about 15 years. No plans to move any time soon.

Can’t help you with river specifically, but I went from running x11 with openbox, to Wayland with sway. Sway has a really good ecosystem of tools like swaybg for wallpaper. I use waybar, pcmanfm, and rofi.

After 15 years on arch, last year I looked at Gentoo, artix and void. I chose void and have no complaints. It’s a very unopinionated distro, uses runit, rolling release, nice package manager, and works well with just compiling packages you want from source. My arch was heavily optimised and clean, but runit is so simple to use and boot times are insane. After post, my boot is around 3 seconds. Shutdown is about 1-2 seconds.

I have 2x it hdd’s in software raid with mdadm which I use as my backup storage. My server mounts the array, writes the backup, unmounts the array, spins down the disks and puts them to sleep completely automatically every night at 1am. They never wake or spin up at all during the day.

If you say so. But I disagree.

No, the opposite. The only thing that matters is your personal taste and preferences. It’s purely and entirely about your perception. They include if you trust the maintainers, the logo, the package manager, the website, the distro name and everything else. You just choose what is important to you based on your taste and preference and choose the distro that aligns with that taste. Which distro you choose doesn’t matter at all, just pick the one you want to. If the most important thing to you is the colour pink, pick one that uses pink.

No, I think you’re missing the point. Distro really and truly doesn’t matter at all. They all can do the same stuff as each other. It’s entirely all about taste and personal preference, and nothing else. Each flavour has a different starting point, and those staying points make it quicker and easier to achieve different end goals, but they can all achieve the same end goals but with varying amounts of effort. But to stay with, just pick one and give it a try, learn how it works and what it does, then either stick or twist, but have fun learning and exploring.

I use gtklock, I spent ages battling swaylock and never liked it.

Totally agree with you! It’s not flashy or modern looking, but everything is where it should be and it all just works exactly as I want it to. I keep others installed on my phone to just to look at if an update improves them, but nothing has yet. Currently installed are ultrasonic, tempo and substream. Non are as good, but all looks better than dsub2000.

You can mitigate the aur issue and retain everything else offered by not using aur. You will have the most arch like system compared to all other distros, without the risk of aur. Those packages in aur are mostly not included in other distros, so you won’t lose anything.

Personally, I left arch nearly a year ago due to it being too popular making it a target for malicious activity, it only offered bloated and over weight systemd, and after running arch for nearly 20 years, I just got bored and wanted something new, so I moved to void Linux. Very happy with my choice. Boot time is 3 seconds, shutdown is 5 seconds. runit is a nice light and simple init system. It’s rolling release but not bleeding edge, so updates never break anything.

Yeah, I mean x11 isn’t Wayland. They aren’t the same. Changing from x11 to Wayland will require change in multiple ways, but I believe once you have worked through the change, you won’t see much difference in day to day usage. But the beauty of Linux is you have the choice. You can use x11 if you prefer. Just be aware the majority are moving to Wayland, so x11 will get less development and Wayland more, and I imagine there will be a point in the distant future where x11 will be a lot of effort to run.