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75·11 days ago“People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.”
The only way to make sure Linux works like that is to have a closed hardware environment. But it has to play nicely with other hardware and services (e.g. printers, webcams, etc + office documents, etc). It has taken a very long time for MacOS to get to this point, but people put up with Mac compromises because enough things worked smoothly.
I’ve just commented about this in another thread…but I’m pretty convinced that Linux is not close to being ready for normies.
33·26 days agoI stopped trying to dual boot entirely with all the problems it caused me. I’m surprised the community universally seems to recommend dual booting as an easy to setup option for beginners.
47·28 days agoSorry for the loss OP.
Maybe not what you want to hear right now, but I’m really glad Steam cloud minimises the impact of a loss. When I had a Nintendo Switch I was terrified of losing hundreds of hours of Dead Cells or Enter the Gungeon progress. Losing a Deck is obviously a financial loss (and the emotional attachment of someone special giving you yours), but at least there isn’t insult to add to the injury the way Nintendo would do.
I know it has the ability to, but I don’t recommend it. I’ve recently commented on this so I’ll paste it here:
DO NOT dual boot as a beginner. I did this when I started and would screw up something with the bootloader and be unable to boot one of the OSs (data can still be copied off, but installed app data isn’t easily recovered). Being a noob at the time, I even accidentally wiped the wrong drive during a distro hop.
For a beginner I would recommend you remove your Windows SSD and keep it safe in a drawer. Or clone the drive first. Then you can mess around all you want while keeping your original SSD safe.if the data and OS/app installs are valuable then don’t fuck around learning a new system with the drive in situ. Certainly don’t try to learn to partition and dual boot off the same drive. The noob risk is just too high.
In order to use dual boot, one must be able to set up dual boot. This guide is addressed towards people who have never used Linux.
If you’re lucky enough to have more than one device, then I’d just say use Linux on your secondary device. I used my Steam Deck as my PC for a month before I made the change.
I fully support people playing around and possibly soft-breaking their things just for the heck of it.
21·1 month agoI thought HTTPS everywhere was baked into browsers now and didn’t need to be installed anymore? Is that not correct?
DO NOT dual boot as a beginner. I did this when I started and would screw up something with the bootloader and be unable to boot one of the OSs (data can still be copied off, but installed app data isn’t easily recovered). Being a noob at the time, I even accidentally wiped the wrong drive during a distro hop.
For a beginner I would recommend you remove your Windows SSD and keep it safe in a drawer. Or clone the drive first. Then you can mess around all you want while keeping your original SSD safe.if the data and OS/app installs are valuable then don’t fuck around learning a new system with the drive in situ. Certainly don’t try to learn to partition and dual boot off the same drive. The noob risk is just too high.
I used eBay so I could get a refund if the laptop wasn’t as advertised. I spent weeks looking at new listings looking for a good deal. I eventually found an amazing deal from a hospice that was selling excess stock. I’ve worked in a hospice before and know this would have only ever been used sparingly in an office and be very well looked after.
On eBay I would avoid anyone who hasn’t written out a complete description and detailed pictures of condition and specifics. Like the other comment says, the BIOS being unlocked is very important. Read descriptions carefully. People fall victim to buying expensive things that can’t be returned because it was mentioned in the listing (e.g. buying a box only for a very expensive price). For any laptop I find, I search for forum posts from other users about how that model works with Linux and videos for a teardown to make sure that RAM, WiFi module, etc can be upgraded. Make sure the charger is included.
Search eBay for “8th Gen 13 inch 16GB”, then sort by lowest price for buy-it-now. That’s what I did for a number of weeks. Got one for myself and a great one for my dad as well. Good experience both times.
I’ve just been through the process you’ve described and bought a laptop. Your budget is way overkill for your use (documents, browsing, video watching).
I recently bought myself a “like new” second hand Dell Latitude (5300, I think), 8th gen i7, 16GB Ram for £150 and it is amazing with OpenSUSE.
I got my wife a new HP Aero 13 (Ryzen) a couple of years ago and even that was £580 brand new and has been great.
Consider the secondhand market. A lot of laptops will meet your criteria.
Synology NAS, Wifi 6 router and Plex have been a fantastic life upgrade for me.
Mailbox.org with my own custom domain (firstname@surname.co.uk) and Thunderbird for an email client.
I would highly recommend it. It is cheap and includes almost a complete replacement for Google services (email, contacts, calendar, online drive, etc).
Please consider your privacy. Giving all you emails to Google (or other mainstream data harvesters) basically gives them deep info about your whole life (purchases, travel, communication…everything).
Having a custom domain let’s you go to any provider you like if you want to switch.
It is far from getting to that point. That will happen when it becomes mainstream enough to attract normies. Lemmy could still use a lot of growth. I only get to consume content that happens to be available here, rather than being able to pick niche communities being active on the topics I would like.
A 128 or 256 GB SSD or NVME drive costs £10 to £15 on eBay used. I would buy one and put Windows on it when sending back for warranty repair. OP should actually just do this for the BIOS update and then swap out the SSD back to the Linux one after.
I’m told it is not just for ink convenience. Apparently the printer needs to be connected to the internet and stops working if you stop paying the subscription, which you are locked into.
Yes