I worked with windows and their servers for a long, long time. Fully delved into that ecosystem as it was between 2000-2019 or so.

In 2019 i quit the job I had then and went on a short sabbatical, severe burnout. I had played around with knoppix circa 2003, slackware as well, but I didn’t “get it”.

So the image of linux, in my head, were those experiences until 2019, when I took another look. I had a 500gb sata ssd that I was using to test out every distro under the sun, including a relatively successful install of BLFS. For 2 years I had tried all I could get my hands on, until I settled on my distro of choice.

Nuked my nvme, cleaned out almost all windows remnants from my homelab and went balls deep in linux.

So now I am off windows for about 5 years and I feel like I did when I quit smoking. I keep an install around on a spare ssd because I need fusion360 and a few games that only work on windows so I can keep up with the few friends I have.

But home is on my linux installs and every day, I enjoy the shit out of it.

Interesting, @chazwiz, if you ever go the debian way, check the kernel

Same here, sick of holy wars.

That being said, it seems the hardware difference is there, amd 370 is undercooked on debian, unless you use either sid or custom kernels.

A gits dir and a dir called “wd”. Short for working dir.

Its a dumpfest of scripts, tomls, yamls, directories galore. The gits dir is where I keep my cmdb, that one is organized. wd is like a playground where I allow myself not to give a shit

Yup! Considering that cpu, debian will be painful, but ubuntu as a server is asking for trouble. Look for fedora server, for the love of god even an arch server. Do your future self a favor and avoid that grilled roadkill that is ubuntu.

Fedora server comes with cockpit if thsts what you want.

For the 370, fedora works well.

Pinch of salt- i got burned too many times with ubuntu server, I run an extensive homelab and I’m a regular at the burns ward. I loathe ubuntu with the energy of a Wolf-Rayet star.

What?! Theres a huge difference. Ubuntu is hot garbage for server work. How? Wait until you hit a permissions issue with your share and you find that snap did some bullshit, because you have mixed apt and snap packages. The notorious hardcoded snap store backend? Not a fan.

Yeah one might say debian is old packages, but first of all its a nas system, not an internet facing machine or even a main server thst needs a ton of services.

Even then third party software is pretty recent even on debian.

Ubuntu is the wrong choice for any server. Any.

For me its security patches. I frequently lock app versions manually.

I do have an old laptop that uses a fixed release, because it sees infrequent use.

One needs to adjust whats needed per usecase. For me that means daily drivers get semi-rolling or rolling. Where stability is neede/older systems, fixed releases.

Excuse me, I’m curious, how does one mess up their search history?

Ultich, dont take this the wrong way, but thats how you are using systems and thats how you see them. It is your perspective, not everyones perspective.

Computers are not just one thing, one tool. They can be, they are, many times. But for many of us they are hobbies, a thing to tinker and experiment with, thats who you the the pretty UIs from.

I get that ignorance is bliss, but you can not paint the whole ecosystem with the same brush. People are different. Generally yeah, you are right, but it is also a very ignorant way to look at things.

Not really, I’m using kde.

The only thing the mozilla foundation deserves is a red hot iron prod up the arse.

I would of went Alpine, but debian is a solid choice as well.

To add to the arch management, after a while you learn the golden rule - set it and don’t fiddle with it too much. Nowadays there is very little maintenance to it. I run an update followed by shutdown. Once every 2-3 months there is some issue, that takes a forum search to fix and once a year it breaks to the level where I need about half an hour to an hour to fix it.

Its all fun and games until the power bill arrives. Performance per watt is important, please look at that first. Don’t be me.

Bazzite is probably a safe bet.

When I first installed linux I set up a dualboot because I still had data on windows. A week passes, I get cocky, I customize the grub loader, somehow nuked the windows install in the process because (unbeknownst to me, I was installing a new bootloader on the linux drive) I ran some commands off the stack exchange. When I went to my windows drive the C part was gone-gone, I had documents on that C drive. Said to myslef “I guess I have a free drive now” and never looked back.

Those documents were important, no backups. Time, nerves and money consuming to get them again.

For that style of laptops give aurora a try, its basically fedora, but polished for ultralights. I have a surface pro from 2018, still works great, had a harder time with other distros. Good luck.

Awesome, best of both worlds! Have fun!

Yes, I have a surface pro5, I have been installing iterations of linux on this thing for the better part of 3 years now. Custom kernels, drivers, a pain, a real pain.

Until i came across aurora. Holy shit, I installed it and poof, all the efort of custom kernels, matching drivers just evaporated, I know I sound like one of those nuts that found a distro that he thinks is good, but I swear for the surface pro, this distro works excellently and I have tried ALL OF THEM.

Just know that you are saying goodbye to your cameras. Below I have linked the aurora ISO, the aurora install guide for surface and the linux-surface initiative, in case you strike out with aurora. Best of luck and if you have questions feel free to PM me.

https://dl.getaurora.dev/aurora-dx-hwe-latest.iso

https://docs.getaurora.dev/guides/surface-install-guide/

https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface

Mwahahhahaaaa!

I’m running aurora on a surface pro5 for ages, the thing works like a charm out of the box.