Lol, I wouldn’t even use MS Office on Windows, Libre Office all the way.

Jellyfin for only music streaming would probably be fine, if it’s just you using it. PiHole would be good, you could probably get a low impact distro on there to run Docker containers, but only pretty light services on it.

About to build my first really nice homelab NAS for Jellyfin, archiving, etc. targeting between 30-40TB if all goes well :)

Snaps are a standard for apps that Ubuntu’s parent company, Canonical, has been trying to push for years.

The issue that most people have with them, is that Canonical controls the servers, which are closed source. Meaning that only they can distribute Snap software, which many Linux users feel violates the spirit & intention of the wider free and open source community.

Appimages and Flatpaks are fully open source standards, anybody can package their software in those ways and distribute them however they want.

.deb files are software packaged for the Debian distribution, and frequently also work with other distros that are based on Debian, like Linux Mint.

I’ve been rolling Debian more and more this year. If you’ve got solid Linux chops, it’s really great.

I also really like LMDE, it’s what I run on my Business laptop.

I love Mint, it has become my workhorse distro. I use LMDE on my personal business laptop. I switched my parents from Windows 10 to Mint earlier this year, and it’s been great on their very old and low power desktop.

Cinnamon is not the prettiest or slickest DE, but damn if it ain’t the most stable DE I’ve used.

I’m a KDE fanboi myself, but when I spin up a machine that I need to just work in a super dependable way and is no muss, no fuss, I usually choose Mint with Cinnamon.

I’ve slowly been decorating my IT office with various Linux trinkets.

I just got a foam stress “ball” Tux recently, and I plan on getting a Debian coffee mug, maybe some Linux/FOSS related stickers lol.

Ventoy folders are next on my list :D

I recently submitted to the Ventoy path, can’t believe it took me so long.

I actually thought I had messed something up after burning it on a USB. The drive mounted an empty folder and I thought, “no way it’s that simple, I don’t just drop the ISOs into the folder do I?”

Yes, you just throw all your ISOs into that folder, unmount, and you’re good to go!

In my experience, Linux folks are just happy to find each other in the wild.

Hell, I’m just happy to meet people that are Linux-curious lol.

It’s mostly online that the distro wars are fought.

?..It’s a great tool that provides all the security of VPN access without having to struggle with the more technical aspects of spinning up your own VPN, and it’s zero cost for personal use.

You could also use Netbird if you wanted, but I have been using Tailscale extensively and it’s awesome.

IP white lists and firewall exceptions will help, but exposing ports on your home router is almost always a bad idea, especially for something as trivial as a game server.

I would highly recommend Tailscale. It’s free for up to 3 users, and if you have more friends than that, I would have them all sign up with free accounts and then share your laptop device with their tailnets.

It’s very easy to setup and use, costs nothing, and will be far more secure than opening ports and trying to set up IP white lists, protocol limitations, etc.

Tailscale creates something called an “overlay network” it’s basically a virtual LAN that exists on top of your real network and can be extended to other people and devices over the internet. It’s fully encrypted, fast, and like I said, very easy to set up.

Eh, bring it all on. Part of what is great about FOSS is the vibrant ecosystem. I welcome new stuff, even if I don’t have much use for it.

I do think it makes a lot of sense for certain use cases. Like my Steam Deck, great use case for an immutable distro.

Another is school or work deployments where you just need a herd of identical, generic systems or thin clients that run the same small set of applications.

I’ve been thinking of using Linkwarden for a while now. As my computer usage spreads across more and more devices, having a single place to go for all my bookmarks would be fantastic.

Performance and how configurable things are, plus ease of use.

For instance, my default router/modem device from my ISP was super clunky and confusing. I needed to set up some custom port forwarding and firewall rules. The aftermarket router I bought was faster, had way better wireless coverage, and the UI was so much easier to set up the configs I needed.

So it’s up to you, from what you said, seems like you probably would be good with the default from your ISP.

Puppy Linux, baby cuz I got that dawg in me!

You’re just wrong on literally every point dude.

1. Nope, I’ve installed Linux Mint for multiple people, several different apps, never touched the terminal. I even updated the kernel all through the GUI.
2. Basically the same on all the most popular distros. Searching “startup” or “autostart” in KDE Plasma, Cinnamon, and Gnome DEs all bring up an easy GUI app for getting programs to start automatically.
3. Same as #1. You don’t need to use the terminal to install most software, especially not anything popular. And guess what, you need the terminal to do hardcore stuff on Windows too. I know because I’ve worked for years in IT and have to use the Windows terminal for all kinds of random stuff, I literally had to use Powershell today.
4. This happens in Windows too. Just ask me how many times I’ve had to install old .NET frameworks or other random drivers/3rd party software to get some piece of software/hardware to work on Windows. Something that I thought would be a 10 minute install turns into an hour because of random shit not working right.
5. Bruh, I play Minecraft all the time. Hundreds and hundreds of hours. It’s one of the easiest games to play on Linux. And I play with tons of mods, texture packs, and shaders. I’ve been playing Minecraft on multiple Linux distros for 4 years, it runs great.
6. All major distros auto-mount external drives. I have a whole bag of thumb drives, external HDDs, and SSDs that I use in my day job. Never had a problem with them not being picked up and mounted by any of the Linux systems I work on.

I mean, don’t use it I guess, but stop spreading these obviously false claims, man. Have fun getting all your personal data farmed by a multi trillion dollar megacorp and fed into AI engines to churn out infinite heaps of sludge. Oh yeah, and all the endless popup ads in an OS that you already paid for…

Oh yeah I forgot, Bluetooth is banned on Linux… Bruh what are you even talking about? Lol

Can’t change your mind? I’ll just downvote you then :)

Same, it’s saved my butt so many times. Once in the middle of a tech conference, I was messing around in the terminal with my networking and borked something really bad.

I spent 5 minutes trying to get my networking back but couldn’t figure out what I had screwed up and ended up breaking it more.

I just went into Timeshift and restored to the beginning of that day and in a few minutes I was back up like nothing had happened.