Might check out distrowatch. Just note that popularity for them just means how many times had that entry been looked up.

https://distrowatch.com/search-mobile.php?ostype=All&category=Live+Medium&origin=All&basedon=All&notbasedon=None&desktop=All&architecture=All&package=All&rolling=All&isosize=All&netinstall=All&language=All&defaultinit=All&status=Active#simpleresults

Might have been a temporary issue. It’s working for me.

Last time I tried (several years ago, pre-Proton) iTunes would run fine under Wine but couldn’t see a connected iPhone.

I agree with @qocu@hexbear.net . It sounds like you are trying to replicate your workflow. Windows and Linux come from different mentalities. There won’t always be a drop in replacement.

I’m short on time but perhaps I can help with your point 9 though.

Each distro’s repos are built by the people that use that particular distro. Somebody needed a particular piece of software, found it wasn’t in the repository and decided to package it and perhaps maintain it for the repo. Sometimes this is the original developer, sometimes not.

All software is built from source code. If the source code is available for Linux, you can compile it yourself. Instructions for how to do so are usually provided by the developer along with the source code, nowadays usually found at their git repository.

Of course, you don’t have to compile all your own software (it can be a headache, which is why someone came up with precompiled packages), but it is an option if the software in question is not available in your distribution’s repo.

Your number 1 point: I like Kate, vscode and micro as text editors. They are fairly simple.

Thank you. I was trying to figure this out as well.

They didn’t care. You know non tech folk, they don’t care so long as it works. If you’re lucky, they know enough to hit the button with the power symbol to turn it on, but make sure you have step by step instructions printed out for those that can’t figure it out. I wish that was sarcasm.

In our location it was mostly used for passive tracking of equipment via a scanner on the roof of the truck and tags on the trailers and we didn’t use the software much beyond that. From what I saw of it, it was some native custom application. Used the default Gnome interface and design scheme of the time. Looked to be pretty idiot proof.

When I was working for Averitt Express, a trucking company out of Cookeville, Tn, our yard trucks had computers in them (for yard and dock management) that ran Ubuntu. This was 10ish years ago.

And this is why I don’t dual boot anymore. Or run Windows anymore for that matter. Learn to play nicely with others please, Microsoft.

That’s what I thought you might try. Answer is, I don’t know. I think it would depend on what the UEFI does with the secure boot keys when you disable secure boot. From a security standpoint it would make most sense for it to wipe those keys, but I could be wrong. The easiest way to find out if it would cause a problem would be to try it.

If I understand this article correctly however, Windows only requires that the UEFI be capable of secure boot, not that secure boot be enabled.

I think the first thing I would try is to try installing and booting Windows without secure boot. If that fails, than reinstall, this time with secure boot enabled and leave it enabled. Several other comments here are saying that secure boot in linux is now largely seamless and as it has been several years since I’ve mucked about with it, I’m inclined to listen to their recommendation.

Should be doable either way, but swapping secure boot on and off may cause problems with Windows in your proposed setup. I would pick one and stick with it. I know Linux is compatible with secure boot, I just never bothered to learn how to work with it. If I remember correctly, every time a change was made to the kernel, the keys would need to be reenrolled. This includes whenever the Nvidia driver’s updated.

Might want to read up on secure boot.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Unified_Extensible_Firmware_Interface/Secure_Boot

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/User:Sakaki/Sakaki's_EFI_Install_Guide/Configuring_Secure_Boot

The last time I had secure boot enabled on any of my systems was several years ago, but yes. At that time you had to enroll the keys both on the initial install and every update. It was such a headache for limited benefits (for me) that I just started disabling secure boot whenever I was setting up a system.

Things might have gotten easier, but I doubt it as he secure boot system is not really under the control of open source developers (for good reason) and the end user can really only choose whether it is enabled or disabled.

Not necessarily, but doing so will make your life alot easier, especially when it comes time to update the drivers.

Sometimes it’s an ideological issue. Some distributions don’t ship nonfree drivers, some do, but require you to manually install them, and some have trouble making up their mind. This last is where you get live cds that automatically load the drivers needed for your hardware, but when you actually install, things aren’t working anymore.

This is news? To anyone?

Unless I’m mistaken, and I probably am, the patents on blueray should have expired by now. Software side might be covered under copyright right though. Not sure if software can be copyrighted though tbh.

I do both. I buy the media, usually a physical release, and then put it on my Jellyfin server to stream to my devices. Benefits of streaming, but with the piece of mind that my favorite music, movies or tv shows won’t go away.

Not that I’m aware of.

The only time I heard anyone talking about it was on the podcast Self-Hosted . Supposedly it’s a NUC clone with performance similar to a then current (2023) mid range laptop and draws about the same amount of power. I think they said the N100 processor had Intel QuickSync for hardware transcoding.

Sure, but “better” is massively subjective. For me, when I set up a pi, I’m not usually making use of the GPIO or the camera inputs. I’m generally throwing together a headless server. To do that, in addition to the board itself, I need storage, power, heat sinks, an fan and usually some sort of case.

Using the prices at CanaKit as a rough guide, you can come up with this search on Ebay.

The first entry I saw drew my attention. It’s a 7th gen i5 with 16GB RAM and a 120 GB SSD. Not sure the 500 GB HDD would survive shipping, but it’s $100 shipped. Biggest concern is that the seller only has 65 sales. Possible scam?

On the higher end of that bracket there is this. 6th gen and only 8GB RAM, but the seller does have a history.

With the prices on the Pi5 your potentially getting into the price range where it might make sense to look at the Beelinks mini PCs, based around a 12th gen Intel.

Like I said, prices right now are at a spot where I can’t just say throw a Raspberry Pi at the problem. They are great boards but for someone self-hosting their own services they don’t necessarily always make sense anymore.

If you mean for ARM based systems (not just SBCs), I would agree, but the software and support ecosystems for amd64 systems far surpasses even the rPi ecosystem because you have backwards compatibility with a lot of the legacy x86-64 and x86 code. And because they support UEFI, distributions don’t need to explicitly support your particular version of your ARM processor so you can run pretty much whatever OS you want.

Not long ago I saw a one of those old small Dell Optiplex workstations with a 4th gen i3, 8GB ram and a 256GB SSD on Amazon for $100 USD. There’s a new BeeLink with an N100, 16 GB RAM, and 500 GB SSD for $200. They’d both be great for any home lab project that doesn’t need the GPIO of the rPi. And they are both in the same price range.

Don’t get me wrong, if I needed to kitbash a desktop or small server together in a hurry, I would probably be using a Pi3 or Pi4 because I’ve 6 of them collecting dust from when my self hosted services outgrew their available compute. I replaced them with a keyboard damaged laptop with a 6th gen i5 and my old desktop with a 4th gen i5. But if I needed to buy something today, I’d be doing some price comparisons first.

If you like Pi’s, use them. They are great kit. But if price or (more recently) power consumption are your primary consideration, it’s no longer as simple a choice as it was pre-pandemic. It’s worth looking around now.

Of course, none of this applies if you need the GPIO. But then you’re looking for project boards, not desktop or home server systems. Different set of criteria. And a different set of head aches.

Been able to use rPis as a desktop for a while now. The 2s and 3s weren’t particularly pleasant but it was doable. The Pi 4 8GB with an USB3 jump drive as root partition was a lot more pleasant, at least until you hit thermal throttle.

Right now though, there are more powerful options in the same price point, once you account for power, storage and optionally, a case. At least for desktop and home server use.

The Raspberry Pi’s just aren’t the go to hardware for the home lab anymore. Probably won’t be again unless the price comes back down on the Pi’s or the price on new and used amd64’s goes back up.