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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • I use primarily debs but if your using Ubuntu it will include Ubuntu supported snaps. This is all from the distro supplied repos generally.

    Installing random stuff not distro support contains a lot of addition risks such as potentially more bugs and malware.

    I think the only 3rd party program I have installed is an AppImage of Joplin. I found the snap buggy.

    I am not big fan of snaps or flatpacks as I had issues with both. One rarely needs them on Debian based distros anyway.




  • flatbield@beehaw.orgtoLinux@lemmy.mlSwitching to linux for newbies.
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    4 months ago

    Reguarding apps, you said typewriter, movies, music, games. Office suite look at LibreOffice. Movies and music if it is online just Firefox or any other browser you choose. Firefox is good at working with PDFs too. Any distro should come with a document viewer, photoviewer, video player, and music player. You can choose from tons of other or more advanced tools. Debian for example comes with over 60K packges and Ubuntu and Mint are similar. There are also 3rd party sources too. Flathub or Snapcraft for example if you want something not in the repos.

    If you go with a Debian based distro with a lot of apps in the repos, you probably my not need these other app souces, but some people like smaller distros, something special just not in the repos, or a newer or different version of app. For example I use Joplin which is a notes app that is not in the Debian repos.

    For apps finding an app name and starting links https://alternativeto.net/ is your friend. For distros, https://distrowatch.com/ is your friend. Strongly favor a distro in the top 10 on distro watch unless you have some special need.

    Edit: You will notice that the top 10 are all Debian, Arch, Fedora, or SUSE based in that general order of more to less popularity. Linux distros tend to be based on these base distributions. For example Mint is based on Debian and so is Ubuntu.


  • flatbield@beehaw.orgtoLinux@lemmy.mlSwitching to linux for newbies.
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    4 months ago

    I personally prefer Debian based distros just because of the number of apps in the software repo. Probably consider Ubuntu or Mint in your case. My wife and I have used Linux pretty exclusively for over 20 years. Ease of use is not that much of an issue once your setup. My wife and her dad are not technical and they have few issues.

    Installing, and fixing issues is more technical but it is for Windows too especially if you do not get it preinstalled. You presumably have some stratagy for Windows support. Linux same, have a stratgey for it.







  • A few hints. For the user your using to log into SFTP the .ssh director must be somthing like 700. The directories above it must be somethin like 750 or 755. This is so you ssh keys are secure.

    A far as any data directories you want to access, like 755, 775, or 777, depending on what you want. Also umask setting may matter for new files.

    This is not Jellyfin specific just generally how this worka.


  • You can just buy a system with Linux preinstalled. My laptop is from System76. I usually build desktops/towers from scratch but they sell those too.

    Installing apps has always been easier on Linux then on Windows as Linux has had large free app stores back 30 years. The question is more are the apps you want in the app store. If not things get harder. I like Debian based distros like Ubuntu or Linux Mint as they have large app stores.

    You might want to look at distrowatch.com. Mint is currently at the top.



  • You might want to use dd to just copy zeros to fill the drive at the device level. Takes time but will delete the data.

    Another option is to hardware erase. I think hdparm can do that but it is a bit tricky.

    Another method is to use blkdiscard if it is say an SSD or another drive with that sort of funtionality.

    Just make sure your referencing the correct block device with any of these methods as they are pretty destructive operations.

    Edit: With dd it might be good enough just to erase the leading and trailing 1MiB of the drive. The partition and backup partition info is usually there.

    Edit: Drives can also have drive firmware level locking and passwords. I think hdparm can play with those too.