I think your issue has been fixed: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/22289253

There are different flavours of Ubuntu with the other desktop environments (called Xubuntu, Kubuntu, and so on). The posted screenshot is indeed a mishmash of Gnome and Xfce though.

Don’t trust Secure Boot.

That’s the second best thing as long as you don’t worry about nation state actors (you’re removeded by then anyway). Only requirement is a board/laptop manufacturer with a proper uefi setup (eg ability to set your own keys, not using those “do not use” test keys, etc) - that usually comes with business machines.

I got dropped out from university. I got a Microsoft Azure Fundamental cert since then, now I’m a mixed Windows/Linux sysadmin at an SMB. YMMV, I’m in Europe btw.

The upgrabability of this laptop does have one caveat, though. The bottom is a bother to remove, and most Youtube crap conveniently glosses over them. For one, some of the screws would get loose but not come out all the way. I eventually found the trick was to throw some pry tool under the screw head to hold it up so I could get it the rest of the way out. After they were all out, the bottom cover STILL wouldn’t budge. This too ended up being a matter of jamming a pick in one corner of the case and running another one to slowly pry up the bottom case on all sides. I lost a plastic tab or two in the process, but that doesn’t show up on the outside, and I think 24 GB of RAM (and 2 TB of NVME 2280 storage + 256 GB, the Windows drive that I left in the 2242 bay) will be plenty for a long time.

It’s an E series ThinkPad. They are a lot less durable than any other series - they are basically the Dell Vostro of ThinkPads. (Even Dell doesn’t consider the Vostro line business ready now)
For the next best thing for a slight price increase would be the L series which is a lot more bulky and durable (and more repairable in fact - you can’t replace a keyboard in an E) which still doesn’t come with the premium price of the T series.

Doesn’t surprise me that a developer from Microsoft doesn’t understand this. To this day, when I select “Update and Shut Down” in Windows, it only actually shuts the computer down about half the time.

There are some tasks that only can be done when the majority of the system is not in use. Windows prepares the files, reboots, does its thing in a preboot environment, then it actually shuts down.

I’m tempted to flood our Kconfig files with tabs just to prove a point, but let’s not make a mess where it’s not needed. However, if this idiocy persists, don’t be surprised if I start tabbing everything in sight.

This is genius.

Not going to help a lot but may point to a motherboard issue - I’ve experienced this under Windows and a reboot has solved it.

• apt will brick itself if it gets interrupted mid transaction with no clear recourse apart from a total reinstall, so try not to get greedy and Ctrl+C if it looks like dpkg is hung

You can dpkg -r the package you tried to install then apt won’t complain about missing dependency packages for your app as it won’t be marked for to be installed

trying to install any software that isn’t already packaged explicitly for Ubuntu is a nightmare because there is no equivalent of the AUR for people to push build steps to and you’re quite often left guessing what dependencies you need to install to get something to compile

There isn’t a big global community repo per say like aur but anyone can host their own repos with PPAs, you just need to add them to your lists

Most apt quirks are there with Debian too, not just an Ubuntu thing. The rest of the things you mentioned are fair.

Ah. For me it’s not the search bar only but also if I select text and press Ctrl+C/press context menu Copy as well.
Interestingly, if sites put something in the clipboard (eg. Mastodon toot Copy link button) it works anywhere else.

My bigger problem right now is a bug that prevents me from copying stuff from the url bar when middle-click pasting is enabled in the KDE settings…

What. For me it’s the opposite - I can’t copy stuff to other apps from Firefox if that setting is not enabled

I see that no one has suggested Doublecmd

on the other hand

Copying multiple lines will be more difficult. You can use Ctrl+C to display the current position, use page up/down for coarse navigation.

obligatory without an install script

Follow the Arch wiki. Just make sure that your distro has a hook for the package manager for signing the kernel. Eg. for Arch there’s the systemd-boot-pacman-hook aur package.
It’s not hard to set it up with a LUKS-enabled system, just put the relevant kernel parameters in your /esp/loader/entries/entry.conf file.
For example, here’s my arch.conf entry (with LVM on LUKS):

title    Arch Linux
linux   /vmlinuz-linux
initrd  /intel-ucode.img
initrd  /initramfs-linux.img
options loglevel=2 quiet splash cryptdevice=PARTLABEL=partlabel-from-blkid:pvname root=/dev/mapper/rootlvname rw  

If your keys are already enrolled, you can just use sbctl sign-all once, your package manager hook should do the rest.

Overall, the general directory structure should look like this in the end (files omitted):

/boot
├── initramfs-linux-fallback.img
├── initramfs-linux.img
├── intel-ucode.img
├── loader
│   ├── entries
│   │   ├── arch.conf
│   │   └── arch-fallback.conf
│   ├── entries.srel
│   ├── loader.conf
│   └── random-seed
└── vmlinuz-linux

any distro doing that

I meant manually from the cli. I’m not aware of any GUI tools having support for the special LVM features either.

I’ve tried to set up rEFInd but couldn’t get the proper configs / kernel parameters to work for my LUKS-enabled setup. If you’re willing to try another loader out, I was able to make systemd-boot work with both plymouth (flicker-less loading), luks (with graphical prompt), and secure boot too.

Tumbleweed solves the first issue as well by running BTRFS by default on root with snapper configured. I’ve done a few rollbacks in the 3-4 years I’ve used it, and it’s way better than trying to fix an Arch system with pacman. I could get the same effect with Arch, but most users aren’t going to consider BTRFS or ZFS on root with Arch (I had BTRFS on /home on Arch, but that didn’t help much).

What about LVM snapshots? I assume everyone sets up LVM nowadays anyway.

Nope, all manual. If Arch had something integrated then Manjaro would have it.