I’ve seen some youtubers recommend OnShape. It’s a browser based CAD app so it should work fine.

I always forget. Can we do a release upgrade to this or do we have to wait until 24.04.1?

Edit: Nvm. You can update today

sudo do-release-upgrade

gPodder

deleted by creator

• fish
• tmux
• sshfs
• htop
• nmap
• distrobox (haven’t tried this yet but looks amazing)
• zfs (and any utilities that go with that)
• sanoid
• syncoid
• tailscale
• snapper (if using btrfs)

As far as config files go, I haven’t gotten around to automating those so I usually search my nas for old ones and copy/paste what I need

I appreciate what KDE is doing with their DE, I’m glad it exists but it’s not for me either. I only suggest it because it’s surprisingly light on resources for the amount of customization options you get.

Since it’s your first time, my first suggestion is to try Xubuntu (Ubuntu with XFCE desktop) or Kubuntu (Ubuntu with KDE desktop and generally more popular than Xubuntu). Both distributions are lighter on resources and they have an Ubuntu base which means there’s a ton of documentation online so if you run into problems, you will have plenty of resources.

Alpine is small for sure but it is more niche and it doesn’t use systemd which most major distributions use which means if you happen to run into weird issues, your pool of resources will be smaller. Don’t get me wrong, Alpine is great but I wouldn’t recommend it for new users. I don’t know anything about Puppy Linux; maybe it’s fine?

If your machine can’t run Xubuntu or Kubuntu, then worry about trying more niche distros like Alpine or Puppy.

If you run into issues, feel free to ask questions. The community is generally nice but you’ll want to try fixing it yourself first and then including what you tried in your post to get a better reception.

Embrace the terminal. It’s daunting at first but it’s such a powerful tool. Don’t use sudo with every command. Don’t paste random command in the terminal without doing a little research to understand what they do. Again, ask if you need help, you won’t learn everything overnight.

Good luck!

Edit: Linux Mint is also probably a good choice. Never used it myself but I’ve heard good things.

Hardware. I do all my work on a laptop and those Apple M series processors have been amazing for performance and battery life. I’ll stick with a Mac until those Qualcomm X Elite CPUs start getting shipped in Windows laptops next year. After using this Mac for the past year, I think I prefer Windows and WSL over MacOS or Linux. This whole post only applies to laptops though; Linux on desktop and servers for life.

Plex

At the time, Windows was updating and restarting whenever it felt like it which would stop my Plex server from running until I logged back in. Windows and Macs are now just thin clients that allow me to connect to all my Linux servers.

You got a power button too /s

Sort of. I still haven’t been able to snag the top of the line CM4 (WiFi, 8gig ram, 32 gig emmc). I’ve seen a handful of CM4s with different configs that I don’t want. But for the 4B, yeah they can be bought now.

Edit: haven’t been able to snag one in my region*

I did it a few years ago, although I had an AMD GPU.

It works surprisingly well but games that require anti-cheat software (ex. Valorant) won’t work.

The only other good solution that wasn’t mentioned in your post is to just buy and maintain a dedicated windows box. Short of that, GPU passthrough is a great option