Creat

I like the use of color. Only where needed. Good emphasis.

I have no idea what people keep talking about when they say Arch/CachyOS is “unstable”. I have had so many more issues with running Debian (usually on servers) over the years. Since I swapped my desktop to CachyOS over a year ago, I have basically no issues at all. Just one very minor thing that fixed itself after a few days (bug in kde on new version released). For like 15 months of use, that’s spectacular compared to any other system I’ve ever used (especially including Debian and of course Windows, obviously). What exactly is the goal? How do you make “no issues” and “it just works” more stable?

Doesn’t always help. There was a controversy a few years back that some TVs that are not connected to the Internet will use other TVs of the same manufacturer they find in WiFi range as a relay to offload their telemetry to the manufacturer anyway. I can’t remember how or if that was ever resolved. Or if it’s even illegal (anywhere).

I didn’t say “it suddenly breaks”. I said I have more issues with it, which is decided different from “it just works”, which has been my experience on CachyOS. Specifically I mean issues with installing (up to date) software, or using software that has requirements that I just can’t install the required version cause the repo has a version from 3+ years ago. Not everything has to be “bleeding edge”, but being so stable that everything is utterly outdated is also a kind of unstable. Sometimes this goes so far that the “stable” version shipped by debian is already unsupported upstream with all the security implications that entails (I had that once with PHP, I think).

Being European, I’m assuming slimbooks aren’t really it easily available? Repairable, Linux-first. Very happy with mine.

Compare the other extreme Debian, which is very stable. In the sense that is unchanging, sure. But that’s one hell of a bad word to describe that in this context. In my experience the incompatibilities caused by only ancient versions of things available in the repo of even a newly released Debian are not helpful. Stable wouldn’t be the word I choose to describe the situation, or the fiddling and tinkering that results from that. Often having to go outside of the repo to solve, defeating the whole point of said repo. Arch in my limited experience is much more stable, in the sense of “just works” and always having up to date software. If I want to use something, I can just install it (from the repo), the chance of it not being the current release are slim.

Stable vs Unstable does not mean anything to do with bugginess or prone to breakage It would be great if that’s how the words were actually used, but in most discussions I’ve seen it is certainly not the case. Also, when talking to new users, they are supposed to magically understand and know the word is used in a niche way in this context? It certainly won’t be what they take from it when hearing or reading it. Unstable means packages update frequently including major versions That’s what we have rolling or bleeding edge for. Sure, unstable can mean that when used within the same project/context. So having different releases be stable and unstable for the same thing, but across projects/distros that’s just confusing, especially for new people.

If he can't even install an addon for a browser, what do you think he can do with DNS?

This causes me to question who spent their time finding out the Jell-O consumption with what looks like a finer resolution than just by state. Like why?

No company that doesn't allow you to install browser add-ons will allow you to run a pi-hole instance. Not on your machine, and much less as an actual pi plugged into their network. If you did plug an actual pi into the network it would probably reason to be just straight up fired.

I wouldn't think so. I would also assume that direct DNS requests to external servers aren't allowed in the firewall. But even if they are, they probably can't use a non-company DNS server if he needs to reach internally hosted services. So it would at least require using different browser for internal and external browsing, assuming DNS requests to external servers really are allowed.

There's also In shape, which has it's down sides (some go away with money), but also runs anywhere bring browser based. One of the more obvious down sides is that it's by definition cloud based.

Ah, I didn't even know it was a brand. They might be it.

There's also a dedicated recipe in "bottles", which I think is based on it at least in part. As I'm trying to move away from fusion, I haven't tried it yet though. Apparently it can work, but can also randomly break with updates...

There has been a lot of advances even with Nvidia in recent years. Assuming the GPU in the laptop is semi-modern (not sure if it's 10xx or 20xx and newer, but one of those), you should be able to just install any modern distro and it should just work. This is especially true for gaming focused distros (like CachyOS), which doesn't have to be used for gaming btw. They will auto-detect just fine in the installer and there is zero effort or tinkering required.

I’m remoting into my work machine with 4 RDP in a similar way, also using multiple (local) screens. I happen to be on CachyOS (Arch), but I would assume this works on any distro. I just call xfreerdp3 directly with the appropriate command line options to span my local monitors which I want to use. I only use 2 of the 3 I have, as the 3rd remains for my local stuff. Zero issues. Just works once setup.

In times of pre-optimized repos (like CachyOS) it seems rather redundant from a performance perspective. Other reasons remain valid though (learning or specialized optimizations or requirements). Alternatively, it can also be considered wasteful (electricity/compute) when everyone compiles their whole system instead of doing it once in a central server.

I didn’t claim anything is bad, anywhere. Also I didn’t “try to use Debian in a way it wasn’t inteded to be used”. I am using debian on 90% of my servers/vms/containers to this day. Have been for literally decades. To give a specific example: I was running a nextcloud, which required PHP, and wanted to update that. The newer version reuqired a higher PHP version, because the currently installed PHP version was EoL and not supported anymore (by PHP maintainers or Nextcloud). So updating required removing the debian-provided PHP version and installing one from other sources (external repo or compile from source), which honestly defeats the point of a “stable” distribution if the software provided is EoL, doesn’t it?