It's giving me anxiety 😅

🙏

The linear regulators are still there. It's the rectifier that gets replaced. I guess the main difference in the power side is the high frequency noise of the switching PSUs vs the low frequency ripple of the rectifier, I'm not 100% sure if 7x12s are immune to them at least at audio frequencies.

Box Jades are lighter than Navies, provide insane amounts of tactility (and noise) and feel awesome.

May I ask why you, as a beginner, specifically chose one of those distros instead of more "mainstream" ones?

Puppy Linux's main use-case is to be a live ISO, that doesn't need to be installed to run. It doesn't mean it's not a good idea to install it, but I think if you want to use an Ubuntu derivative, there are better options for a beginner like Pop or Mint that would let you install a lightweight desktop environment like XFCE, LXDE, LXQt and so on.

Alpine Linux is specifically designed to avoid all the core system tools that are pretty much universal on most other distros like glibc, systemd or GNU tools and libraries, which will make your life hell as a beginner if you need to troubleshoot anything as most "universal" documentation like the Arch wiki would be at best partially relevant, at worst useless.

Thanks for this great writeup about what makes Ubuntu its own thing rather than standard.

Thanks, if you know who to lobby for it, please do ;)

You're right. I'm changing this paragraph.

OK I'll reformulate, thanks.

I was running out of steam yeah :D

Thank you for your feedback!

I'm enriching this guide with the info you provided :)

Thank you <3

I wasn't aware of the racism connotations nor the connections to car culture, as English is not my first language. I thought it was some unixporn inside joke and never questioned that term.

I'm sorry for using that term and have edited my message.

From "too many damn Linux memes" to "look at my heavily modified desktop" in 72h, I'm proud of you my friend :D

Edit: removed racist term unknowingly used.

Yeah it supports amd64 :)

Fun fact: AMD started out making licenced products based on of Intel's x86 architecture, and in the early 2000s the roles were reversed when intel had to licence AMD's 64 bits extension of this architecture.

aarch64 are for ARM processors like the one in your phone, mips64 are embedded processors most likely found in a car or a router.

What's your CPU? 99% sure that w7 era CPUs are all 64 bits.

Oh yes that's probably it, flathub doesn't support 32 bits architectures anymore.

Why did you choose this architecture? Almost all x86 CPU architectures from the last 20 years are 64 bits, you should reinstall using the AMD64 image. This will solve a lot of issues and insure you get the most of your hardware.

I can't figure out how to setup flatpak. Everything seems to be working fine until I enter the last line in the terminal:

Assuming you've installed flatpak correctly (sudo apt install flatpak gnome-software-plugin-flatpak)

in a terminal, type flatpak remotes. If it lists flathub, you're good.

Try installing a random app like flatpak install flathub de.haeckerfelix.Shortwave

It shoud work. If it doesn't, post your logs.

I have to type a password in the terminal every time I want to use sudo

This is the intended behavior and should not be changed, it's a basic security feature. Once you've finished setting up you system, you shouldn't need sudo everyday anyway, except for updating/upgrading the system.

I'm used to a desktop interface with a toolbar/start menu that I can pin frequently-used programs to, but with Debian it seems like I need to click "Activities" to do anything. Is there a way to set up the interface so it's more like Windows in that regard?

Assuming you're using Gnome, this is easy to solve using Extensions. First if it's not installed already on Firefox, install Gnome Shell Integration. It'll let you manage Gnome Extensions directly from https://extensions.gnome.org/

Then, install dash-to-panel for a "windows-style" experience, or dash-to-dock for a "macos-style" experience.

After that, you can go wild on the extensions you want to use ;)

If I need to do a clean install, I'm thinking of switching to Ubuntu, since I'm more familiar with the interface.

Don't. Ubuntu will teach you nothing but the Ubuntu way. Debian is as Standard Linux as conceivable. If your only concern is the Ubuntu-style interface, configuring dash to panel to appear on the left side is all you need.

No chance. Amazon has a long history of using a ton of FOSS code on AWS and contributing fuck-all.

No chance.

Imagine, you're in a large company and buying (or more likely, leasing) several thousands laptops each year. This is corporate world, you need to minimize expense, downtime and failing that, someone to blame.

You need to have a supplier with sales, 24/7 support and logistics in your country. Who has stock available at all times is able to replace any broken piece of equipment in less than a business day. Even if you keep a small inventory at hand, this inventory needs to be replaced quickly.

Trust me, corpos never buy from small vendors. They always go to the big brands.