For years, I’ve gotten by with a desktop at home running Arch and a work laptop running Kubuntu. Now I want a laptop that’s not owned by my job, so that I can use a computer outside the house and not have my workplace own the IP rights of whatever I do on it. My workload is basically just going to be emacs and web browsing, so basically any distro can do it.
I’ve already got the laptop (HP Elitebook 840 G5, secondhand), but now it’s time for the distro. I don’t plan to use this laptop often, since it’ll mostly be when I travel a few times a year. I don’t want Arch, because I don’t want to install 6 months of software updates the night before a vacation and then hope that everything works.
Thus, I’m looking at Fedora Silverblue, since that can apply updates atomically on the system, and I can always roll back. I’m wondering if anyone else has good recommendations for a distro to serve my needs.
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I mean, base Debian should work out fine.
Fedora Silverblue or Kinoite, as you will reliably be able to update the system, even after half a year of not using it.
Updates are atomic, so either an update is installed successfully or no changes to your system have been done whatsoever, there is no in-between state (i. e. broken system) possible.
I know a lot of people have said it here, but Debian.
Silverblue is cool if you want to explore an immutable base and install most apps with flatpak or in a container. If you want to install packages in a “normal” way you “overlay” them, it’s the only major difference
Any mainstream distro should work I feel like. I’m not familiar with Fedora Silverblue so I can’t say anything about it.
Debian
Debian with some low spec DE like xfce or Debian basic DE
Not enough people here saying Debian. /j
You’re right! We need more
cowbellDebian. I’ve got a fever and the only prescription is Debian!
I found the GUI interface for firewalld on OpenSUSE was beneficial for travel. You set your open services and ports per zone: Public, Trusted, Home, work, etc. And when you connect to a network just move adapter to the appropriate Zone in the network dropdown settings. This way you arent a single zone and changing ports all the time.
Do they use yast or is it the general firewall-config gui?
It is a yast firewall module to config it all. Then your regular network manager settings to move wifi network to an alternate zone when you connect to various networks
Since you’re experienced, I think Debian is appropriate. Rock-solid, well-supported, and comes with a decent variety of DE options. I personally rock GNOME and have Timeshift set up for rollbacks if necessary.
Debian base with Sway.
What do you do for a volume icon/volume control?
slightly unrelated but I use i3 and use volume hardware keymaps. would be nice to have a tray alsa source switcher etc. don’t know if one exists. for the stupid work meetings
I also use i3 and volume key maps, the tray icon I use is just called volumeicon and it can be used to switch sources. I think it has optional dependencies to do it though
For volume control, I use Wireplumber:
- To raise the volume bindsym XF86AudioRaiseVolume exec wpctl set-volume @DEFAULT_AUDIO_SINK@ 1%+
- To lower the volume bindsym XF86AudioLowerVolume exec wpctl set-volume @DEFAULT_AUDIO_SINK@ 1%-
- To mute/unmute the volume bindsym XF86AudioMute exec wpctl set-mute @DEFAULT_AUDIO_SINK@ toggle
- To mute/unmute the microphone bindsym XF86AudioMicMute exec wpctl set-mute @DEFAULT_AUDIO_SOURCE@ toggle
For icon I have configured the swaybar. I don’t use notifications, thus they’re simple to set for bindsym (above) if needed.
Thanks! By configure the sway bar, do you mean that it has a way to display the volume? I couldn’t find that last time I tried to get things configured and ended up just going back to i3
I have 4 icons displaying the current amount of volume with white background and for mute I use red background. It was super easy to set in the config file even I don’t speak C++.
Another vote for Debian.
Xubuntu would be a nice easy one to install. Look into Arch as well. I actually run Arch just about everywhere and really like it.
I too use Arch on my desktop (on a daily basis). I think you will find MX Linux to be a great fit for your secondary device. It works like a charm on my laptop.
