Some Computer Changes

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user 55

Just a Drifter
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So over the years I have been stuck with win-blows for an operating system. They and its "owner" are corrupt as the day is long and I have wanted to get as far away from that software / spyware as possible for a multitude of reasons. The primary ones are security and privacy. Some additional changes are for more basic reasons. File storage. Music storage and streaming. Same for video. This computer when finished will not directly access the internet but will reside on an internal network. It will have enough backup power to run for days if not weeks without charging or other outside power. What it will require can be easily generated here.

So as we have discussed, Linux is a reasonable option, and I am now testing another operating system based on "Arch". So far even with testing on an antiquated system is seems to be able to do everything I expect and more while remaining secure. I am adding a screenshot of the wallpaper for fun. I might create a "daily driver" if the testing continues to impress me. I know some other tech type folks here might enjoy too. I will have several gigabytes of archives stored so it has to be error free and reliable. Time will tell.

Screenshot from 2022-11-07 22-07-18.png
 
This sounds like a neat project. Archlinux is a good distro, too. What storage system are you using? Are you using RAID? unRAID? ZFS? Something else?
 
This sounds like a neat project. Archlinux is a good distro, too. What storage system are you using? Are you using RAID? unRAID? ZFS? Something else?
Just an older 2 TB ssd right now. Raid would likely a viable choice once I actually decide on a final design. It is a dual boot system with Mint os also.
 
Just an older 2 TB ssd right now. Raid would likely a viable choice once I actually decide on a final design. It is a dual boot system with Mint os also.
Yeah, if the purpose is to be a repository, you will definitely need storage redundancy. I encourage you to buy or build a storage array.
 
Mint is a good Linux choice for new Linux users. It has everything you need built-in. e.g., To play commercial movie DVD's you need libdvdcss2 installed. Most distros do not have this installed. It's trivial to install, takes all of 5 seconds, but a new Linux user man not know they need to install this, or how to do that. Mint has it installed by default.

But not just new users opt for Mint. That is the distro that I run on my main desktop computer. And I'm more of a Linux/Unix guru, not a newbie.

Arch Linux is an excellent distro. But Arch doesn't hold your hand quite like Mint does. I consider Arch a distro for moderately knowledgeable to advanced Linux users. Doesn't mean that a newbie can't use it, but it might be a little harder for them to. However, the online documentation for Arch is excellent. Many users of other distros go to the Arch documentation when they need to find out how to do something.

Arch is "leaner" than Mint. In their default configurations, Mint will use more resources than Arch. However, compared to Windows, even Mint is lightweight. If you have older/slower hardware, choose the Xfce desktop for Mint. That is the lightest standard desktop they offer. Next heaviest, but not by a terrible amount, is the Mate desktop. Heaviest is the Cinnamon desktop.

If your hardware is old and slow, you might want to investigate the antiX distro. That is quite lightweight. And it uses the Debian (another distro) repositories (where you download software from). Debian is a super well supported distro. Solid as a rock. Stable as all get out. Ubuntu (another very popular distro) is based on Debian. And Mint is based on Ubuntu. Since Mint has access to it's own repos, and Ubuntus repos, and Debians repos (may sometimes need some tweaking for certain Debian stuff) - Mint has access to just about any programs you could want. I like antiX, but I wouldn't call it a newbie distro necessarily. antiX has the most fantastic live boot persistence options. And a very nice thing called a "frugal install". These are maybe a bit advanced for the typical newbie to know what they are. But believe me, they are really handy features. Similar to antiX for persistence/frugal, is a distro named "MX Linux". It has more stuff installed by default than antiX, and might be easier for a newbie to sit down and be immediately productive with.

There are a bazillion different Linux distros. Don't get hung up on that. Linux is Linux. What changes between distros is mostly the GUI user interface and the programs installed by default. There are some differences "under the hood" between distros, but most new users aren't going to care much about that, or even realize that there are differences. When you fire up Firefox or Chrome for web browsing, or Thunderbird for email, you're not going to be able to tell which distro you are running that on. It looks and works the same everywhere. You would be hard pressed to even tell if you were running those on Linux or Windows!

Remember, "RAID is not a backup system". RAID is used to keep uptime as high as possible when dealing with hardware (disk) failures, and for speed - depending on how you configure it. For a home desktop computer, I consider RAID useless. RAID might be better suited for a home server in some circumstances. But then, ONLY if you already have a good separate backup system. If you don't have good backups already, use those extra disks for backup, not for RAID. I know many people who have set up RAID at home and when I ask them why they did that, they don't know. If you can't clearly state why you need RAID and what problem you are solving by implementing it, then ... you don't need RAID.
 
I've use Raid for gaming systems over the years for loading speed. If you lose a drive though forget whatever you have saved depending on which Raid you choose. The purple "Arch" based distro is very much terminal centric. Thats why I have Mint around. Sometimes it is nice to just be able to plug and play. Oddly, the wifes laptop crashed hard today. Drive appears to be dead. Some information lost but not really catastrophic thankfully. A couple hours time should get things back. This is why I want a better option. Had it been importand images, documents, etc we would be in serious trouble. Hard copies of documents will always be my preferred option though.
 
Hey, I've been using Linux since Linus Torvalds released kernel version 0.12. I've built thousands of kernels and device drivers and endured hours of installing upgrades. I use Mint because it flippin' rocks!
 

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