most fears are kinda like intuitions, where you come up with scenarios of things going downhill, they can definitely help you skip a few such scenarios
If you want set it and forget, you can try immutable distros like fedora silverblue, if you use bottles for running games, you can look at bazzite. If you want to tinker, then debian/arch/fedora minimal installs and build what you want
Going for 6-7 years - you need to keep a few things in mind
depending on usage - battery would have to replaced once or twice - so machine has to be somewhat repairable.
a subset of above - 2 or 3 cleanings per year
also try to find repair guides for your device, the harder it is to repair, less good of a deal it is. For my old laptop, i have to not only remove all of the motherboard, but then de-rivet a back plate, and then replace keyboard and re-rivet. This forced me to buy a external keyboard.
go for a good display - at this price, tn is very common, my old laptop was tn, and it sucked. go for IPS. (difference in price would be $10)
if you are flexible with budget, don't buy really old stuff. Anything from last 3-4 or even 5 years is fine, but any older is definitely not. since you want to future proof, going for maybe $100 more for a better cpu may even pay well, if you amortize the cost over 4-5 years
go for something not plastic body - my last laptop was plastic body, and in nearly 2 years of daily commute and medium to heavy usage, all edges broke, and in 1-2 falls, i even had display bleed. Unscrewing and screwing back made plastic bits fail over time. If you can find a metal body, then great, if not, try to get something which has parts of body metal reinforced (my current one is this)
whatever hardware you get - please check linux compatibility beforehand. for laptops this will include keyboard - touchpad, wifi cards, and so on
do not go for a gimmicky device
Don't be overwhelmed by linux. These days, operating systems are anyway glorified boot loader for browsers, where people do everything. If you need any help, post in communities and you will find help. You can also message me if you would like that.
what is your budget? for hardware, I would either recommend a used laptop, or some entry level laptop. For a scale, I bought something for 500$ USD (did not buy in US, converting pricing to it) and for that I got - a recent-ish 8 core cpu, with a good (relatively) igpu, 24 GiB Ram, 1 TB storage, and 50Whr battery. If you want to target for 300$, you can roughly halve these specs, and get reasonable deals.
For distro - Anything works. If you want something to set and forget - pick a immutable distro like Silverblue. All distros essentially will act same, don't try many. What you may want to try is Desktop environments (you can either check youtube videos, or project webpages). If no windows is installed, manufacturers either put opendos on it, or just plain blank, in either case you would prepare a installer media (instructions available on all distro websites, it is easy), go to bios, allow usb booting, then plug the usb, while booting select the media, and start. Then most installers are guided enough to help you.
the battery thing is real. I basically can not find a laptop with weak/low power cpu and igpu, but a huge battery. I get that we can not do more than 99whr, but for weak stuff, I can not find anything above 50 practically.
to add to it, you "can" add anything arbitrary, but it is not same as downloading a executable. Due to some really weird reasons, many parties were interested in using pdfs like interactive forms, for example some government forms, where you can fill a field, and you can add scripting to execute upon input and convey back. It is somewhat like javascript for pdfs, and then the onus is on the pdf readers to be compliant enough to execute such scripts, and provide enough access to your system. Many minimal pdf viewers do not implement these features, or for example pdf viewer in firefox has the option to execute, but disabled by default.
happy you are all good. Some people who are not well find there lives to be lacking, and long for some imaginary things. And sometimes just asking directly helps
i did not necessarily me mean our as in the person who is dreaming, our as in mostly humans, it is like a diorama we run, not exactly playing sims in our mind
i don't know how the /s in the middle looks, if you just want it to appear verbatim, use the code mode /s, to use it, wrap whatever you want to keep verbatim between pair of 3 back ticks hello
sga @ sga @lemmings.world Posts 9Comments 311Joined 6 mo. ago
i know, but i in my right mind can't give any money to google