Fucking hell, there really is too much choice of Distros and things. I've settled on something Debian based using KDE Plasma and I've still got several well-known options to pick from. Debian? Ubuntu? Mint? It's just silly. Maybe I should just go for Ubuntu as it's got commercial backing.

Yeah, that's not a path I'm ever going down. I'd probably end up with a web-based GUI that remotely builds everything from the ground up, or something equally as stupid.

Any idea how close a VM running a live CD would be to a real install? KDE was a bit glitchy on Ubuntu, which would make the decision easier, but I don't know if that's just a side effect of how I'm testing.

So, Debian setup lets you leave the root password blank, but not the user password. That seems a bit backwards.

I would have left them both blank, if I could have...

Anyway, I was looking up encryption last night, so they probably already know about me.

I put Linux on an old WinXP laptop that only has a 32gb drive. Suppose it depends how many programs you plan installing.

Here's a turn up for the books. Messing around online when I probably could have been doing something productive, I found PureOS and Purism. The former is a privacy-focused Linux-based OS, and the latter is a hardware company that makes laptops that come preinstalled with PureOS.

What's noteworthy about both is that the OS has FSF approval (i.e, it's fully free/libre open source software) and doesn't look like ass, and the laptops are user upgradeable and also don't look like ass. There are, of course, other OSs with FSF approval and other companies have made their own hardware and chosen to put a Linux-based OS on it by default, but they've always been a wee bit fugly. The websites in each case also tend to look like they've been handwritten in HTML by a raging neckbeard, and are impenetrable to anyone not fluent in nerd. Stuff like gNewSense also look like you need a doctorate in computer science to be able to use them - 'user friendly' is not in these people's vocabulary. I remember early screenshots of Ututo S, and it looked like Windows 95's uglier sibling.

So, major caveat time, Pure OS is in beta, so expect bugs. Distro Watch is littered with projects with high aims that are now just ghosts. And I haven't used the hardware, so maybe it looks pretty, and yeah you can upgrade the innards, but said innards are shite and the laptops have a worrying tendency to burst into flames, or summat. But it doesn't look like they do. And if the OS side of the equation ends up as abandonware, your shiny new laptop should be more than capable of running another OS. (Maybe even Windows if you're feeling kinky.) PureOS is Debian based, like Ubuntu et al., so it can't be total wank.

I've been tracking purism for about a year now. They look promising. The hardware has decent reviews too, if a little on the expensive side. I briefly played with pure OS as a Vm but couldn't configure it properly in the time I had and never got back around to sorting it out.

Cheers, yeah I thought that should probably be enough for most things.

Still having a really miserable time attempting to get a working dual boot system with Windows 10, every single time I've tried with a variety of distros it all just seems to end up bollocksed. Been trying over the last few weeks with my laptop too. Trying really hard to follow the tutorials and understand what is going on, but it all gets fucked up anyway, think it's bootloader trouble, possibly some BIOS settings though I have set them correctly AFAICT. I'm sure I'll get there eventually

Got a Clonezilla image of my Fresh Windows install with all programs I need, to save me a bunch of time anyway

You can now play your Windows-exclusive Steam games on Linux! It works automatically and hopefully you won't even notice you're running a Wine derivative (Proton). I tried it with 3 games and they were fine, achievements and all. Pretty simple 2D games, but still.

https://spcr.netlify.com
A cool database that tells you which games work and which don't

So, while the Linux Mint folder icons are nice, all the other icons are fucking ugly. Anyone know of some nice/simple/flat icon packs I could try? Using a dark theme, if that's relevant.

The blue folders are a bit bright, but the app icons look alright. Thanks. I'll see if I can get it installed for a test run.

I'm not aware of a limit, but not do it think it's common to have more than a few. Can you use DNS at all to put the multiplexing elsewhere??

Yeah the normal pattern is falling back to the others. I think it starts some chatter with them before the first one ceases to be contactable, eg choosing the one with lowest RTT?? There's also the concept of stratum in terms of a clock's quality but I can't remember where that fits in. If there are upstream links it likely depends on how the next hop server responds to that - if it keeps serving up NTP responses then there's no way to know it's list sync, unless the NTP response somehow indicates this, which maybe it does actually? Bleurgh you may need to go read the standards (which aren't Linux specific)...

Hmm. There's ntpq or something that can give more info out? ntpdq maybe? What are you using to think it's not using it any more, more than just comparing times I take it? Slew etc can make life complicated.

I'll have a look on monday, hopefully they will be syncing again, if not im in for a wonderful day. thanks for the advice