If you already have a router tying these two networks together then you should NOT also have two NICs in one machine tied to both networks. Pick one or the other, you can’t have both. If you think you need both then you haven’t correctly considered your network topology.

This sounds familiar. Can you verify if you’ve enabled net.ipv4.ip_forward=1 in /etc/sysctl.conf? If you have to make a change, then issue sysctl --system to reload the updates.

Sure. You install your DE first, and then start installing software like browsers, email, etc. The net install disk is just a barebones system to get you up and running and then you install whatever you need from there. If you’re building a desktop them you might want a DE. If you’re building a server then you might want web or email services. The basic installation can be expended to include everything you want for that particular machine.

The advantage of using a pre-configured full setup is that you don’t need to know the name of all the packages you want to install, and typically you can still remove the ones you don’t like. Even with the DE you will probably find that the package also installs a number of common tools like task bar widgets or file managers. So in making a truly custom system you will have to hit google quite a bit to find the things you want to install, but then you learn what all those various packages actually do. Even the GUI login screen has multiple choices to select from which give you different ways of managing the logins. That’s one of the things most people really enjoy about linux – almost every type of software has multiple choices (like Firefox vs Chrome) so it’s easy to build up a desktop that suits your particular needs.

1. Have you looked at Mate Desktop? It’s based off of an earlier version of Gnome but I find it much more familiar to the way things used to be managed on Windows.

2. That’s going to come down to the specific hardware. A lot of vendors build their devices to only work under Windows but there are a lot of smart Linux techs who have been able to reverse-engineer working drives. Your best bet is to find a hardware compatibility list and see how much support your particular laptop has.

3. If you look at Debian, you can get the “net-install” image. This doesn’t even install a desktop environment, it simply boots you to a command line and you can install whatever you want to use. Many other distributions probably have a similar installed available, it’s just a matter of deciphering what the names mean.

4. If you install something as root, or if it’s installed by the system during the initial installation, then yes you’ll need root, but more likely you will use “sudo” which gives your user account the temporary access needed (if it was set up with that access). Again, going back to something like Debian’s net-install, everything except the core OS would be installed by you anyway.

5. “Rooting” sounds like a term you brought from an Android phone. In desktop terms, think of the root user as being like the admin on Windows. You only use it when needed, like when you’re performing a system update, otherwise you do everything under your regular user account.

6. When you install a DE like Gnome, it also adds a login to your graphical interface. If you install a second DE, then on the login screen you are presented a choice as to which one you want to use this time. If you want to switch, you just log out and select another one from the login screen. You can have as many as you want, just remember that this loads a ton of extra stuff on your system. It’s ok to play with, but then I would suggest uninstalling the ones you don’t like.

7. Wayland is the core of the DE. The previous system was Xorg, but both are still in common use. Docker is a container system, so like if you wanted to install a web server then Docker would contain all of the modules for that software independently of anything else you have installed. This means that a system update is less likely to break something (although that’s already pretty unlikely), but it does require more storage space.

The closest thing I have is Ghostery, which is just an inspector. I don’t use any extensions to modify the code of a page, so yeah I’m not sure either. I also use Firefox, just checked this at work and I’m seeing the same results. And the dev tools here agree with your findings – both normal and <em> text are using the same font. The only thing I can think of is that the font itself (on my Linux computers) have a different “A” for the two styles. Ah well, not something I care enough to dig in to further, I just thought it was odd to see that discrepancy.

Yeah I think at the time it was a known issue that this software wouldn’t run properly in wine and I just never tried again in the last 14 years. I’m not worried about bricking the ECU, I actually have a spare sitting on the shelf, and even if it did get bad enough that I couldn’t fix it, I could probably take it to the dealer and have them re-flash it for me. Funny thing is, after going the rounds with their service guy trying to get the programming corrected from changing my gear ratio (I ended up giving them a VIN of another vehicle that came with those gears), they weren’t able to change the programming to my own VIN but the truck still ran. No worries, because my software CAN change the VIN, so once I got that squared away it’s been perfectly happy with all the new programming. I have to admit, there’s a satisfaction in telling the dealer THIS is how you fix the problem, and when you’re done with it I’ll fix the rest of the stuff you can’t do.

Not to change the subject, but your italicized “are” made me realize that Lemmy uses a different font for italic content (see the letter A). There’s another message down below deleted by creator which has the same style. I know, it’s a weird thing to notice, but there was a blog I saw this week mentioning that scammers are using websites with a (I think?) Cyrillic ‘a’ that looks just like the italic one here to fool people into thinking they’re visiting a legitimate site, so that little discrepancy stood out to me today. At least now I know I’m paying attention! 😆

I can almost say the say thing, but I actually have a small Windows laptop dedicated to some software used for reprogramming the computer in my truck. I’ve never tried to run it under wine, so I might not need the laptop, but I very rarely use it anyway. Everything else in the house, from our android phones and tablets, to the entertainment system running from a raspberry pi, up to our laptops, desktops, and my stack of servers all run linux exclusively. Funny how they all run smoothly for years at a time.

I’m not sure about anything that does rolling backups of full disks, but I have used rdiff-backup for years for rolling backups of individual files. The format for the backup is similar to (and based on) rsync so it’s fairly easy to script. For complete servers I just keep a copy of the install image on hand, in a catastrophic drive failure I can do a new installation to a new drive (creating the partitions, grub setup, etc), then restore the latest backup. An alternative might be to use dd and create a full drive image file to use as your starting point in a full recovery.

One thing to keep in mind though is that the backups should NOT contain any system folders like dev or proc that get generated at boot. If possible, when making a starting image with dd, you want the drive to be separate and not part of the running OS, because some folders like dev and var have a basic set of files in place needed for the boot process which may be different than the final version you see after the OS is up and running. That’s why I find it easier to just plan around a clean install to new drives when needed.

At that capacity, I’ll cast another vote for SSD if at all possible, but you can certainly get small HDDs pretty cheap now.

If you want the easiest and cheapest way to add more drives, do a search for “sata port multiplier”. These cards go for around $25US on Amazon or Ebay. They are NOT fast! It uses a single SATA port to run up to five drives, so all the drives split the bandwidth, but long ago I ran some of them for a few years without any problems. You simply run a sata and power cable from your motherboard to the card, then plug in your drives, it doesn’t even require a slot on your motherboard.

I’ve always relied on multiple aspects for my used drives (currently ZFS raidz2 which itself provides multiple checks, but I also do backups of the really important stuff). It doesn’t matter though, all drives new or old are going to fail and you just have to be ready for it. The worst case is multiple drives failing at once, and I had that happen several times when using a weak power supply.

So far I’ve been really happy with the refurbs from Amazon though, plus the NAS is nothing to sneeze at. I upgraded the server to a newer machine, then realized that allowed me to step up in families for my SAS cards. Basically went from a machine that could push data at 70MB/s (and was constantly behind) to a new machine pushing 450MB/s or more with almost no lag. I run a lot of stuff on my home network so it’s been nice having the new speed, and the zfs pools are providing around 92TB on one set and 22TB on another set so I have room to go crazy. If I had to buy new drives I’d have maybe half that amount of space.

Check the SMART info on the drives you receive, if they already show signs of failure then return them immediately.

For “reputable” sellers, I typically go with ones who are selling drives in bulk and have a history of more than five minutes with lots of recent good reviews. I took a chance on a good deal for a “new” drive once and received an obviously used drive where the previous person had cut out the SAS bridge (these pins are required to power on some SAS models like what I bought, so the drive was a paperweight). You’ll get some lemons, but I’ve been running mostly used drives on my fileserver for the past twenty years and had reasonably good luck from bulk sellers (and easy replacements when I got a bad drive from one of them).

Oh, you might also check refurbs from Amazon. My current fileserver is running a set of eight 18TB refurbs which were significantly cheaper at the time, but the drive model itself was only a year old so I knew there couldn’t be much wear on what I received. And Amazon has a good return policy.

Any $5 laser mouse with a scroll wheel from ebay/amazon is fine for me. Plug it in and it just works. I prefer certain shapes for comfort but I’ve never had a mouse NOT work in linux.

Actually I AM that guy with a small font size and super-packed density. The more information on the screen, the faster I can take it in at a glance and find what I need. Sorry your brain doesn’t work that way, but less clicking and scrolling absolutely does affect my productivity and my idea of usability. For example, I find it highly annoying when a website changes to a larger spacing on a drop-down list and suddenly something I used to be able to immediately click on now requires me to scroll down several times to find the option I want. I’m not sure how that’s supposed to increase usability.

Heh I just ran into the invisible icons issue recently, for whatever reason I am no longer able to accept Teams meeting. Yeah that’s definitely a shitty thing. But more whitespace? In other words, less visible information on the screen which requires more scrolling or clicking to other screens? Sorry, that just sounds annoying and less productive.

What do you find “old-fashioned” about Thunderbird? Do you not consider an interface “new” if they don’t change it and hide all the common features every five minutes like Microsoft does? It’s an email client, you read your emails in it. How would you do it better?

56 here, I discovered and was blasting through first season last Summer when I realized that was the only season so far so I started pacing myself… and then all the crap came down about it being cancelled and I was flabbergasted. I mean yeah it’s an animated series, that doesn’t mean it’s ONLY for children. Hell look at how many animated shows Star Wars has and I would never expect something “Bad Batch” to be marketed as a kids show. Prodigy feels more like DS9 to me, showing the really dark side of the Federation and things that slip through the cracks, it’s not the typical show where everything gets wrapped up in the last five minutes and you move on to the next episode, and I really love that. Hopefully it will get picked up for more seasons but meanwhile I’m taking my time going through the episodes.

Kinda like dealing with Microsoft Office… You can’t find anything in that “new” toolbar design because so many options are grouped together in ways that don’t make any sense. I’m so glad I never had to actually use that garbage even though I did enjoy the older versions.

It’s been a long time since I used Windows myself, however one of the big reasons for switching was the inherent instability. At once point I was developing code in Visual Studio and constantly loading/closing quite a few different programs to test things out. Windows just didn’t seem to handle memory-recovery and I would have to reboot every week or two (usually because of the whole OS locking up). In comparison, I run a variety of software on my linux machines which can involve anything from testing code in multiple browsers to image editing to 3D CAD drawings. Sure that tends to drain the memory but when I close something I get that memory back. I’ll frequently get down to the last 100K of RAM, close a couple programs that may be holding large caches (Firefox really hates me having hundreds of open tabs), and then I’m right back up and running again. Reboots may occur about every 6 months.

I have to support other people using Windows at work, which reminds me how much I’ll never go back to it. My biggest frustration is that Microsoft is constantly changing things. Hell you can’t even directly reach the control panel any more, you have to run searches to find the specific item you want. Want to check the settings of a certain printer? Good luck, that doesn’t seem to be available in the right-click menu any more. It’s just all these idiotic changes making it difficult to actually use or maintain Windows. Why should I have to google how to find something when everything used to be under the control panel or a right-click away?

I wonder if this is a matter of countries refusing to choose a side (by not recognizing new countries), or if they ARE choosing to side with the aggressive countries?