LurkingLuddite

Never had a problem with XFCE, even doing some weird stuff with metrics in the task bar.

Though I do not tinker like I did when I was younger, nor do I know what Plasma has over XFCE that’s not cosmetic in nature.

Ironic given XFCE is supposed to be the light weight one and the steam deck is the portable device.

I like both of them, though. Plenty of customizations in both, not that I tinker around much any more.

Everyone is focused on the exit, when clearly there is still a vulnerability to the entrance side. If someone is identified as a bad actor, you do not want your own personal address showing up all over in the logs of who they’ve been conversing with… Regardless of what can be proven as to the nature of conversations, you will now have eyes on you.

So yes, a VPN is useful, just not for all the reasons the comments so far are addressing.

Nice! Sound like you’re on the right track, though might want to keep a live cd image on hand in case Windows decides to take over your boot options until you can finally squash it. xP

Try out some live boot disks then. Several flavors of linux will just boot up, and give you the option to install from within the booted OS. I forget which ones lwt you change things and basically treat them like normal, but some will even carry over any made changes right through the install (if you tell it to, anyways).

Then, you’ll just have to identify any critical applications you need and see if they run on linux, or have any viable alternatives that do, or worst case try to run the windows flavor through Wine or proton or so.

If you need stability above all, I’d recommend avoiding the bleeding edge distros or the young ones that are changing a lot. It sounds odd, but I’ve been digging MX Linux a lot, and I’ve tried a good few flavors over the years. It’s based on Debian Stable, so it’s repos won’t be the bleeding edge, but it has that classic Debian “Just Works” going for it. The only bugs I’ve had have been issues from Wayland that also affect other distros.

You can really tell the people that still operate on that mindset. “Number must go up” is apparently pretty stupid motivation in most contexts!

It doesn’t comprehend anything. That’s the damn point.

Though it WILL “understand” what you did by the algorithms that break down code turning the variable into another token. So all you’re really doing is costing yourself more time and money in the slop machine.

Not just with their web hosting. I’ve had so many updates break random crap it’s not even funny. Recently, a random update I did not approve suddenly had kwallet not working. A core piece of a DE they provide a bundled version for. I had to start kwalletd myself every time I wanted to use it.

It didn’t start that way on the fresh install. I didn’t do anything myself except reboot. Then suddenly my scripts that nab from the keystore are failing and asking me for passwords and what a mess.

That’s just a more recent example. I remember having quite a few random issues on update in the past, though the only other one I explicitly remember is the DE suddenly failing to start. Like, at all. Luckily I had a recent timeshift backup saved elsewhere, restored, and ignored the update notifications for a long while…