I’m a regular user of Linux systems but apart from a couple of test Ubuntu installs many years ago they’ve always been containers or VMs with no DE which I can throw away when I break them. The Steam Deck showcasing how far Wine/Proton has come combined with Windows being Windows has given me the push; I’ve made a Mint live USB and it’s running beautifully on my desktop. I come to you, the masters, with questions before I hit install:

  1. What do you recommend I do about disk partitions? I’m keeping a Windows install for the few things that demand it, does Windows still occasionally destroy Linux partitions? Do I need separate partitions for data and OS? Is it straightforward to add additional distros as new partitions or is that asking for trouble?
  2. Is disk encryption straightforward? And is that likely to upset the Windows partition?
  3. Is cloud storage sync straightforward? It’s my off-site backup solution on Android and Windows (using Cryptomator with Dropbox, Google Drive, etc) but I don’t think that many providers have Linux clients. Is something like rclone recommended?
  4. Should I just use apt to install software? I know there’s some kind of graphical package manager (synaptic?), does that use apt under the covers or is it separate? Is it recommended to install something like Flathub too?
  5. Any other pearls of wisdom? How do I keep everything tidy? Any warnings about what not to do? Should I use a particular terminal emulator or Firefox fork?
  • Hugging Stars
    5•26 days ago

    1. Use a separate bootloader partition for every OS. Windows is known for destroying non-windows bootloaders. It rarely, if ever, touches anything else. Many distros have a /boot partition with initramfs since grub might not support booting from the root partition’s filesystem. Integrity is ensured with secure boot, /boot encryption is optional.

    2. LUKS is straightforward, and most non-DIY distros have encrypted root support built-in.

    3. Gnome has Google drive support in the file manager itself, although it’s not exposed to CLI yet.

    4. If you’re not short on storage, I personally highly recommend Flatpaks as they are containerised whilst also come with a sandbox solution. Avoid non-default frontends when using system packages.

    5. Check out immutable/image-based distros like Fedora Silverblue. They are proved to be extremely reliable and need little to no manual maintenance since all changes are atomic and generate a brand new OS.

    6. Avoid Nvidia GPUs. Their proprietary drivers are compatibility nightmares.