I started with a Clonezilla USB a few years ago, but Ubuntu is more flexible and can be used for everything with both VNC and SSH. The GUI is easier for some tasks, and Nautilus, Disk Usage Analyzer, Gparted, and other utilities are all available on the same SSD used for backups.

Power loss protection on SSDs is an interesting addition I hadn’t come across before.

We live in a very windy area and power blinks are common. A high endurance MicroSD was in use the first time the Pi wouldn’t boot, but I was in town and it was just annoying. It was a big issue when the Pi wouldn’t boot from the SSD while I was out of the country.

We don’t have high bandwidth demands so any decent OpenWRT router works fine and supports both Adguard Home and Wireguard. What I really like about putting WG in particular on the router is that if the router is up, WG is working, and the routers come back up without fail after every power outage. A 2nd Wireguard instance still runs on my Pi but since switching to WG on the router a year ago there hasn’t been a reason to even connect to it.

My problems with the Pi had me looking for other solutions and I ended up with a mini Dell laptop running Debian. (Can’t easily run WG on it due to some software conflicts.) It alleviates the need for a UPS and runs for 6+ hours if the power goes out, rather the minutes provided by my small UPS.

One of these days I’ll find a bogus reason to talk myself into upgrading the router with more powerful hardware. Mikrotik looks like a great option and I’ll take a look at RouterOS. Thanks for the info.

Besides adding a UPS, how do you deal with power failures? Are you somewhere where they’re not much of a problem?

In my experience mini computers don’t handle power failures nearly as well as purpose-built hardware.

After several power failures the SSD on my Raspberry Pi became so corrupted it wouldn’t boot, and I was 250 miles away at the time and lost access to my home network for weeks. Overlay file systems work but are a PITA to maintain. By contrast my routers have never had a problem even with repeated power failures, so instead of relying on the Pi I’ve moved my DNS and Wireguard servers to my router.

I’ve been using DuckDNS on a multiple platforms for a couple of years and it works great. Never had a problem.

Sounds like you’ve got a good handle on most of it. FWIW, here’s how I deal with some of the same issues:

For Windows apps I’ve found a virtual machine is the easiest solution. It’s set it up to share folders between Linux and the Windows VM so moving things between OS’s is easy. I’ve tried other methods like Wine, and for the Windows apps I need the VM works best by far.

Did you mean Timeshift? (Time Machine is Apple software.) Timeshift works great for incremental backups and is easy to use so you should get it working, but in my case I also do full system backups every few weeks because setting up my systems from scratch is a PITA and really time consuming, especially for my server.

For those full backups I’ve set up a bootable persistent live USB SSD with Ubuntu. The persistent SSD is fully configured with all software, including VNC, SSH and Clonezilla. Creating a backup requires plugging in the SSD, rebooting and running Clonezilla either locally or remotely. Clonezilla is also also preconfigured so it requires only a few steps to start the backup. Full system backups take about 20-30 minutes to complete but my SSDs aren’t that big.

Enjoy your move to Linux. It’s well worth the effort.

Some Bluetooth/wifi adapters are a real[tek] pain in the ass. The adapter in my HP laptop is constantly trouble and well known for it, but the Intel adapter in my Surface works without any issues at all. At some point I’ll replace the Realtek in the HP with an Intel.

I agree it was somewhat cumbersome to set up Linux initially, but the excellent guide by the Linux Surface folks on Github made it just a matter of following the directions. For me the biggest annoyance was having to use a USB keyboard and mouse until the Surface kernel was loaded. The good thing is once the kernel was loaded everything just works and has for years.

The battery on my 3 year old AMD model lasts 6+ hours on a full charge.

It wasn’t mentioned because the camera works on the Surface Laptop 4.

Not often mentioned, but Surface Laptops run Linux thanks to Linux Surface on Github. I’ve been running Mint on a Surface Laptop 4 13.5" for years with zero problems. Used and refurbished models are much cheaper than the other options mentioned here.

• Positives - Excellent display and keyboard, nice form factor, very light and thin, comfortable fabric cover on keyboard bezel.

• Negatives - Smaller SSD (256g), limited ports, larger display bezel, reportedly somewhat difficult to disassemble, initial Linux installation a bit of a pain.

13.5" models with I7, 16g and 256g ssd are going for around $300 on ebay.

Musk wants the content he personally finds objectionable to be moderated. Racist Nazi shit and hateful GQP posts are perfectly fine, just like on X Twitter.

Same here. I got to a point I wanted to use the OS rather than play with and fix it. Went back to Mint and stayed there.

I am currently using an recent version of Ubuntu live USB for backups and a “serious” error window pops up every time I boot it. Same experience with Ubuntu installations. For me at least, Ubuntu isn’t anything close to stable.

Have had espresso machines for years and can confirm it can be very difficult to find shops that do repairs and have replacement parts. Good luck with the startup.

Is anyone else just done with CAPTCHAS? I refuse to deal with them at all anymore unless I absolutely need to get to the content they’re blocking.

Maybe the ultimate test for a human is when the page is abandoned when a CAPTCHA pops up.

Icons cannot be removed from the launcher screen, they can only be combined into folder. The folders cannot be hidden or removed. Preinstalled programs cannot be uninstalled or disabled. Nothing works until the tablet is registered with Amazon. There is no app drawer. It’s possible to install another launcher, but it’s not possible to use it because Amazon has hardwired the home button to their launcher. (There used to be ways around that but Amazon has systematically disabled each of them.) Their Silk browser is terrible. Most every Amazon app provided is terrible.

I get that it’s cheap and there will be significant compromises, but at least some of Amazon’s apps should be somewhat comparable to non-Amazon apps.

I’ve gotten around some of this by loading the Play store and F-Droid, and blocking Amazon’s servers but it’s clear that Amazon’s tablets are not only cheap but they’re really low effort products built for Amazon rather than the purchaser.

I think it’s exactly the opposite and there’s lots of information and multple interviews that strongly suggest that. IMO Musk is full-on Nazi scum and lives in a nearly impermeable bubble, so much so that he thinks he has toned it down to what will pass in society. It seems he read the room wrong either way.

I installed Plex a couple years ago and when I found I actually had to sign into their servers to access my own content it was immediately uninstalled. It was only a matter of time before they pulled this kind of shit.

Anyone arguing that Musk didn’t know exactly what he was doing is just another Nazi pissing in the wind and they all deserve every bit of blow back they get, pun intended.

The only thing Musk didn’t understand is that he was branding himself and everything he touches as nothing more than Nazi scum for the rest of his miserable life.

I recently bought a cheap refurbished 10" Amazon Fire specifically for web browsing. The author is spot on when he says it’s “obnoxious to the point of hostility.”

Amazon places a huge “Register now” nag across the launcher that can’t be removed without registering, and even the calculator won’t work until you do. Wigets aren’t supported by Amazon’s launcher and it is impossible to load an alternative. There are a host of other deliberate annoyances Amazon has created to make sure the tablet is used for their purpose rather than your own.

It was only $35, but it’s not worth even that much. Amazon has truly made enshittification an art form.

Not a surprise for Roku. The company has been getting progressively worse in the last few years and their enshittification is accelerating. Their recent forced download of an update that requires users to agree to arbitration to even use our TVs was intended to ultimately take control of those TVs completely away from the people who own them.

Right now it’s possible to block Roku’s static ads and presumably the autoplaying ones using a local DNS server like Adblock Home or Pihole, but it’s only a matter of time before Roku blocks everything unless we watch the ads they are trying force down our throats. I’m already in the process of obsoleting all 5 of our Roku devices.

It has taken Roku years to build up enough market share to allow this kind of behavior and it will take years for the market to abandon them. Their executives will claim ignorance as to why users are walking away when it finally hits their bottom line.