I played with a pi-hole setup for a bit. It was nice. I got distracted and set up NextDNS. That’s where I am now.

I like I can easily turn it on/off when I just need to do something and no time to fuss with it.

I’ve got a home server, just not fully setup and going yet, but someday…

Any thoughts on why I might do pi-hole over something like NextDNS? I think the cost is roughly $1/mo.

Why the pain of Arch? You probably fell in love with the rolling release, wiki, and the AUR.

If their computer can handle running a windows vm on virtualbox, I’d recommend that over dual boot. Windows update will almost certainly cause issues on boot…eventually.

Jump into Linux with both feet. Use the vm as a crutch or a bridge to windows only software.

Follow the advice below… backup everything. If you have a 2nd hd, this makes it easier to keep files and is separated.

If you’re prepared to reinstall, it’s easy to nuke it and try again. It’s part of learning and sometimes easier to troubleshoot.

Bard on my experience, Mint is probably the best gateway distro into Linux from windows. Debian and Ubuntu forums are relevant and useful. My wife and I are both IT professionals, and mint was just “natural”. She couldn’t care less what os, de, or wm is in use as long as it gets it done. She’s got mint on one laptop and Debian with gnome on another.

Once they decide they want something different they can find what meets those needs nice they have their bearings and a “need”.

Ubuntu never really hit home for me for some reason.

I wanted to move off mint, because I wanted the gnome DE. Yes, I did successfully slam gnome on top of mint, more as a can I do it vs should I do it exercise. Then I wanted something further upstream and went to Debian.

Then, I started tinkering with Endeavouros. This has allowed me to learn more about how things really work and WHY they work the way they do. Documentation on arch to me is second to none. Until I had daily driver Linux experience and spent some time tinkering, this was just overwhelming.

I for one welcome our new overlords. May you be fair and just; never making infamy in yepowertrippin’ bastards!

Thank you for your contributions!

I got one from my utility company. They installed it at the meter. It was about $400. Once it’s tripped, it will have to be replaced, but if something happens significant enough to trip that, I probably (hopefully) saved a lot of other large appliances and HVAC.

It might be that I’m looking at this from a US perspective. Craig’s list has been a bit rough when I’ve tried it. Scammy and shadier people. I hope you’ve had better experiences here than me.

I found cash converters out of the UK. Is that correct? It seemed comparable to a pawn shop at first glance.

Ok, I feel old. The only reason facebook has any relevance to me is the market place. What’s the best alternative?

Thanks, I’ll dig into that one sometime!

In my experience, not much, but I’m a marginally functional newbie. Mint manages things for you fairly nicely and has been the best, it just works with out messing with much/anything. (At least for my hardware)

I managed to get gnome working smoothly on mint and have been happy with it. I started and returned here since I last ditched windows as a native OS.

The only thing that has made me consider distro hopping from mint is AUR on arch and gnome, though I’ve been successful so far.

Part of trying the distros that are more advanced and give you more explicit control and configuration is the sense of accomplishment and it makes you figure out how and why things work the way they do. It holistically builds your velocity in your understanding of Linux. (Or gnu whatever that nuance is).

If your machine has enough resources it is super easy to host VMs of anything you want to try. You can try them all, and it won’t cost you anything but time!

Kagi has been the closest thing to the google from 2003 that I’ve encountered in a long time. I’ve not tried their assistant that’s only available on the ultimate plan as it’s too expensive for me. FWIW, I have the duo plan, soon to move to the family plan.

The quick answer usually works pretty well and you have access to fastgpt if you want more of the LLM effect.

You nailed it. It’s a part of the solution and shouldn’t be a weapon. Trust, guide….verify. You’re raising a “being” hopefully with the intention of being a self sufficient adult, not an over grown child. We have to help prepare them for this world.

I log DNS on all devices. This helps me see if stupid stuff is happening, or if somehow the refrigerator managed to obtain an internet connection.

Sounds like you need to write an app to do this. It seems you want to aggregate data from multiple sources, keep secret, then send.

I’m tech inclined, but not a developer, lots of low/no code solutions should let you get pretty close fairly easily.

I’ll bet you could use a jobs site to “rent a developer” and it wouldn’t be too expensive.

Or find a 3rd party to collect and schedule the email.

I think my email service does something like this, though I don’t use it.

https://proton.me/support/schedule-email-send

Print your business cards on them.

There’s also the xbrowsersync extension if you just want to save and sync bookmarks.

I may be a lost lemming though based on the community…