As someone out of the loop on this, it would be helpful if they didn’t wait until 4 paragraphs into the article to state what OnlyOffice actually did. Likewise the article they link to by OpenOffice doesn’t state what EuroOffice did until 7 paragraphs in.

Apparently it’s a dispute about EuroOffice changing the logo when they forked OnlyOffice?

In terms of being “safe,” if you mean in terms of data collection/privacy, just because big companies have an interest in Linux, that does not mean your Linux Mint install is sending telemetry back to those big companies with your personal data.

Big companies have an interest in Linux because Linux is the backbone of server infrastructure all over the world. They contribute to the code, but the code is open source, so the community could see if they were putting some kind of telemetry into open source projects, or the community could simply fork the code if a big company tried to do some other objectionable thing.

I am not aware of any guides, but I know that in order to get the terminal to look like Manjaro’s, you will need to install the zsh shell with the powerlevel10k theme and zsh-syntax-highlighting. I believe they also use either zsh-autocomplete or zsh-autosuggestions.

At least, this was how it was configured back when I used Manjaro several years ago.

I prefer tlp, as it gives me more granular control than autocpu-freq, which I have also used. It allows me to retain control over certain things like USB auto-suspend behavior (a problem with some power utilities like powertop), and the audio powerdown on the headphone jack when on battery, but which was causing popping and audio cutting in after a delay whenever I started a video or application with audio.

Also, if a pkgbuild was updated for security reasons, now Manjaro is putting users at risk by continuing to serve the old version

Hold up, isn’t that last point just a criticism of delayed updates in general? By that logic, would Manjaro be putting users at security risk by holding back the main packages?

Interesting. As a former Manjaro user (several years ago now), my problems with the distro were more with their approach to package management and the AUR. They withhold packages for the main repositories, but the dependencies for AUR packages will always assume the latest packages, so I would constantly get into these dependency deadlocks where I could not install or could not update certain AUR packages because the necessary dependencies were the incorrect version. I view this as a fundamental technical problem with their approach, and was my main reason for switching away.

Hopefully the new structure/leadership will result in technical changes which fix their issues. Though if I am being honest, the vision of a Manjaro with rolling packages is basically just a reskinned EndeavourOS, so I am not sure what they would need to do for me to recommend this distro to anyone.

The best way to go into it is to think of it as learning a new skill. Some things are done differently, some things may require a bit more setup the first time you do them, but once you have your system where you like it, it should be possible to use without thinking about it too much.

Printers generally work fine in Linux. This is one area where Linux does surprisingly well.

For all the games, I’m not sure. They may just work with Wine or Proton, but it is far from guaranteed. I have had good results running even quite old games from the late '90s through platforms like GoG, though.

Good news I guess, but at the risk of looking a gift horse in the mouth, didn’t Intel previously lay off a bunch of their linux and driver devs just last year in July/August?

Sources:

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-SLM-Driver-Orphaned

https://www.techradar.com/pro/linux-at-risk-recent-intel-layoffs-are-putting-key-projects-at-risk-experts-warn?pubDate=20250814

https://www.tomshardware.com/software/linux/major-intel-linux-driver-projects-are-dying-due-to-intel-layoffs-and-corporate-restructuring-compatibility-and-reliability-issues-could-increase-over-time

I use plain Arch for desktop, but for servers I use headless debian. A media center is sort of in between, so up to you. In terms of resource usage on an older laptop, I expect the choice of DE would matter more.

Side question: his job is asking him to run work programs on his personal machine? If they are not willing to provide a work laptop or if it is something that does not require powerful hardware to run, I feel like in that situation I would buy a burner laptop off ebay to run the work thing on.

That’s just my personal preference, but I do not mix work and personal things on the same computer.

Privacy concerns for the most part. Also for better desktop performance and less bloat on my existing hardware. I was not going to buy a whole new laptop just for macOS, and also gaming on macOS is not nearly as viable.

I would like to somewhat dispute this idea that all Linux users enjoy fixing problems for entertainment. Don’t get me wrong, I can and do solve problems in Linux, but once I have a setup that works, I just use my machine normally rather than constantly tinkering with it.

As for how I went about the switch, fortunately, my laptop at the time had 2 NVMe slots, so I installed a second drive and dual-booted between Windows and Linux for a while until I had set up replacements for all the programs that I use regularly.

I am an electrical engineer, so even beyond Teams and MS Office, several of the engineering and CAD programs we use are not supported or only partially supported on Linux (i.e. hardcoded to only work on a specific version of Ubuntu, lol).

I have spoken to our IT guy, and he would be completely on board with using Linux, but even he acknowledges that there is no reasonable path to us doing so, so I just sort of accept it.

Hello from the owner of a 2018 Gigabyte Aero 15Wv8! Neat to see these less common Gigabyte laptops being used with Linux.

That UEFI looks a lot newer than the one on my machine, so I am not 100% sure, but I would assume disabling “enforce secure boot” would be the same as disabling secure boot. Other folks may know more, but I cannot think of any reason why turning it off would brick your Linux install.

As for XFCE vs KDE, I would say stick with KDE/Wayland unless you can really not find any workaround. The difference in resource usage between DEs is probably not significant enough that it would make a difference on a machine with 16GB of RAM and a relatively recent CPU. I mostly see that advice given for older machines with very little RAM.

I’m not sure about that game or the gradual lag issue. A quick google shows someone describing a similar-sounding issue in this Linux Mint forum thread, though. Maybe some of the suggestions there might help? They mention some stuff around LD_PRELOAD= with various parameters in Proton.

Depending on your budget, I often find there are good refurbished deals on semi-recent models on ebay. That’s how I got my current laptop. Most business models will have upgradeable RAM/storage/wireless cards. Externally removable batteries have not been a thing on laptops in a long time, but replacement batteries for common business models should be available as long as you are okay with taking off the back lid, which it sounds like you are.

A quick look on ebay (Your local market may vary) suggests there are some decent deals on 11th-13th gen 13" HP/Dell/Lenovo business laptops in the $300-400 range. Maybe something like this HP 630 G10?

If your budget is less, the usual 8th-10th gen Intel business laptops are always a good option and usually go for $100-200, maybe even under $100 once you get into some of the lower spec or scratch-and-dent models (Also, yes, I know AMD is a thing, but businesses almost always use Intel in my experience). My travel laptop is an old 8th gen Acer Swift with a dent in the back lid, but it otherwise works fine and has handled many trips in my backpack. Maybe something like this Dell 5310 with a scuffed lid? I’m sure you can look around and find something which works for you.

I would say Arch if you are that tight on resources and comfortable doing so (the setup isn’t as bad as people make it sound, just look up a guide online), but Endeavour would get you to more or less the same place with much less complexity.

That said, is there any chance of upgrading the RAM? an extra 4GB or 8GB stick of DDR3/DDR3L off ebay would not cost too much, and would make a world of difference for things like modern web browsers.

My criteria for when to upgrade is simple: when it no longer runs the games I want to play at an acceptable framerate. I have a 30-series card, but I have yet to play a game where I had a problem with framerate, so I have no plans to upgrade. It wasn’t until I ran into a game where I was getting 20 FPS at minimum settings on my old GTX 960 that I decided it was time to upgrade.

One could probably say the same about workstation performance if it is taking too long to run and becoming a productivity bottleneck. For something like that, I think it comes down to an assessment of how much you will be spending versus what percentage reduction in processing time you will see out of the upgrade. If it is only a marginal improvement, maybe wait, but if it would be a substantial uplift, then it is probably a worthwhile return on investment.

Depending on what your definition of “decent” is, I think you may be disappointed. The cutoff for support is around 8th gen intel and AMD 3000-series from circa 2017-2018. Even my old 2017 laptop with a quad-core i5-8250U is supported.

Unless there are specific recent CPU models which are not supported, I think the majority of the unsupported laptops are going to be decade-old 6th and 7th gen or 1000/2000-series machines. These machines already go for fairly low prices on the used market.

It is a somewhat old-fashioned choice these days, but Arctic Silver 5 paste is still my go-to. It is very thick and not prone to pump-out or dry-out. I have systems that I have taken apart where the paste was still tacky a good 5-6 years later. I think some modern pastes are a degree or two cooler, but for a 15W U-series CPU I do not think that is as much of a concern.

Most tutorials online will be for desktop CPUs and will tell you to put a pea-sized bead in the center and press down, but this is more suitable for desktop CPUs with an integrated heat spreader and not laptop CPUs, which are typically direct die application and would probably either leave a ton of excess paste from a pea-sized dot, or risk an exposed corner for a smaller dot.

For direct die, I would suggest spreading an even layer of paste from edge to edge of the die using the edge of an old credit card or the like. You want to avoid stirring up the paste too much in order to avoid introducing air bubbles which could cause localized hot spots on the die.

1. There is no shame in dual booting. That will give you the freedom to find alternatives for everything in your workflow until you stop needing to boot into Windows at all. The preferred way is with a separate physical drive, because windows updates will sometimes overwrite the ESP partition or do other weird things which could break your Linux install.

2. Not an expert in that, sorry. There are plenty of articles online for alternatives for all of those.

3. Linux has no trouble reading NTFS. I have an NTFS network drive, and on my dual boot laptop I can simply reach into the NTFS partition on my second drive and grab files from it from Linux (Windows cannot read the Linux drive, though).

4. Not sure on those specific models, but I have a Behringer UM2 and Linux detects and works with it just fine.

Gesundheit