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.

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.

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.

After trying out dozens of distros for years I didn’t want to deal with stability issues and troubleshoot odd problems anymore. I reinstalled Mint years almost 10 ago. Mint has gotten significantly better and more stable with each release since.

Now I only use 3 distros on a regular basis. Mint as a desktop OS, Raspberry Pi OS, and Debian (with Cinnamon) for a server running software that requires Debian for support. Debian was far more difficult to configure than Mint even on the new Dell laptop being used as a server.

I still try out other distros occasionally in VMs and using Live USBs, but still haven’t found anything that works as well on my hardware and for my needs as Mint.

I don’t hate you and I can think of perhaps 2 people I’ve ever known that I have hated. You hate someone who irritates you with a few comments on social media.

I pity you.

I used to work for a Fortune 500 tech company that dealt with thousands of other businesses. Someone on the executive team decided that everyone in the company should be actively pushing our products every time they had customer contact. Customer calls about a bill? Sell them something. They have a major problem and are angry about it? Sell them something. Need to use their bathroom? Sell them something.

It just irritated our customers and didn’t result in any more sales. It seems that executive got a job at Microsoft.

You really believe a single Google search is work? Have you ever had to do real work?

I have no problem providing a source for esoteric, difficult to find information, but when someone so entitled they’re literally too lazy to type into Google the precise same thing they’re typing into a comment field they can whine until they’re blue in the face before I’ll do it for them. Users like you can also whine about it as much as pleases you and if you don’t like it you should complain to the manager.

I’m sad for you that you waste your time and energy hating Americans. Maybe you need a hobby,.

2-4 citations are required for the simplest college essay and you’ve provide only one. You should look that up, but that would mean the onus of finding the citation for citations would be on you.

It’s sad that I must point this out, but this is a comment section, not a reference article or college essay. Footnotes and references are not required or expected here and every user on this site knows how to use Google.

No argument about anything, nor will I provide you sources that show thunder isn’t caused by Thor’s hammer, the moon causes tides, or that Ivermectin doesn’t cure Covid,

Microsoft’s use of a keylogger started with a Windows 7 update and has been well documented for almost a decade. It’s not my problem you’re uninformed. If you want to waste your time and energy complaining that a random Internet stranger refuses to spoon-feed you simple search results, that’s entirely up to you.

My friend got a call from “Best Buy” technical support saying they’d noticed her computer was slow and followed their instructions to set up remote access. Unfortunately she didn’t realize that there was anything to be worried about. It wasn’t until months later when she left the computer on and unattended that the scammers took control. Fidelity wired the money out of her account before she saw the notification and Fidelity has been jerking her around ever since. She’s still badly shaken.

I’d put her on Mint, but as much as I enjoy her company I don’t want to be permanent tech support for her computer.

Anyone who’s so lazy they literally refuse to type the same words used in their comment into a search engine doesn’t deserve to be taken seriously. There are lots of adults on Lemmy, but apparently we have a few children too.

LOL! You’ve got a very long wait. I suggest you hold your breath.

Have you tried a Google search?

I just reinstalled and configured Windows for a friend who’s machine was hacked, so my frustration with Microsoft is very fresh. (She lost 8 thousand dollars of her savings she’s still trying to get back.) After years of using Linux I feel like I’m being punished every time I help someone with their Windows machine.

/Rant

These things in particular drive me nuts:

• Sending everything users do and type (including passwords) back to Microsoft. It’s called spyware when other companies do it.
• Flooding 1/2 the screen with web results when a search is done from the start menu. I’m looking for an installed program, not a potato recipe.
• Requiring a registry edit to turn that web search off and lots of other simple things that use to be configurable in settings.
• Placing ads throughout the operating system and making it difficult to turn those ads off.
• Forcing the use of the Edge browser no matter what users choose.
• Preventing the removal of unwanted programs without editing the registry.
• Forcing upgrades at Microsoft’s convenience.
• Force restarts of the operating system causing data loss for (likely) millions of users.
• Removing more and more user settings with each new OS release.
• Burying commonly used menu items multiple menus deep.
• Preventing the removal of Start menu items. I will never use the Xbox Game Bar no matter how many time I’m forced to see it.

/

Define cheap. 11" Dell 3140’s in new condition with Intel N200 processors, 8GB RAM, wifi, SSD and a decent keyboard have been coming up on Ebay and Woot every few weeks for $170 or so. Debian 12 detects all hardware immediately on installation.