Linux

Many years ago when I was a baby distro-hopping penguin, I new so little. And many distros were full of watered down unix illuminati. Very condescending/dismissive/unkind advisory know it alls. Boo! Hiss!

A rather intriguing Linux, not even on version one had a kind user; knowledgeable, patient and willing to answer my noob questions. I had that distro on the back burner, valuing its incredible speed and efficient programs but its screen scrolling was s l o w on my hardware …

And then … I was helped with making use of my very old graphic card. Whoosh, all of a sudden Puppy Linux was viable and still very different, experimental and well … just small, efficient, ran from RAM as root. Basically the way Linux for a desktop could be …

I was hooked in …

I was not much for programming but could support in a variety of other ways. Daily news-letters, youtube talks, curating the wiki, posts on the forum. Testing every release and reporting back etc. etc.

I am no longer active but remember …

… support your distro … My very first act was starting this page … grown a bit since then https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puppy_Linux

I'm trying to set up a Linux laptop for a friend who lives in another city. They have only ever used Windows, and likely won't have easy access to fix issues (not that I'm an expert).

First off, is it a good idea to give them a Linux PC at all? Have others had good/bad experiences giving technophobes Linux?

Secondly, if I go ahead with it, what's a good, stable, "safe" OS for a beginner? I'm shy of anything that's a rolling release (e.g. Arch, Manjaro etc) as "bleeding edge" can break things more often than not. I'm leaning towards Debian or something Debian based. But I've also heard good things about Fedora.

If I was the one using the PC, I'd have installed Fedora, as I've heard it's well-maintained. Then again there's been some good buzz about Debian 12. What would your advice be? Thanks!

Are there issues with sharing /home and other directories between linux distributions on the same system? What about sharing between linux and bsd?

Just curious.

Linux foundation and a number of big names in tech commit top talent and invest on RISC-V. The companies that support this initiative are, among others, Google, Intel, MediaTek, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Red Hat, Samsung, SiFive, etc.

I started my computer today and after the BIOS boot logo nothing showed up. Usually Plymouth's disk decryption screen shows up as my SSD is encrypted. I legit thought something had broken my computer and even updated my BIOS. Still, nothing, just a black screen.

Then I checked Reddit's /r/Pop_OS and many users have had the same problem. Apparently the latest system update has broken Plymouth, so after the BIOS logo one has to input the decryption password blindly. And BAM – then the Pop OS desktop shows up! I'm telling this here in case anyone else uses Pop OS. I don't know whether to laugh or cry.