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Joined 8 months ago
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Cake day: April 26th, 2025

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  • 400+ installs in the past four years - discarded/donated business laptops that get fixed, cleaned, upgraded with cheapest SSDs and donated to predominantly tech illiterate users.

    99% is ubuntu lts + ansible playbook that removes snap, disables A TON of update naggings, installs flatpak, coupla apps and systemd timer to autoupdate all flatpaks. this is the only thing that has low support requests, everything else we tried (mint, debian, fedora) has a disproportionately higher support request frequency (reinstalls, wifi, fix this, remove that, etc).

    I totally could adapt debian to be as good or even better (fedora with the bi-annual versions is right out), but one of the important caveats is the user being able to install it with minimum hassle if needed and that just would not be doable.

    I’d urge everyone ITT to look at the thing through the user’s eyes and not get lost in “no true scottsman” fallacies. the goal is to convert a user over, not to demonstrate how cool you are. once they know what’s what, you can sell them on fedora and atomic and whatnot, but not as a first step.

    I don’t use ubuntu, have it on none of my stuff, and wouldn’t go out with you if you do. but it’s presently the only option for beginners for use on laptops that has a semblance of a modern desktop OS.



  • this thing is so far off on the horizon based on “things we need”, it’s not even worth discussing. if you’re not a founder whose startup someone acquired for bags of cash and are looking for ways to burn it, skip reading.

    the estimation of like $1200+ for the thing is so disgustingly off the mark, it’s comical.

    instead of 20 teams creating their contenders form scratch, what’s truly needed in this space is scouting out the thinkpad of the existing models. something that’s a gen or two behind but still widely available with at least 8 GB and fast storage. original manufacturer is exiting production to focus on newer generation models and the subcontractor that actually makes them has the tooling to keep 'em coming.

    who’s not gonna take a swing at using the thing when they can have the unit new for $200 or flash a used one for like $50? before you know it, you have a user base. then, when you have the user base and a proven track record, you can try inventing a new paradigm outta thin air.