phaedrus

I’ll never touch Windows again, and stopped using it over a decade ago. I unfortunately don’t have any experience related to this laptop, but when it comes to dual-booting other OS’s it’s no different than any other machine. I can’t imagine it would have issues with Windows, and System76 has some info on installing Windows

I don’t have to do anything special to run games, though. I pirate a lot, and play legit Steam games as well. Only issues I run into are related to anti-cheat, but that’s nothing new for Linux gaming. Once you’re in Windows, it likely won’t be any different than using Windows on another machine.

I just saw your other comment where you mention wanting to play CyberPunk 2077. FWIW, it runs great on my Ryzen7 model almost highest settings, so I’m sure it won’t have any issues on the Ryzen9.

Good luck with the hunt!

The System76 Pangolin has an AMD APU that’s pretty powerful. I have the Ryzen7 model, but the newer ones are Ryzen9. Comes pre-installed with Pop_OS!, but they also provide firmware packages for Arch, Ubuntu, Fedora, and NixOS. I’ve also tested Nobara and Bazzite on it with good results.

https://system76.com/laptops/pang15/configure

I can play pretty much any game, as long as it runs in Proton normally, with very little FPS issues. Only games that chug are poorly optimized to begin with, but usually dropping the res to 1600x900 with FSR on will fix most issues.

Also, “most economical” is tough these days with the tariffs and all. I got my Pangolin for $1000 shipped, then a few months later the tariffs hit and the price rose to $1500 before shipping.

Being obvious doesn’t mean it’s true, especially on the internet with so little detail given.

If you look at the edit to the post, that is not the reason, so I’m glad that I asked and didn’t just assume.

You could always carry some lumber in through the front door and accidentally destroy it…

Curious for the reason why you can’t get rid of it? Renting?

Believe it or not, it’s still less work than NixOS (at least for a daily-driver OS)

Incredibly simple, free, and quick thing to add for user confidence. Doesn’t sit well with me they can’t be bothered, what else does that attitude apply to in the OS?

It’s 2025, the EFF and certbot exists, but no https? Interesting.

Any who, thanks. I’ll check it out, but I’m a little bit turned off by the above.

This reminded me of my old friend DSL, had to check up on it. Didn’t realize they re-released it!

https://damnsmalllinux.org/

No longer at the 50MB size, but still 700MB would be great for a small OS on this odd piece of older hardware.

No differently than it’s used in Windows, plus a few more key-chords that utilize it. That’s the default in GNOME and KDE at least, and probably other DEs as well.

I’m more interested in what people do with that strange menu key sitting next to my touch-starved right-CTRL. I know it’s for pulling up the context menu, but I have literally never used it for any reason. When I’m 100% keyboard, I’m probably in a terminal and it won’t do anything any way.

Others have said it, but SyncThing all the way. Open source, been around for a decade, battle tested, no cloud, full control over everything.

I didn’t see this mentioned, but you can also tell KeePass to auto reload the database if the file gets updated elsewhere. Makes it so you can run the same KeePass database on multiple devices with live/realtime updates. I’ve used this setup instead of vaultwarden/passbolt on several IT teams to keep the important stuff separate from the normal systems. It’s not on by default usually, but right in the Basic Settings page under File Management.

I have KeePass+SyncThing on 3 laptops, 2 androids, and a home server. If I add a password to one of my androids while I’m out and about (and I have cell data), next time I sit down at my desk it’s already available. Vice versa works, too. If my home server dies, the other devices don’t care and keep syncing amongst themselves. I think I’ve had some version of this setup going since SyncThing released, I can’t imagine using anything else.

Do note that since there is no cloud or infrastructure behind it, sync conflicts do happen when a device in the network goes offline for a while. It’ll never get rid of files if there’s an error syncing, but instead create a second copy with a timestamped filename. If this happens to your password db file, KeePass can then merge the two copies together and sort things out mostly automatically. Over the many years I’ve been using this, it doesn’t happen as often when you’re the only person using any of the devices that sync. It can happen a lot when you share the setup with someone else, though.