I tried OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, that was a massive mistake (video codecs broken, froze whenever I tried to enter my password without changing from X11 to Wayland or vice versa (a theme was installed)).

Just reinstalled it with OpenSUSE Leap and at least the video codec issue is gone.

Did need to manually configure my disk partitions to get full OS encryption and now my partition table is a REAL mess.

RHEL, OpenSUSE, Devuan, Rocky Linux, ZorinOS, Knoppix, Debian, Mint, MX Linux, ElementaryOS, Kubuntu, etc.

When I’m looking for a distro (which I’m currently doing) my core concerns are:

• Comes with KDE Plasma pre-installed (or Xfce failing that, I may be better off with Xfce but I want to try KDE).
• That any money I’d give to the project would not end up in America.
• That any money I’d give to the project would go towards organization doing most of the dev work.
• Minimal software set to limit the chance of a malware-infected update.
• Gets critical security patches quickly, ideally as close to straight from the horses mouth as possible.
• Strong security by default, and a strong security culture.
• Monetizes the home user in some way.

Probably to do with the bipartisan laws against criticism of Israel. Probably not the best hill for Grindr to die on so I think they made the right choice here.

I didn’t. And apparently you can’t without trying to short-circuit the motherboard. I just assumed, and assumed wrong.

I just tried to distro-hop and found my BIOS had been locked with a password. Assuming I didn’t set a password that I subsequently forgot (and that isn’t one of the many I have memorized), I figured this might have something to do with the age of the laptop (I have a HP 4540s). If certificate expiration is already affecting people then this might be it.

As I understand it the TPM is for people who have physical access. It prevents them from cloning your disk.

I think with an adequately long password (or an adequately resource-intensive encryption algorithm) you can secure your disk enough to prevent unauthorized access. But the TPM would prevent them from removing your hard-drive and shunting it into a super-computer (so all password attempts would need to be on the crummy 10-year old laptop CPU) so a TPM + password is more secure.

It’s my plan. Not in the mood to distro-hop on my laptop right now, and I got to get through my Epic Games backlog (and also the Steam demos I can’t be bothered downloading again) before I swap over my Windows 10 desktop.

OpenSUSE because rolling release and no IBM. Never used it though.

Currently I use Mint. It works but it’s not the best.

Guys, we’re losing big to mobile devices. Although I’m glad Australia is still going strong at 12% desktop computer.

I’m not an expert but …

• I think Fedora and OpenSUSE are the best (with Fedora leading). Well-funded and they take security seriously.
• Arch and Bazzite are filling specific niches.
• ReactOS and NixOS I think are in beta, but I’m not paying much attention to either.
• In terms of desktop environments I think KDE Plasma leads the pack. MATE is strong on accessibility though.

Popular equals more money and more interest. In other words popularity and quality feed into each-other (not 1:1, but more than 1:0).