Braindead responses and honestly probably just bait anyone passing through, ignore this fool. Ubuntu base install(gnome), in my experience uses less than 2gb of ram at idle. (Even less when using xfce or lxqt) Dummy added bloat to his system and then came on here to bitch about nothing. either that or hes a bot, troll or both.

Dont forget the speed lines, flames and arbitrary number for the extra horsepower!

in all seriousness though the heatsink could attach directly to the backplate with thermal cement. since alot of phones are designed to disapate heat from there, great idea!

Hes saying that a HDD or SSD draws too much power for the usb port to handle on his mini pc. This would not be an issue if the drive was externally powered or, for example of he used a dongle that has a power input, the usb hdd or ssd “should” (maybe check the specs of the dongle) draw power directly from the wall and transfer data to the phone, so it shouldnt be an issue. This is actually very useful input even if the user does not plan to boot off the hdd. Definitely could have been worded better tho

I was assuming that the user would be using an older phone that would otherwise become ewaste (most phones have built in batteries now), some phones do clock down when at low battery but if you are consistantly plugged in it shouldnt be an issue. Alot of modern devices will draw from wall power before battery, but that doesnt solve the battery issue entirely since the l-ion batts are kinda dangerous when overheated or punctured so unless you have the skills to remove the battery and wire a bypass you are taking a minor risk. but imo ive used phones as permenent gps or as a wifi reciever and in those applications, i did not encounter battery expansion and or major overheating.

You can use mixplorer (6$ google play store) to quickly launch a local ftp or smb server. attach a hdd or ssd to the charging port, buy a dongle (<25$) that allows data transfer, charging, and ethernet. And you basically just made a nas. You could even port forward the ftp to make it accessible outside your network (i dont recommend this unless you are hosting a vpn).

do not expect good transfer speeds but as far as a persistant redundant secure storage this is a great solution. The phone used would optimally have usb c for better data tranfer speeds. But the phone itself may limit these speeds refer to your phones specifications data for that (just google it).

The phone might overheat so maybe slap a usb fan on it and remove the case. If possible make it “float”(put rubber feet on the phone or smthn idk) to allow airflow on both surfaces of the device.

Very cool Idea. Please make an update post and link it in this thread if you make it and test speeds <3

Im using the free version of boost, but theres a whole bunch of features that dont work (such as not being able to view saved or upvoted posts). The main thing I was looking for was a full page feature each post is a page that can be swiped to the right to view the next post.

I also use ddg but im pretty sure they sell your data to microsoft. Also firefox has been under fire for privacy complaints and censorship. If privacy is a concern you might aswell find another solution.

If you just want it to work Id try waterfox (what i use), or some other fork of firefox that focuses on privacy, ive also heard good things about ungoogled chromium.

Hope that helps

Did you even read the whole comment?

just stick with the free version and find free viable alternatives. Libreoffice, kdenlive, etc.

If time is a factor and you just need a distro that “works” stick with what you have, and find FOSS alternatives for zorin. Best of luck

I respected their time and was simply making a suggestion because zorin seems scummy locking default features behind a paywall.

Most distros come with a built in software downloader. If you consider it “work” to type kdenlive and click download ive got nothing else to say to you.

Yeah fully agree, i just wasnt willing to outright call them scummy. If anything the 50$ price tag should drop to ~20$ since the software they are packaging is not even their own work.

Zorin itself is foss but paying for features like themeing and software Is imo against the spirit of linux, they should, (again imo) release zorin pro as the default and simply accept donations. Like most distro maintainers. Even more frustrating, is the advertised features are just normal features and software readily available for free on other distros being paywalled. Its very likely that a user could get all of the listed features on the free version without paying. I also misread the website, ms office and adobe premier are not even what is included. In fact they do not list the specific names of the alternatives that they use in the pro version. I would bet that the pro version Has all foss software that is being hidden behind the price tag. I will do more quick research and edit this comment if that is the case.

Edit: Yeah i nailed it, its all foss software available through most package managers or flatpak heres a list.

Additional Software Included in Zorin Pro: Office & Productivity:

LibreOffice: A comprehensive office suite compatible with Microsoft Office/365 documents: https://www.libreoffic…​

Scribus: A desktop publishing application: https://sourceforge.ne…​

Graphics & Multimedia: Krita: A powerful, open-source image editing and painting software: https://krita.org/

Inkscape: A vector graphics editor: https://inkscape.en.so…​

Blender: A free and open-source 3D creation suite: https://www.blender.org/​

GIMP: A free and open-source image manipulation program: https://www.gimp.org/d...​

Evince: A Gnome document viewer: https://apps.gnome.org…​

Foliate: A simple and lightweight e-book reader: https://flathub.org/ap...​

Kdenlive: A non-linear video editor: https://kdenlive.org/e...​

FreeCAD: A free and open-source 3D design application: https://www.freecad.or…​

LibreCAD: A free and open-source 2D CAD software: https://wiki.librecad…​

Darktable: An open-source digital photo management and editing tool: https://www.darktable…​

ALL of the listed features from zorin pro have free alternatives, unless you really want microsoft office, screen sharing, adobe premier, etc… just stick with the free version and find free viable alternatives. Libreoffice, kdenlive, etc. How did you land on zorin to begin with? Most new users are recommended to use fedora, ubuntu-gnome, and linux mint. To me, just looking at zorins website they do not share the most basic principles of the linux space (being free and open source). I highly recomend switching, if you could run

echo $XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP

This will output the name of your display manager like gnome, kde, etc. The version of zorin you are running is more than certainly using a popular one. Just find a distro that uses the same one. And your user experience will be almost exactly the same. Zorin might have some QOL features but definitely not anything you couldnt implement yourself.

Feel free to reach out here for more help if you run into any brick walls. You already dual booted your pc so i have faith that you have a pretty good grasp on what you are doing. If time is a factor and you just need a distro that “works” stick with what you have, and find FOSS alternatives for zorin. Best of luck

Personally, I configure my entire os before signing in to websites or any software (or putting any privacy critical info on my system) then I backup my os to my NAS using rescuezilla, using linux its usually max 30Gb. I also have a private github repo that i backup my dotfiles to just in case my NAS kicks the bucket. Going back to a “clean” install after doing something stupid kinda sucks but at least all your hard work making it look and feel the way you want will persist. I also highly reccomend doing some sort of offline & off network backup for privacy sensative information. Best of luck, I feel your pain I nuked my system once after days of work and i said, never again.

honestly, I like your perspective better, its way less depressing than how I normally view people. Its still sad to know that people dont praise eachother or themselves enough. but at least from your viewpoint the people I deemed weirdos are not the monsters I percieve. It gives everyone room to grow, Where as im generally more interested in myself. Praising others, Is definitely something I should work on.

I feel bad now, but when I see people practicing basic decency I generally see it as “the bare minimum”, When obviously thats not the case. Your perspective is very much appreciated, Thank you!

but for most tend to exaggerate enormously what other think of ourselves and the truth is, no one cares much.

This is true, but for most people with S.A.D. they were frequently exposed to people who DO care. Family for example constantly commenting on your looks and demenor can have a lasting impact on someone. I was lucky enough to become more rebelious and anti-conformist. but some like my SO, are constantly worried about what others think because its so engrained in them that the people around them are making snide comments to them or behind their backs.

For me, and what im trying to get her to understand. Is that “indifference” is paramount. Its a difficult thing to do but becoming indifferent to the opinions of others is way more powerful than attempting to believe something that isnt always true (that noone cares much). Truth is we are constantly surrounded by wierdos who take a single look at another person and make 1000 judgements.

I find it to be a way more powerful tool to just think about how sad they are, how lonely they must feel, how every foul word is likely a projection of their own lack of self worth. Shrug my shoulders and walk away. Sadly children are not given the opportunity to “walk away”. Especially in the case of parents and family.

I used the plasma-meta package and to be sure I just now used arch-chroot on a flashdrive and removed plasma entirely. Cleared pacman with -Scc and then reinstalled plasma-meta and all its dependencies.

Also breeze-gtk and oxygen-gtk were the only themes in the long list of dependencies. Maybe they removed them to shorten install times and shrink the size of the DE install?

Youre comment is greatly appreciated. it also gave me an idea. Im next going to install downgrade and check if the dependencies change to add more themes in a previous version.

I could also be crazy and manually installed a bunch of themes one night. but i barely put any work into the look and feel of the DE so im almost 99% sure this is not the case

Update this did not work downgrading breaks dependencies and will not let me since force was depreciated…

After some tests with many different keyboards from f-droid, not a single one of the roughly 12 I tested were able to send capital letters. My workaround would be use a keyboard that allows for custom keys and add shift or a capslock input to the keyboard.

I tried “unexpected keyboard” which had the option to do this but i cannot for the life of me figgure out how to actually press capslock when its added to the keyboard its set to the letter A but its not useable through normal means i must have to hold it or something and i cannot figgure it out.

My other solution is to buy one of these

Its a dinky wireless keyboard with a left click on the top left making it holdable like a game controller and all mouse inputs are useable with only thumbs. Its great for using a keyboard from a bed or couch.

Best of luck

I use fossify, im going to test this on my device later after work and see if i can reproduce any issues you are experiencing. Any specifics would help. (just want to see if the problem is limited to you)

I wrote many of my issues with windows in an above comment. But Im still running windows 10 because i hate windows 11 the only real feature they added was the ability to open a command prompt in a directory with right click. Everything else was asthetic nonsense, nothing has changed since windows 7.

it is not secure to be running an older OS or to disable updates and telemetry as i have done. I could use a virtual machine, but anticheat games are usually blocked in vms. I dont have the money to run a second pc, just for windows. Ive been doing this since before windows 11 was even released. I RARELY boot into windows anymore since the only game i play that isnt linux compatable is rust. And even that game runs perfectly under proton but the anticheat prevents me from joining anticheat enabled servers.

To answer you specifically about Windows 11, Its AI was litterally taking screen shots of user desktop and storing them locally without user consent. They quickly shut it down after complaints, and are re-enabling it for everyone with a toggle to turn it off. They know exactly what they are doing. This is a huge privacy and security flaw. They dont care. The less time you are on your windows installation the better.

If you or any other windows users REALLY care about windows id make the switch too, giving linux a larger market share might actually force them to make changes for the better.

You have no idea what you are talking about.

In fact i wasnt even going to respond to this but you are so wildly misinformed that I assumed you are trolling. But you might actually lack the ability to use google or the AI you seem to want to suck off.

You are correct here

There are three different package systems (Red Hat, Debian and Arch) and they are all completely incompatible with each other

But your dumbass actually writes PACKAGE systems. Do you know what a package has inside it? The product! Wow! So if you have the source code… and use a tool to build it on your distro… its almost like youre an idiot.

Even from a legality standpoint, if a company publishes a button that says “click me and I will do x”, they are opening themselves up to legal liability

The irony of this statement is that they do this all of the time when I run a game with kernal anticheat or DRM or even something as simple as data collection from chrome.

But you are correct I very likely devalue the importance of gui for standard users. since ive been in the linux sphere for so long and i did get used to scripting in windows aswell. This is one of those times where i agree with everything you are saying but my entire being wants you to be wrong, because it does not allign with my experience of reality.