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mtbcMy laptop computer's probably over five years old. The cheap replacement keyboard from China isn't great and the soldering work I had done on the power connector appears to not be lasting. The HDMI connector died ages ago and the screen appears to be indelibly dirty. It's past time to replace it.
My by-month household budgeting includes putting money away for replacing larger assets so that's fine; I currently budget £800 to replace my laptop every four years. I'll be getting a cheaper one than my current 17.3"-screen beast, less relatively powerful among current offerings, but I expect it to be okay if I still get plenty of RAM (my laptop from work has 16GB but I don't mix personal and employer stuff; I run jessie on that too). Still, I'll wait for my April pay drop and re-budget against the new number before making the purchase. When I say we have to cut our spending, it's not that we don't have ability to make purchases, it's more about ensuring that we spend within our budget and that the budgeted spending does not exceed our actual income. As well as for named assets, I also budget an extra £250 each year for replacing other miscellaneous ones. I had assets like our television in mind there, though our current one has lasted nearly a decade. I started this budgeting after noticing that we use much that we bought when my disposable income was much higher and that it won't all last forever.
A new laptop will entail deciding which operating system to install on it. For over two decades I've defaulted to Debian stable; my current laptop runs jessie. In various ways it keeps getting more featureful and automated and I've found myself feeling less in control of it. More recently in replacing our decade-old desktop machines I installed OpenBSD and I've really liked it, it feels like Debian once did. Still, my personal laptop is probably the one place I still need to be able to run Adobe Flash in the browser, and OpenBSD's position on that is,
I thus get to investigate the simpler security-conscious Linux distributions, which is partly about testing which way the winds seem to be blowing. For instance, on the one hand I read that Docker are adding Alpine Linux images as an option, which looks good for Alpine, and on the other Devuan's front page still tells us about their
I am not looking to start any flamewars here, hence my vagueness about the
Update: On crazy juice and regrets, I am now reminded that Ludovic Courtès is connected with Guix and I already know of him through his use of Basser Lout for document preparation which is another unusual choice that I am glad I made.
My by-month household budgeting includes putting money away for replacing larger assets so that's fine; I currently budget £800 to replace my laptop every four years. I'll be getting a cheaper one than my current 17.3"-screen beast, less relatively powerful among current offerings, but I expect it to be okay if I still get plenty of RAM (my laptop from work has 16GB but I don't mix personal and employer stuff; I run jessie on that too). Still, I'll wait for my April pay drop and re-budget against the new number before making the purchase. When I say we have to cut our spending, it's not that we don't have ability to make purchases, it's more about ensuring that we spend within our budget and that the budgeted spending does not exceed our actual income. As well as for named assets, I also budget an extra £250 each year for replacing other miscellaneous ones. I had assets like our television in mind there, though our current one has lasted nearly a decade. I started this budgeting after noticing that we use much that we bought when my disposable income was much higher and that it won't all last forever.
A new laptop will entail deciding which operating system to install on it. For over two decades I've defaulted to Debian stable; my current laptop runs jessie. In various ways it keeps getting more featureful and automated and I've found myself feeling less in control of it. More recently in replacing our decade-old desktop machines I installed OpenBSD and I've really liked it, it feels like Debian once did. Still, my personal laptop is probably the one place I still need to be able to run Adobe Flash in the browser, and OpenBSD's position on that is,
Adobe does not provide a native OpenBSD plugin. Considering their security record, we thank them for this neglect.Also, I have some longer-term plans that do include Linux so running only BSDs at home seems unwise.
I thus get to investigate the simpler security-conscious Linux distributions, which is partly about testing which way the winds seem to be blowing. For instance, on the one hand I read that Docker are adding Alpine Linux images as an option, which looks good for Alpine, and on the other Devuan's front page still tells us about their
objective for 2015. Or if I really want to drink a whole lot of crazy juice, which I've been known not to regret on past occasions, then I could look at distributions like GuixSD.
I am not looking to start any flamewars here, hence my vagueness about the
various ways. Different users have different needs which are perhaps best served by different things. Still, over coming weeks I'll have my ear to the ground a bit more than usual in trying to decide which Linux distributions seem to have long-term viability and an interest in keeping things simple, maintainable and secure.
Update: On crazy juice and regrets, I am now reminded that Ludovic Courtès is connected with Guix and I already know of him through his use of Basser Lout for document preparation which is another unusual choice that I am glad I made.
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Date: 2016-03-13 04:12 pm (UTC)