Huh.

There’s a time and place for a DIY solution and academia can well be like that sometimes.

The latest Mac Mini can’t run Linux though. It’s M4 and asahi doesn’t even support M3 chips yet. But if you actually got the previous model with M1/M2 you can do Linux if desired. I might not attempt, and just use the Mac as a server as-is. It’s not too different from Linux. Asking the duck for “how to xx on Mac” when you already know the Linux equivalents should make your life tolerable.

Thanks for the recs!

Idk about that, for me it just now refuses to play .flv files that it previously had no problem with. Says Codec not supported (mpgv). The files open fine on mpv player.

Get base Debian, you’ll have more options for desktop environment. Once you get past the installation hassle it should just work for the rest of times. MX has its place but it’s specifically made to have no systemd which may not be something a new user is looking for. It feels very opinionated, is what I’m trying to say. May be your thing of course, but I’d recommend reading more on its philosophy before picking.

8 years is probably not old enough to require lighter desktops if the machines were at least mid range at the time. You should be able to use gnome or KDE as you please. Nothing against XFCE in principle, but it can be a little clunky especially for a laptop. No touch gestures, for example.

I think the most significant user-facing change is what versions of the most common desktop environments are included. In this Debian version they seem to be especially recent compared to previous ones (Gnome 48 / KDE 6.3). This means it’s only a few months behind Arch in desktop features right now. Of course it will get old as time progresses, but for changing from another system now is probably the smoothest.

I was also looking to see if the installer offers an automatic setup for encrypted root with btrfs subvolumes, which is my go-to for laptop installs, alas it does not. Btrfs snapshotting is such a neat feature that I’m going to bring this up for anyone who seems even a bit like a power user. With manual setup it should be possible to do this, so I’ll be seeing how easy it is to do that.

Right. I was wondering about VLC as I have had some weird bugs with it, that’s a shame. What’s your exit plan?

I organise events to help people switch to Linux so for that yes it’s actually helpful to evaluate so you’re not giving out some unhinged advice :)

Specifically Debian changes quite a bit between releases.

Vscode and gitlens for routine stuff, and then just CLI when push comes to shove and I need some more advanced feature.