flatbield

My Signal auto updates via Obtainium. That is outside of a store. I think I remember the two updates your talking about.

You can just buy a system with Linux preinstalled. My laptop is from System76. I usually build desktops/towers from scratch but they sell those too.

Installing apps has always been easier on Linux then on Windows as Linux has had large free app stores back 30 years. The question is more are the apps you want in the app store. If not things get harder. I like Debian based distros like Ubuntu or Linux Mint as they have large app stores.

You might want to look at distrowatch.com. Mint is currently at the top.

I envy you. The US is often terrible when it comes to individual rights and protections.

On the other hand, the stupid cookie notices triggered by EU regs are aweful. What a blunder.

I guess it can go both ways.

Is there a typical process you used to request deletion when there is no obvious way?

I am in the US and my state does not have rules that require it anyway so I am not certain if I can make them do it anyway?

What brings this up for me is I am changing my email address. Some places do not even offer that. Plus good time to clean up.

Hint. The secure erase commands are challenging. First you have to hot attach the drive. If you boot with drive connected it will be locked usually plus there is usually a timeout where it locks too. Then you have to use the correct security commands to unlock the drive for erase to work.

You might want to use dd to just copy zeros to fill the drive at the device level. Takes time but will delete the data.

Another option is to hardware erase. I think hdparm can do that but it is a bit tricky.

Another method is to use blkdiscard if it is say an SSD or another drive with that sort of funtionality.

Just make sure your referencing the correct block device with any of these methods as they are pretty destructive operations.

Edit: With dd it might be good enough just to erase the leading and trailing 1MiB of the drive. The partition and backup partition info is usually there.

Edit: Drives can also have drive firmware level locking and passwords. I think hdparm can play with those too.

Keep in mind face unlock on most devices is really not very secure. Apple is maybe the only one that comes close.

Actually I like Cinnamom the best. For VMs without video accelertion, XFCE. For media center and my laptop I stayed with Ubuntu/Gnome.

Work flow. Any desktop will do, that is more about Apps. For me Firefox, LibreOffice esp Calc, Python, Bash, Thunderbird, ssh, Zim, Geany are what I use most.

Consider one that supports MTA-STS. DANE is a plus but not widely deployed.

If EU, you have a lot of good choices. US providers are limited.

Connect the AP to a Gigabit ethernet port. No way that should be limited to 100MBit.

My point is use ethernet not a WiFi connection. Also use an AP with a Gigabit port.

Regrading AP. Why can’t you just use the wifi functionlity and let your server do the rest? APs are really just glorified WiFi cards with a bridge.

I would not want to expose my home server to the internet. VMs have been breached, network stacks too, and any exposed services. I would dump the windows stuff, if nothing else it is not future proof. Consider an AP. Backup consider a hot mount sata enclosure. One can then do swapable high speed backups. I would want off line and off site backups. One issue with rsync is it may not store all file attributes. Just be aware and it may not keep historical snapshots. Some of this depends on how it is configured. Also rsync may not be that secure though it can be too depending how configured.

Edit: Cool concept though. Thanks for sharing.

Edit: Might want to consider some level of volume shadowing or Raid on your server and NAS. Maybe some snapshotting.

Edit: Future proof, have enough memory, cores, and storage.

By the way, how one might do this at the high level.

First, you have to choose virtualization method. Could be any, but if starting with Windows, maybe VirtualBox. When setting up your initial OS you have to figure out how big to make the disk images and what format. If a virtualization format then you’ll have to convert them later when you copy them into a real partition, if in real disk partition to start, one can just copy by imaging partition. In either case, think carefully about the size of the partition your configuring as it is going to have to be smaller or equal to the final partition your going to use for dual booting at the end. There is some question best way to format the VM image so you can actually image it easily to a final partition. May take some thought as you need to think about what needs to be in the final partition and how boot loaders will be setup in the final configuration. Also maybe need to think if the VM should be setup for lagacy/BIOS boot or UEFI boot.

Linux should not have an issue with booting in multiple configurations. That is either direct/dual boot or in a VM. It generally just works. Windows on the other hand, you may have more issues.

When fiddling with low level disk and partition layouts and copying. You want to backup everything maybe both at the file system level, and as full disk images so you can easily undo mistakes. Also on Windows secure boot and Bitlocker can present additional issues if your booting with maintenance media. Make sure you have your Bitlocker emergency unlock codes and know how to use them before doing anything other then windows. You may want to disable/remove Bitlocker when fiddling with this stuff too.

Other then that moving to dual boot from VM should be basically creating a partition into which to place the Linux image, then doing and image copy from your VM image (just the partition, not the whole image), into the new partition perhaps doing the format conversion if your VM image is not using a partition to start with. Then you’d have to setup the boot loader based on some sort of dual booting how to. Too long ago for me to remember the details of that. If the partition is going to be on the drive Windows is filling, you’ll have to figure out how your going to shrink one or more of the existing partitions, and then create space for Linux. There are tools that can do that.

Caution in doing partition layout changes, low level image copies, and fiddling with boot loader and maybe BIOS configs is all quite technical. You have to be prepared for this to take some time, and to be able to restore your original setup if things go poorly. You will also have to have another means of accessing the web/internet as you’ll need to be able to lookup howtos and hints, maybe also download stuff, and format media for things you’ve forgotten to do ahead of time.

If you doing this on a workstation, not a laptop. Another safer way to do this is hot mountable drive drives (do not actually have to be hot mountable). Just have windows on one drive, Linux on another. Pop the drive in you want to boot from and go. The other more expensive method, just have two different computers purchased with the OS preinstalled. As you suggest another method that is not that technical is just run Linux under virtualization in Windows, say with VirtualBox.

Someone who has recently done this should feel free to make any corrections to the above. Thanks.

Edit: Another caution. Linux cannot always boot from USB media with a size larger then 2T. So if using external USB media, consider using media less then 2T. Also if using USB, use USB3 media plugged into USB3 ports for best speed.

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Interesting. Does modern Windows allow booting OEM version into VM? Historically it was a) not allowed by license, b) not possible because Windows tended to hard configure to your motherboard hardware for example. Back in the Windows 7 days, I had to buy a separate Windows 7 Pro version to move from dual booting windows to running windows in a VM and dumping the annoying dual boot config. Back then the Consumer and OEM versions were not allowed to run in VMs. Non-OEM Pro and Enterprise were.

Also, I agree. Linux generally can boot into changing environments without issue. Windows, always a question.

Probably possible but highly technical. Might be better to just run Windows or Linux in a VM whichever system you won’t use much. Exception is gaming or other apps that need hardware video acceleration. I aleays found dual booting annoying unless you have to do it, though I did use it 25 years go when started with linux.

Be aware. you may have to buy a specific Windows version to run it in a VM. OEM versions historically were not licensed for VM use. Also changing hardware configs for Windows historically has been a nightmare without clean install.

Linux works great generally. My wife and I have been using for 20 years since we dumped windows.

The deal is that Linux is great for FOSS but limited for commercial apps. One generally needs to deside based on apps they run. Hardware is similar.

The other is not having the sync,noerror options and having a disk error. ddrescue is a lot more forgiving.