Not under normal circumstances. I had some issues recovering damaged harddisks that had lots of errors and retries and sometimes either the USB adapter or the mainboard SATA would crap out or handle it better. But for normal copying of HDDs, both should copy the exact same data.

Glad I could contribute something.

If you want more tips: Choose the channel that suites you best. If you like arch, you probably like rolling distros. You could skip the stable channel and go for testing or unstable and that’d provide you with an experience alike a rolling release model. That isn’t officially supported… Debian focuses on getting security patches into stable, not necessarily the other channels. That’s why only stable is recommended. However, the other ones work great and Debian usually do a good job with keeping them well-maintained, too. I run testing on my laptop and I like it.

(Edit: And Debian should have a good amount of customizability… You can (re-)configure the package manager not to install recommended or suggested packages, and you can also skip the manpages and documentation if all you want is a small system.)

My point?

The statement was: “Replace Joe with the evil orange man […]”

My point is, no need for that. The orange man is way ahead of you. I’d credit him for coming up with that meme, years ago.

Your answer is in the official Debian installation guide:

D.3. Installing Debian GNU/Linux from a Unix/Linux System

https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/amd64/apds03.en.html

Didn’t Trump love to talk about that Alzheimers/Dementia-Test he once took and how well he performed and remembered that 5 things they asked him to remember? This sounds like a joke I already heard. Maybe we can look up the dislike ratio from back then.

I don’t know where you live, just wanted to say if you’re dabbling in this new hobby, make sure they’re not keeping logs after your contract ends. Your IP of today might still be traceable back to you, if they keep the logs for a fixed time after the contract ended. Or use protection.

Hmmh. Something is going on here.

Fair enough. Yeah, the framework is a gem. And I learned about the M2 and M3 Macbooks because some people do AI / machine learning stuff on them and they seem to perform exceptionally well. I don’t think I’m a Mac guy, I’d probably need Linux to achieve happiness. I haven’t kept up but last time I checked M2 support was coming along.

Anyhow, my last two laptops were Thinkpads. They were both good machines, suffered quite some abuse and are still running. The old one is pretty damaged though, display hinges broken and some obvious damage, fan does everything but what it’s supposed to do. But it served me well for god knows how long. I think I went through 3 or 4 batteries until I finally replaced that one. The one after that also refuses to die. But it’s getting old and slow and I’m not willing to spend the money to upgrade the RAM and also buy a new battery. It didn’t last me as long as the one before. I’m just not in love with their current lineup. Next laptop isn’t going to be another Thinkpad. Maybe I’ll go for a Framework.

Uuh. Yeah I believe you. I can’t really empathize with that because on friday I booted the Windows on my laptop and it took like one and a half hours with the fan on maximum and two restarts until it had done the updates of the last three months since I’ve last used it. And then the Steam main window started flickering like crazy and I had to reboot it once or twice more, fix the boot order since it also messed with that and the graphics issues luckily went away on their own. I like to do development and dabble in electronics projects and that’s also so clumsy on windows. You need like 20 different tools to get a task done and windows doesn’t come with a single one of them. No git, no proper editor, nothing to mess with firmware files or flash them onto the microcontroller Not even the driver for some really standard USB/Serial chips. You can’t read some of the filesystems, it can only extract one or two types of archives and always something gets in your way and messes up your workflow… And speaking of workflows… I really like the unix philosophy, it’s soo convenient to use computers with a proper cli. In windows there is no equivalent to that, you’re supposed to use a plethora of UI tools, or nowadays use the WSL and just install Linux. And that’s just one aspect of what I do on my laptop. Guess it’s different for everyone of us. I mean I don’t judge. It’s just, I’ve tried both and I just can’t imagine how I’d enjoy using Windows. But everyone should make that decision for themselves. (Sorry for rambling on and on. I was really a bit pissed before the weekend. And turns out I still am. The “things have fewer issues on windows” somehow never works out for me.)

I’m sorry, I really don’t get all the innuendo here. Are we talking about a Macbook or another laptop here that gets support for 10 years? I like to pay about 1200€ for a laptop and it usually lasts me like 6-8 years. But 1 TB SSD is a bit short of what I’m comfortable with. If I configure a M3 Macbook with 24GB of RAM and 2TB of SSD it comes down to 3149€. That is about $3.400 after taxes. Another laptop I really like is the frame.work laptop. The AMD Ryzen 7 should be plenty fast. The price including 32GB of memory and 2 TB of storage is 1918€ or about $2.070 after taxes. And in the years to come you can fix it and upgrade it however you like. So your $1900 sounds about right if it’s blazing fast and lasts you 10 years. I just wonder which laptop you’re talking about.

If I might ask: Who is leaving and what for? Mac? I’ve seen some developers buy the newer M2/M3 Macbooks. I think they’re nice. But not nice enough to pay the price for one with a decent amount of RAM and storage myself.

No it doesn’t. If you don’t care and just want anything that runs Steam, don’t bother. Just pick anything, it runs fine on most Linux distributions, Windows and probably Mac. You’re fine with tossing a coin. I’d choose Linux in that case since it’s cheaper.

A proper conversation would be like this:

What shall I use?

Depends… What do you want to do with your computer?

Play games with Steam.

Alright, then use XY. Wanna know more?

No.

Fine.

Hehe, I think it’s more the Windows people who spread that urban legend. While I completely agree with you, I didn’t learn anything new here 😉

• make-or-break (adj.)
• all or nothing (phrase)

To me perfect is the enemy of good is: you don’t arrive at good, because you set unrealistic goals for example. But theoretically you all want to go in the same direction.

All or nothing is taking chances, gambling. It’s a different category. It doesn’t have to do anything with one solution being good or bad. It’s saying I want that, no compromises. Like if you say ‘I want to go to Disneyland or I’m not coming with you.’ There’s not necessarily anything good or perfect or bad in it. With political parties it’s often they have to show their voters they’re determined and not taking shit. So they say ‘we’re not compromising’. And that way you have a clear winner and loser. Can be beneficial or detrimental to a goal. The motivation could be entirely different. But both things can also be at play at the same time.

lol. i watched way too much star trek when i was a kid. i would consider myself as someone who dislikes capitalism. but that’s my private thing. i like having money available to buy food, eat nice noodles or go on vacation every now and then. but i wouldn’t be sad if that somehow worked without the concept of money or some of the big companies.

i like this platform. i’m fine, thanks for asking.

I’m not a hardcore capitalist. Also i can’t watch all the ads the corporations would like to feed me every day. So i’m fine with using an adblocker. Don’t give stuff out for free on the internet if you don’t like this. But since you ask: I really don’t like that strategy to commercialize everything, to finance everything by selling ads and user data…

Don’t start with the most complicated distro and then fail.