Ventoy? Linux live iso files aren’t too big less than 5Gb each. You could toss on a handful of utilities like memcheck, clonezilla, and a hdd eraser. Then a few isos of distros you want to try. Adding and removing isos is a breeze with ventoy.

Ugh, how could I forget?

I want to see a seamless roaming standard so a grandma can buy a random brand’s wifi extender, plug it in, connect it to her ISP router’s wifi and have the same ssid through the house. No needing to jump to NANA-SWIFI-EXT.

I would happily dedicate a corner of my garage for a big sodium ion battery.

Also, fun fact they can charge and discharge faster than lithium ion. Also, their chemistry doesn’t lead to spontaneous combustion. Perfect for a house backup.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/07/trump-and-congress-finalize-law-that-could-hurt-your-wi-fi/

Tldr: different countries wanna do 6g differently. Actually a big problem is the big beautiful bill that just passed in the US. Wifi6e/7 6ghz spectrum that was reserved for wifi got approved to get auctioned off. But it’s already a global standard. If us cell cariers buy it up and use it to make faster 6g cell speeds (short distance very high speed). That’s going to fragment standards globally.

Cell carriers don’t currently use anywhere near all their spectrum they already own.

Hello

Garuda - all the benefits of arch with an easy installer. And it’s prettier (in my opinion) than EndeavorOS. Gaming is pretty great.

Wasn’t too difficult as they already offered Linux as a supported option. But I had to justify it. I was already using a linux VM for all my actual work. So I complained about all the buggy behavior I had experienced. Didn’t have to exagerate too much. I was properly modivated after IT sent out an email announcing the forced migration to Win11.

Yup! Here’s a helpful link in case you feel like spreading the joy.

https://www.maketecheasier.com/install-use-microsoft-defender-linux/

Microsoft Defender.

I convinced my work to let me use linux on their laptop. They sent me instructions for setup. One of them was to install Microsoft Defender, had a link to the Ubuntu package and everything. Blew my mind.

Does your pc’s mobo have 2 m.2 slots? If so, that’s a great solution. If you do decide to stick with linux, that gives you two hdds. If not, you might want to consider buying a m.2 ssd to usb enclosure too. You can use it to transfer files you want to keep or for ventoy or backups.

DACs are great, agreed. However try telling that to the guy next door. The reason ethernet got to be so popular was because of how familiar it was and similar it us to telephone wire. There were several other competing standards befofe ethernet won.

10GbE cards and switches help regular folk upgrade without needing to learn about DACs.

Right?! Most affordable 10G switches are SFP+ which requires a lot more research to make sure you get the right modules and cabling.

Run:

df -h

in the terminal and find out.

Not NEW, but, check out local auctions. Local universities and govt offices are frequently selling lots of newish laptops (5ish yrs old) for $10-$50 apiece.

That’s why we have mice copy/paste bindings on most systems too. Highlighting text auto copies, and scroll wheel click pastes. Not all do this, but many do and have for a while.

Great, I recommend having two Adguard Home instances.

Yep, if you have somewhere to put a docker container or VM you can have redundancy.

Right, I never said two raspberry pis, I meant two instances. Like one pi and a container run elsewhere.