DontTakeMySky

You’re completely right. Though depending on your area it may be possible to sit in a cafe (even a Starbucks or equivalent) occasionally to pass the time. Often without needing to purchase anything (or, if you have to, purchasing a simple black coffee for cheap).

But yes, unfortunately that isnt always possible. I hope you can find something to make your days more varied OP. something to break the routine of sitting at home waiting for time to pass.

Go outside. Not in a “go touch grass” way. Explore new places and fill your days with variety and sunlight if you can. If you can’t make the time pass quickly you can at least make it more interesting. And sitting depressed in a park is a lot nicer than sitting depressed at home.

If you’re already running, vary your route a bit, or spend some time in the middle of your run sitting outside for a bit.

I don’t expect it to fix anything, I’ve heard enough of the “just try this and you’ll feel better” bullshit. But I hope it would at least help mix up your days a little.

• what partitions do linux distros need to function ?

Many guides will suggest setting up separate partitions for a bunch of different Linux directories. It’s not strictly necessary to make things work properly. You can totally do it all on one partition (in addition to your windows one I mean). If you want to try something more fancy then keep a separate home partition, but honestly don’t worry about it much unless a guide or installer is suggesting it.

• is it bad idea to install linux on a single drive in its own partition ?

Nah. One big Linux partition isnt a bad thing and is a lot easier to grasp when starting out. (Though for dual boot you’ll need the windows partition somewhere still)

• what precautions should I take other than backing up my hard drive before doing dual boot ?

Backups are the main thing. Maybe a list of useful Windows software you have installed, just in case you accidentally break your install and can’t boot in to check what you had installed.

Make Windows recovery media and a windows install disk if you don’t have one. Just in case you need to go back and reinstall it can help avoid trying to do that without a working machine.

Test with a live usb first too. That way you can at least boot into the live Usb if things fail. And you will already have it prepared.

• How can I ensure my dual boot linux install won’t touch my windows partition at all if I install dual boot linux ?

I think you could mount your windows partition as read only if that’s a concern. I don’t expect any Linux distros to mess with anything though unless you’re reckless about running install scripts.

• Is there anything else I should be aware about ?

Linux guides vary between “here’s a hack to just make it work” all the way to “here’s a perfect Torvalds-Approved perfect bomb proof 100page configuration guide”. Make sure you know what you’re looking for first and don’t get too caught up on making everything perfect. Focus on keeping good backups so you can restart from scratch if you ever need to. You’ll probably end up trying a few Linux distros over the next few years anyway.

Nope it all just worked, it really surprised me honestly. I expected to need to do some weird tethering to a raspi or something to make it work but I didn’t need any of that. (Well, I had issues because it turned out lightning borked my router, but that was a different issue entirely.)

That’s true, but with the Ethernet connection you can tether to a router directly. When my Internet was down I was able to tether my entire home for the time I needed to get some updates finished to get my docker environment back up and running. I had no idea that was possible before that.

Sorry I don’t have any suggestions, but I’m very curious about your use case. What led you to needing this?

Are you doing web dev with just a phone? Impressive

Why thank you, Cunningham’s Law in action yet again.

Amazon’s gaming framework can’t be used to thwart zombie apocalypses.

USB OTG on android phones is severely underrated.

• I can plug in a USB drive and transfer files around, I’ve used this to manage my retro handheld SD cards before.
• You can tether your hotspot over Ethernet to your computer with an Ethernet adapter.
• You can plug Ethernet into your phone to get faster connections.
• You can plug a mouse into your phone and get a cursor on screen. Not super useful tbh, but kinda cool.
• You can use your phone as an external webcam for your computer.
• It’s a bit more annoying than it used to be but you can use your phone as a universal IR remote with a small adapter and free apps (I miss my built in IR blaster from my S3).

Dust will get in pretty much no matter what you do. I wouldn’t worry about it. If you live in an already really dusty environment then get some sections of filter and attach them inside of these holes but honestly I wouldn’t worry.

It’s for water cooling loops if you want to mount the rad or pump or something outside of the case. I think it was more common in the early days of water cooling when things were less standardized.

I’ve added a “Everyone except Bob Smith can use this software” a la “fuck Anish Kapoor” clauses for paint colors before.

Though honestly it would be hard to enforce.