Mint has a convenient desktop app included called Disk Usage Analyzer that makes checking what’s using your storage space quick and easy.

That seems like you’re just replicating what the AC’s thermostat is doing.

In my experience the thermostats of window units are crappy at regulating room temperature. Even so, did you miss this part of the post?:

Even if the compressor is not running the fan runs 24/7 until it is physically switched off.

The OP is planning on letting the unit run for 10 minutes and then turn it off, a much less effective solution than setting up a remote temperature sensor and power monitoring switch, and much better than having to control room temperature by adjusting knob that’s “labeled from 1 to 8 with 1 being warm and 8 being coldest.”

If I had that setup, I’d use a power monitoring plug with a room temperature sensor. The combination of power monitoring and a temperature sensor would provide an amazing amount of flexibility.

For instance you can monitor when the compressor shuts off (because the current draw will drop significantly) and use the plug to shut off the entire unit, then power it on when the room temperature rises to a set point. I’d change that temperature setting depending on the time of day and possibly add a occupancy sensor or use light switches to enable and disable the AC when someone’s there. It would take some tweaking to get it working properly, but you should be able to make your room more comfortable and save energy with this kind of setup.

Had a backup so it was not a big deal. Only one major issue in a decade is more than reliable enough IMO.

I’ve revived a Dell Venue battery the laptop reported as dead. Connecting several alkaline batteries in series to provide a voltage slightly higher than the Dell battery’s rated voltage and using them charge the Li-ion battery did the trick. After charging the Dell battery for about 10 minutes I reinstalled it, the laptop recognized it and it worked normally from that point on.

It could happen with anything, but since Mint 17.3 (2015) the only serious corruption I’ve experienced is during a major OS upgrade. I had far more problems with Windows.

I tried to help a friend set up a Social Security Administration login a few days ago because of the reported (but now cancelled) plans to force anyone who didn’t have an online account to come into a SS office to continue to receiving their earned benefits. He didn’t remember if he had an web account or not.

The SS website stopped responding after the 1st attempt and a 2nd attempt responded with, “Your account is now locked. You must come into an office or call us to unlock your account.”

DOGE’s purpose is disaster capitalism - disruption, breaking things beyond repair, and manufacturing conditions where oligarchs can profit off of the resulting chaos. “Efficiency” has nothing to do with it.

“Combat inflation” - corporate speak for increasing profits.

I started with a Clonezilla USB a few years ago, but Ubuntu is more flexible and can be used for everything with both VNC and SSH. The GUI is easier for some tasks, and Nautilus, Disk Usage Analyzer, Gparted, and other utilities are all available on the same SSD used for backups.

Power loss protection on SSDs is an interesting addition I hadn’t come across before.

We live in a very windy area and power blinks are common. A high endurance MicroSD was in use the first time the Pi wouldn’t boot, but I was in town and it was just annoying. It was a big issue when the Pi wouldn’t boot from the SSD while I was out of the country.

We don’t have high bandwidth demands so any decent OpenWRT router works fine and supports both Adguard Home and Wireguard. What I really like about putting WG in particular on the router is that if the router is up, WG is working, and the routers come back up without fail after every power outage. A 2nd Wireguard instance still runs on my Pi but since switching to WG on the router a year ago there hasn’t been a reason to even connect to it.

My problems with the Pi had me looking for other solutions and I ended up with a mini Dell laptop running Debian. (Can’t easily run WG on it due to some software conflicts.) It alleviates the need for a UPS and runs for 6+ hours if the power goes out, rather the minutes provided by my small UPS.

One of these days I’ll find a bogus reason to talk myself into upgrading the router with more powerful hardware. Mikrotik looks like a great option and I’ll take a look at RouterOS. Thanks for the info.

In my experience mini computers don’t handle power failures nearly as well as purpose-built hardware.

After several power failures the SSD on my Raspberry Pi became so corrupted it wouldn’t boot, and I was 250 miles away at the time and lost access to my home network for weeks. Overlay file systems work but are a PITA to maintain. By contrast my routers have never had a problem even with repeated power failures, so instead of relying on the Pi I’ve moved my DNS and Wireguard servers to my router.

Besides adding a UPS, how do you deal with power failures? Are you somewhere where they’re not much of a problem?

I think blue states and cities are in abusive relationships with the real Welfare queens: the right wing and Maga.

Huge amounts of money are sent from blue to red areas constantly. State legislators spend city revenues on the rural right wing, and our federal representatives send money from the productive blue states to the Welfare queen red states that do little but take, complain about the liberals who are funding their lifestyle, and then continue to push our country further to the right.

One solution to this is like dealing with any relationship with an abuser: cut them off in every way possible. Blue cities and counties should refuse to send money to red counties and let the Maga snowflakes pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Blue states should do everything in their power to stop sending revenue through the federal government to red states. Take their power away from them.

Maybe some experience of what happens when their generous neighbors stop putting up with their shit might make a difference.

Sounds like you’ve got a good handle on most of it. FWIW, here’s how I deal with some of the same issues:

For Windows apps I’ve found a virtual machine is the easiest solution. It’s set it up to share folders between Linux and the Windows VM so moving things between OS’s is easy. I’ve tried other methods like Wine, and for the Windows apps I need the VM works best by far.

Did you mean Timeshift? (Time Machine is Apple software.) Timeshift works great for incremental backups and is easy to use so you should get it working, but in my case I also do full system backups every few weeks because setting up my systems from scratch is a PITA and really time consuming, especially for my server.

For those full backups I’ve set up a bootable persistent live USB SSD with Ubuntu. The persistent SSD is fully configured with all software, including VNC, SSH and Clonezilla. Creating a backup requires plugging in the SSD, rebooting and running Clonezilla either locally or remotely. Clonezilla is also also preconfigured so it requires only a few steps to start the backup. Full system backups take about 20-30 minutes to complete but my SSDs aren’t that big.

Enjoy your move to Linux. It’s well worth the effort.

My ISP changes my IP address occasionally and, as someone else mentioned, DDNS is a solution to the problem you’re having. DuckDNS doesn’t cost anything (but donations are welcome), works well, and there are detailed guides online for setting it up.

Not often mentioned, but Surface Laptops run Linux thanks to Linux Surface on Github. I’ve been running Mint on a Surface Laptop 4 13.5" for years with zero problems. Used and refurbished models are much cheaper than the other options mentioned here.

• Positives - Excellent display and keyboard, nice form factor, very light and thin, comfortable fabric cover on keyboard bezel.

• Negatives - Smaller SSD (256g), limited ports, larger display bezel, reportedly somewhat difficult to disassemble, initial Linux installation a bit of a pain.

13.5" models with I7, 16g and 256g ssd are going for around $300 on ebay.

Musk wants the content he personally finds objectionable to be moderated. Racist Nazi shit and hateful GQP posts are perfectly fine, just like on X Twitter.

Chlamydia

“[But] when you’re dealing with veterans, you have to be more intentional with your actions.”

Translation from Republican bullshit: “I voted for Trump to hurt other people. He wasn’t supposed to hurt me.”

Asshole.

LG pulls some of this BS too. When I tried it a few years ago, the LG app required always-on precise location permission to function at all. The smart features on my washer and refrigerator also require them to always be connected to the Internet but those features were more limited that what Jeff describes. I was willing to allow the appliances Internet access from an isolated subnet, but there is no way I’m going to allow LG access to all of my phone’s location data just so I can run their crappy, barely functional app.

In Mexico Bosch is even more customer hostile. My Bosch water heater had to be replaced because Bosch discontinued the repair parts needed to fix it. It’s only 3 years old.

Icons cannot be removed from the launcher screen, they can only be combined into folder. The folders cannot be hidden or removed. Preinstalled programs cannot be uninstalled or disabled. Nothing works until the tablet is registered with Amazon. There is no app drawer. It’s possible to install another launcher, but it’s not possible to use it because Amazon has hardwired the home button to their launcher. (There used to be ways around that but Amazon has systematically disabled each of them.) Their Silk browser is terrible. Most every Amazon app provided is terrible.

I get that it’s cheap and there will be significant compromises, but at least some of Amazon’s apps should be somewhat comparable to non-Amazon apps.

I’ve gotten around some of this by loading the Play store and F-Droid, and blocking Amazon’s servers but it’s clear that Amazon’s tablets are not only cheap but they’re really low effort products built for Amazon rather than the purchaser.