Forum: Author Hangout

Its taken ages but I have a new PC. Orders of magnitude more powerful than my old 'daily driver' (3rd gen Core i) and so far beyond my editing box (2007 build) that that might just have needed an ink pot.

So, yer this new rig is pretty powerful. Enough so that it will handle 3 - 4 Virtual Machines and not even notice the load. My plan is to consolidate much of my workloads into these VM's. Don't worry about the others. The interesting one here will take up the Editor's mantel. I just can't take 10-30 second lags in displaying what I've typed anymore.

Constraints: Linux (Distro to be decided), Libre Office for writing drafts, Encrypted volume for security. And anything else people here can suggest.

I'm leaving it open to the tech savvy. I'm good but only have a couple years on *nix compared to 3+ decades on Microsoft. An other decade on others before that, so no the command line doesn't scare me. I just need some advice which ways to lean with a fresh build in mind. RAM and CPU don't really matter much at all. Both in spades.

I throw myself at your mercy.
Thanks in advance.

F.

The choice of a Linux distro is your personal preference.
It's mostly the desktop that you have to choose since the base is basically the same Linux kernel and you chose the maintainer along with the distro. Most of the big distros are based upon Debian (Ubuntu, Mint, etc.) or Arch (Manjaro, EndeavourOS).
I use Debian (Stable) with the Mate desktop for all my VM's. Clean and simple, huge repository. None of the useless fancy fluff of Windows.
Safe choices are Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, etc.
You can look at Distrowatch site and compare the currently most popular distros.

Encryption is a non-issue on Linux: just encrypt a drive or partition with LUKS. I have all my KVM VM's created with full disk-encryption and that never has failed me in many years. With a new fast machine you won't notice the small performance penalty.

By-the-way: Linux has advanced so far that using the command line is more a preference than a necessity. Some people like it better that way and just like on Windows you might need it for specific tasks. For everyday use you won't need it.

Like Ernest I use Firefox for browsing and Thunderbird for email. Can't go wrong with those. LibreOffice is the obvious choice as word processor.

Anyone reading, got a suggestion for a distro and interface for a VM environment?

Suggestions for authoring tools outside of LO might come in handy down the way too.

Present VM experience limited to mint, think I chose mate as the interface. I'd love something good for security and anonymity features, like Kodachi Linux 8 16/17. Doesn't have to be as full on as that, but kind of the idea. Don't want to go to the extreme of Tails either.

thanks for your input guys.

F.

hardware is pretty beefy, 16 cores and 64 GB ram

Okay, so VMs are up and running after a half hour game of hide and seek in BIOS for the right settings.

I gave it 6 threads and 16 GB ram. Plenty horsepower for the purpose. fully encrypted etc.

Any other comments from people? Suggestions for expansion or modifications?

Now the next thing is a new keyboard, old mechanical died last week and god do I miss the feel of those switches (MX Blue) loud as all get out but very easy to type at speed on.

the main rig itself will be used for demanding games, picture, video and audio editing, transcoding and other intensive tasks. The VM in question is just a browsing and writing space, though I a guilty of not closing tabs frequently enough, hence the ram allocation.

It looks like my OS of choice for the VM is moving from an Ubuntu 18.04 base to Debian. I'm hoping 13 as that's in RC.

I'll be blowing away the old rig that this work was being done on. It's way too long in the tooth to be of use for anything else but a paper weight. It could be an ok Linux web client though, just regular browsing and email. That sort of thing