Just checked NewEgg. HP, Dell, Lenovo–refurbished small format (Win 10 or 11) boxes–under $100 USD. Those days aren’t gone yet! Any of these will run Linux easily. With a bigger HDD, multibooting several distros on separate partitions is child’s play. They really aren’t gamers, but that’s a rich person’s niche anyway.
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I stand corrected! 
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There are also some good buys in refurbished larger full sized towers .
Do you mean the prices of ram and disks are increasing ?
Yes that would affect refurbishing costs if they add ram or put in a new ssd.
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That’s why I’m considering my next move. The desktop I put together a few years ago and recently re-purposed as the first component of my Proxmox powered home lab has a 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD and a 2 TB hybrid hard drive. My daily driver, a Lenovo Legion 5 15IMH05 laptop has a .5 TB NVMe M.2 SSD, and I’m considering moving the 1TB M.2 drive from my desktop to my laptop so it has 1.5 TB in all, and perhaps then, I can rearrange things so my Windows and Garuda Linux installations can both have more room than they have at present. Any thoughts?
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You seem to use the laptop more than the desktop, so why not try it.
You could shift the smaller ssd back to the desktop, or leave it in the laptop and put Win and Linux on separate disks.
I use hot pluggable sata disks in my desktop. It is a really flexible arrangement.
I dont have Nvme disks, my internal SSD is sata. SATA are not as fast as Nvme
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That’s part of what I’m thinking, and you’re correct. I have been using my laptop pretty much exclusively as my daily driver. That’s why I decided to re-purpose my desktop as the first device for my home lab. Since it will be functioning essentially as a server, It will be powered by Proxmox, and used exclusively within my local LAN. I don’t consider the highest possible level of performance on that device to be of as great a value for me as the added storage on my laptop would be, and I can probably make the changes within a day.
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If you have a separate disk for Windows and another for Linux, it SHOULD be okay, provided you make sure the Linux bootloader stuff is also installed on the Linux disk. A lot of distributions mess this up and happily put their boot stuff on the Windows EFI partition, resulting in Windows breaking the boot of Linux.
When I had Linux and Windows on different disks and the distributions I used behaved sanely, Linux didn’t break because of Windows misbehaving.
Now, I don’t know how things stand these days, as I don’t have Windows anymore (good riddance, I heard some of the horror stories regarding the breakage of Wintendo).
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Before I make any changes, I’ll do my research, and try to keep both OSes safely apart, although by using sbctl to enable secure boot, the two appear to be getting along nicely. Even though Windows’ next patch Tuesday isn’t until October 13, I may hold off on making any changes until after that day has passed in order to see how things go with Windows Update. IIUC, since sbctl does not use shim to sign grub and the kernel, etc., but instead signs all required drivers, kernels, the boot loader et-al using Microsoft’s own OEM keys and certificates, I suspect doing so makes the difference, because Windows’ own boot loader gets signed with those keys as well. All in all, it seems that my interesting week may be turning into an interesting month!
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I read all this and thing … I dont want anything to do with signing or keys or whatever.
I want to be able to choose trustworthy software suppliers.
I want to verify the supplier, not the software, because they ultimately control its content.
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I have. If you’re interested, here’s sbctl’s GitHub page. This, and the fact that the author of the enabling secure boot’s research for his work gives me confidence in the utility. But it’s nothing anyone else has to be concerned about if they don’t have any need for secure boot. sbctl is only useful to users who have any reason to enable it.
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I guess I dont like key or signatures… not digital ones anyway.
I have no idea what an alternative might be.
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Hysterical? Like yourself, just stating the truth between Windows and Linux, learned, a long time ago!! I have several old machines that are running Linux, but only one running Windows!! In the end, anyone is free to set there machine, anyway they feel!!
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We already use a similar system for a variety of purposes, but for secure boot, we sign all required files using a key, then the secure boot system determines whether a service, driver, or anything requesting to run with kernel access has been properly signed using the current certificate … essentially the two act as a key pair … something similar to other GNU/Linux processes, but before the OS has loaded, presenting yet another hurdle to malware attempting to get a foothold on the system.
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Agreed! And I’m glad that it wasn’t me who postulated that your comment may have been a bit hysterical. While I may have felt that you stated your position a bit strongly, even to the point that it felt more like a demand than advice, you are entitled to your opinion, regardless how it’s stated, just as should everyone else be equally entitled to the same privileges.
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I have a CachOS DVD from Linux Magazine , so I decided to have a look at the live DVD and see what everyone seems to like aout CachyOS.
After some booting difficulties … the DVD would only boot with EFI boot , I got into the live CachyOS DE.
It is Plasma … not my favourite. I eventually found a terminal ( Konsole) and I also tried Alacaritty which I could not get out of transparent mode. (Strange … alacritty is fine in Void).
It found all my partitions OK, and my hotplug disks, and it connected to internet OK.
So I do not really have any complaints, but it is not my style of working. … too many helper features cluttering up the desktop.
I went back and checked with my only other Plasma install … a VM with Chimera Linux. That was cleaner, but the same terrible search to find a terminal in the menus. Chimera has Yakuake drop down terminal, which I find useful. KDE just dont get it when it comes to CLI users.
I also tried a Garuda DVD, but that would not boot in any mode, and I could not even mount it and view the content. I think I may have a faulty DVD or maybe a failing reader?
I might try again with a download.
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Thats the beauty of Linux it so many different distros so if i dont like one or have problems with the other i can find some other that i do like .
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In my experience, Konsole (the KDE terminal app) can be found at System > Konsole in the app launcher menu.
Could that be due to the fact that they provide a DE for any GNU/Linux distribution which chooses to include it as a desktop option? And wouldn’t that put the onus on the distribution for making the terminal app easily accessible?
As for myself, because I use the terminal as much as GUI apps to manage whichever distribution I’m using, if it’s not already present, I pin the Konsole terminal app to the Icons-only task manager on the panel, often found at the top or bottom of the screen, depending on how the distribution decides to present the desktop environment.
FWIW, CTRL+ALT+F2 (or F3) through (IIRC) F8 are usually the keyboard combinations many distributions use to switch to a console screen and, generally after exiting the console session using CTRL+ALT+F1 (or F2) will return you to the GUI session. Note that I add this for users newer to GNU/Linux, or those unfamiliar with GUI DEs.
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I do the same and i have never had problems finding the terminal,i just search for it in the menu and i get it right away.
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That’s right! The Application Launcher has a search field near the top of the menu, just above the menu list itself, doesn’t it? After installing an app, if it’s not immediately visible in the menu, I use the search function to see if I can find it that way …
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yes you are right
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