I don’t have any more drives to test this out

you have a drive from a budget-tier vendor. it could very easily a glitchy drive. the only way to know is to replace it with something else.

more input!

i use some of those low power soc laptops, running with lid closed (heat is basically a non-issue), for pihole, white noise, and a few other ‘little’ things. one of 'em is even running stuff in VMs (the rest are debian-based dietpi).

that a ryzen 2200g with 16gb ram, nvme, and usb-c is ‘unsupported’ is total bullshit. i just pulled one from service. meanwhile, i just ‘upgraded’ a 10th gen celeron desktop, and some even-worse gemini lake laptops, all with hdd (except one with a massive 64gb emmc chip) to 11.

(that ryzen is now rocking silverblue and looking for a new forever home)

it pretty much depends on what their distribution agreements have in them–there could be something in there that requires monthly or longer terms for subscribers. if there isn’t, there sure af will be from now on for streaming services carrying ‘cable’ channels

cinnamint is great. i think you may have already found what to put on the ‘main pc’.

if you’re at all interested in ‘atomic’ variants, kinoite is what is running a couple of kde desktops here.

did you just drop the full index into the config, like the ‘how to use’ image shows in the repo’s ‘readme’? take that out, it’s all 10,000+ ‘channels’. go into the repo’s ‘streams’ directory and find one or a few for your country and add those instead (load the ‘raw’ url for each in the browser, then copy the resulting address from your browser address bar into the config).

always forget that there’s a big ad spot on the home page.

i helped someone set up theirs a little while back… i’m like, “oh, so that’s what’s supposed to be there…”; followed by a “i can help you get rid of those if you want…”

https://leta.mullvad.net/ uses Brave or Google

thanks for this one. i’m currently trying out their encrypted and adblocking dns on the hotspot i set up on dietpi to isolate ‘streaming’ devices, comparing its effectiveness to pihole and adguard home.

dumping this one that specifically limited exposure to the trash bits of windows and instead launch a new variant for gaming handhelds that, while ‘optimized’ and limited in the crud that runs, will most definitely be focused on driving gamers to game pass subs and store sales.

half the internet is 45 years old this year.

garbage in, garbage out.

Following the decision, Nvidia estimated the decision would cost the GPU giant nearly $10.5 billion in the first half of its 2026 fiscal year. AMD reported the export ban would cost the firm $1.5 billion in lost revenues in 2025.

and they wouldn’t be able to find customers elsewhere for their in-demand products to mitigate some or even all of that “lost” revenue?

if you go in not knowing what to do, it can seem ‘difficult’. but it’s mostly like on any other oem prebuilt:

optional: prep the target disk (backups, wipe or clear part table, etc), reset bios to defaults.

if necessary: switch from raid or rst to ahci sata mode, default boot mode to efi, disable secure boot. note that some distributions support secure boot but your method of creating an installer might not–you may be able to re-enable if you want after install.

note that hp systems have a hoop to jump through (a confirmation prompt to disable) after disabling secure boot on the next startup. do not use esc key to trigger boot menu, use f9 for boot menu, f10 for bios entry… as esc will cancel the confirmation code prompt and automatically re-enable secure boot.

insert or plug-in installer, hit the magic key upon power on (f12 for dell, f9 for hp) to bring up boot menu and select installer media, boot and run installer.

Depends on your CPU

absolutely. some cpu can draw more than the 180 watts of a 5060ti, even without actual ‘overclocking’, all by themselves when boosting their own clock (such as intel’s “turbo power”). even a ‘65 watt’ ultra 7 265 can get up to that.

go through their list of games on protondb to see if linux would be a good fit, it might not be, depending on their library.

you’ve got a nice ‘short list’ of distributions to evaluate. i’d recommend setting each up yourself on a spare system to see how ‘point and click’ they are in setting-up, running, and updating the games they play.

also keep in mind the more hoop-jumping and manual configurations you need to do, the greater the chance of something breaking–like during os or wine-related updates. those kinds of issues are the ones your friend will be relying on you to fix for them so you definitely want to minimize the chances of that happening.