AtariDump@lemmy.world wrote:

Great; how do I get my Mother to do that over the phone?

That’s not going to scale as I share out my server.

Are you incapable of recognizing that in this context my comment was a joke? What the fuck is wrong with you?

That’s not going to scale…

How many mothers do you have?

It’s not a cake walk, but I’ve something similar for a friend who can barely turn on his PC.

The OpenWRT router was fully configured before shipping it to him and the existing router’s needed Wireguard port was opened by me using the Comcast Android app. All he had to do was connect his TV to a new wifi network. That wasn’t easy, but he ultimately succeeded.

3 - An OpenWRT router with Wireguard connecting to another router 1000 miles away will do the trick.

Every time I’m force to use Windows it feels like I’m being punished.

I’ve been running a W10 VirtualBox VM with Linux Mint on a dedicated raw SSD without any problems at all. It’s been years, but I remember it was a PITA to set up initially. Looking at the docs, it seems to be easier now.

Are you familiar with the Linux Surface Project? You’ll find feature matrix and installation guide links.

I’ve been running Linux Mint on a Surface 4 Laptop for well over a year and after initial configuration it works very well. The installation guide at that site made it fairly easy to get working.

Why not customize Ubuntu exactly as desired on one Raspberry Pi, and before you make any other changes clone the Micro SD?

No matter what distro you choose, expect a learning curve. Depending on your usage it can be minor or significant. You may find a simple task doesn’t work as you expect in Linux and it’s time consuming to figure it out. If you run Windows in a virtual machine on Linux or set up a dual boot system you can switch back and get the task done easily, and figure out how things work at your leisure.

When I first switched I went back to Windows a couple of times a week for simple tasks that I didn’t know how to complete in Linux. (It usually was an issue with figuring out a new application and rarely had anything to do with the OS itself.) After a couple of months I found I was wasn’t using Windows much, and in less than a year I was able to delete the Windows partition.

CopyQ is an advanced clipboard manager. Gimp is great but Pinta is easy for quick, minor image adjustments. System Monitor is an applet that displays system information by double clicking on a taskbar icon. If you use VPNs, the IP Indicator applet shows the country of your public IP or customized icon when matching ISP is found.

Nor do Lemmy users need to help monetize his Youtube videos.

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

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.

Great guidance here and I know you want to stick with Ubuntu, but but if you tire of trying to fix it try a different distro before you give up.

Lots of people swear by Ubuntu, but for others (like me) it’s nothing but trouble. For instance, I get errors when running the latest version of Ubuntu on a current laptop that runs Debian 12 perfectly, and a previous Ubuntu load on one of our laptops (tried with a new SSD) had so many issues that I gave up and restored the Mint backup.

By contrast, we have 2 different laptops and one old desktop that run Linux Mint almost flawlessly. “Almost” means a system lock up every 3-4 months and the inability to wake from sleep for the desktop. Debian 12 was a bit more difficult to get fully working, but since the initial install it has been been completely stable with zero problems. We have one laptop that is running Windows 11 and it has more problems than any of the Linux machines.

Fixing problems is a great way to learn, but if it’s not the way you want to spend your time you may be heading down the wrong path. Unless you have a hardware issue you should be able to find a distro that has few or none of the problems you’ve been fighting.

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.

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

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.

I’ve been using DuckDNS on a multiple platforms for a couple of years and it works great. Never had a problem.