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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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    1. Linux Mint Debian Edition if you must use Mint and stick with KDE plasma desktop on whichever distro. I’d recommend avoiding ubuntu and Manjaro.
    2. Xournal++ is the only one for this purpose I’ve heard recommended. I use Zim for what I need.
    3. It’s going to be slow and will wear out the SD card eventually but it deserves consideration. I strongly recommend keeping the already installed Windows and using a SD card or USB C drive for Linux, particularly if you’re still intending to actively use it for note taking. You could use a USB C device like a NVMe enclosure or something that supports UAS and get good speed on the Linux install if the Surface supports UAS.
    4. Nothing to offer.
    5. Make sure your backups of anything you don’t want to lose on the Surface are up to date before you start anything. Linux installers will normally prefer an internal disk so if you forget to change that when installing all those files will be gone.



















  • I really enjoy using NixOS as it is good at what it does, declarative system configuration, but it does have issues that can prevent people from using it. It’s great if you want to put the configuration for all your computers in one git repo but that configuration is in the Nix language so you will eventually need to become familiar with the Nix language. The main issues are that the documentation needs work and understanding the difference between the Nix operating system, the Nix language, and the Nix package collection as the more you use NixOS the more familiar you will need to be with each.

    That said, I find it worth learning and recommend some of the following resources for NixOS.

    MyNixOS for graphical configuration management. See my configs there.

    NixOS Wiki for the best collection of NixOS documentation. I’ve found this collection of people’s configurations to be very useful for inspiration.

    The manual pages for the Nix language, Nix packages, and NixOS.