Most of it is countered with being able to use gparted or equivalent. For Windows users the effect is the same. New partition table and you are good to go. It does not affect the USB tht much over time given the price/ use of ssd type storage.
When it comes to ssd's, indeed, using a livecd on ssd is not the way to go, and DVD and CD-disks are also a good alternative, except, if that is what one would want: a clean OS without clutter, despite it's limitations
one step further would be a live-cd with persistence, where either the root partition (OS level), home partition (data) or both are made persistent. MXlinux in that sense is a very good option, as those features are native. It also allows for multiple setups. clean, en several amended. Though I would not recommend to mingle it with data.
It all starts with the outline of what one wants where convenience and paranoia influence the ultimate personal setup.
With regard to repositories, I beg to differ, since this is a matter of what exactly do you want to use it for.
This brings into view personal use.
A nice Gui and window to use. That is basically what windows is, right? LMDE, Mint, Ubuntu are nice.
Libre office, libreprojects, browsers like firefox, brave, dissenter, chromium, etc, are all there. for Video: VLC, SMplayer, etc, For audio: Rhythymbox, audacity, etc, PDF: docviewer or even masterpdf (MXlinux ,free). Picture and photo manipulation: GIMP and drawing. A host of very good Scan and OCR is available for all OS, Screenshots: ksnip. Thunderbird for mail, calendar, RSS,
A special mention for platforms like zoom. When well looked at, these are insecure and are resource intensive. There are several lightweight alternative that are both free and work very well. For chat, video call etc there is epiphany and more.
See also signal, hexchat and elements.io, riot, sessions (combines with lokinet)
Games: Playonlinux is available for all OS's, including whine, Steam. It may take a little tinkering.
These are general purpose packages and for most computers the OS mentioned function properly out of the box. That includes bluetooth connected devices like headphones and speakerboxes.
more exotic stuff usually is discovered while getting used to using the terminal. Think of lokinet, sniffers and spiders, audit software, photorec to retrieve data from crashed drives, host-files to build a local DNS alternative to prevent shadow banning, youtube-dl (though a nice gui also exists) ffmpeg for audio and video manipulation, etc.
If one were in need for a total enterprise system a la oracle or something, adempiere and the likes are available. It takes some tinkering, but there are a ton of howto's available.
This also goes for programming languages like python, c#, etc, database building like mysql, postgres, etc.
Even more exotic when it comes to regex, where files can be manipulated, etc.
hooking up the phone to your linux OS these days is quite simple. You get instant access to the drive to transfer files or with ADB (easy install) to manipulate other thins. The only thing a bit difficult, is when you want to jailbreak your phone. Windows in that regard is more simple, amazingly, especially considering android is based on unix, as is Mac and linux.
This then becomes a free secure environment to learn knew skills.
From this perspective, my recommendation is: do it and follow the steps to get familiar:
-> Live CD
-> dual boot or two ssd's
-> drop windows all together as you really do not need it.
-> expand into terminal to gain deeper understanding and new skills.
Not bad advice.
Most of it is countered with being able to use gparted or equivalent. For Windows users the effect is the same. New partition table and you are good to go. It does not affect the USB tht much over time given the price/ use of ssd type storage.
When it comes to ssd's, indeed, using a livecd on ssd is not the way to go, and DVD and CD-disks are also a good alternative, except, if that is what one would want: a clean OS without clutter, despite it's limitations
one step further would be a live-cd with persistence, where either the root partition (OS level), home partition (data) or both are made persistent. MXlinux in that sense is a very good option, as those features are native. It also allows for multiple setups. clean, en several amended. Though I would not recommend to mingle it with data.
It all starts with the outline of what one wants where convenience and paranoia influence the ultimate personal setup.
With regard to repositories, I beg to differ, since this is a matter of what exactly do you want to use it for.
This brings into view personal use.
A nice Gui and window to use. That is basically what windows is, right? LMDE, Mint, Ubuntu are nice.
Libre office, libreprojects, browsers like firefox, brave, dissenter, chromium, etc, are all there. for Video: VLC, SMplayer, etc, For audio: Rhythymbox, audacity, etc, PDF: docviewer or even masterpdf (MXlinux ,free). Picture and photo manipulation: GIMP and drawing. A host of very good Scan and OCR is available for all OS, Screenshots: ksnip. Thunderbird for mail, calendar, RSS,
A special mention for platforms like zoom. When well looked at, these are insecure and are resource intensive. There are several lightweight alternative that are both free and work very well. For chat, video call etc there is epiphany and more.
See also signal, hexchat and elements.io, riot, sessions (combines with lokinet)
These are general purpose packages and for most computers the OS mentioned function properly out of the box. That includes bluetooth connected devices like headphones and speakerboxes.
If one were in need for a total enterprise system a la oracle or something, adempiere and the likes are available. It takes some tinkering, but there are a ton of howto's available.
This also goes for programming languages like python, c#, etc, database building like mysql, postgres, etc.
Even more exotic when it comes to regex, where files can be manipulated, etc.
This then becomes a free secure environment to learn knew skills.
From this perspective, my recommendation is: do it and follow the steps to get familiar:
-> Live CD -> dual boot or two ssd's -> drop windows all together as you really do not need it.
-> expand into terminal to gain deeper understanding and new skills.