Those who don’t have the time or appetite to tweak/modify/troubleshoot their computers: What is your setup for a reliable and low-maintenance system?

Context:

I switched to Linux a couple of years ago (Debian 11/12). It took me a little while to learn new software and get things set up how I wanted, which I did and was fine.

I’ve had to replace my laptop though and install a distro (Fedora 41) with a newer kernel to make it work but even so, have had to fix a number of issues. This has also coincided with me having a lot less free time and being less interested in crafting my system and more interested in using it efficiently for tasks and creativity. I believe Debian 13 will have a new enough kernel to support my hardware out of the box and although it will still be a hassle for me to reinstall my OS again, I like the idea of getting it over with, starting again with something thoroughly tested and then not having to really touch anything for a couple of years. I don’t need the latest software at all times.

I know there are others here who have similar priorities, whether due to time constraints, age etc.

Do you have any other recommendations?

  • Magiilaro@feddit.org
    1·
    11 days ago

    My Arch Linux setup on my desktop and my servers are low-maintenance. I do updates on my servers every month or so (unless some security issue was announced, that will be patched right away) and my desktop a few times a week.

    Nearly anything can be low-maintenance with the proper care and consideration.

    For your constraints I would use just use Debian, Alma Linux or Linux Mint and stick with the official packages, flathub and default configuration on the system level. Those are low-maintenance out of the box in general.

  • merthyr1831@lemmy.mlEnglish
    1·
    11 days ago

    fedora has been this for myself. maybe tweaking every now and then to fix whatever edge cases I’ve run into but it’s the least painful distro I’ve used so far

    • dino@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      0·
      11 days ago

      Such a bad comment, what does tinkering mean? Not use any software besides the default one? So only browsing and text apps? facepalm

      • Magiilaro@feddit.org
        0·
        11 days ago

        Tinkering, in my personal definition, would mean installing third party repositories for the package manager (or something like the AUR on Arch) or performing configuration changes on the system level… Just keep away as most as possible from accessing the root user (including su/sudo) is a general a good advice I would say.

  • remer@lemmy.world
    0·
    12 days ago

    I’ve been distro hopping for decades. I got exhausted with things constantly breaking. I’ve been using mint for the past six months with zero issues. It’s so refreshing that everything just works.

    • Lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      0·
      12 days ago

      As someone who just had to bandaid an unexplained battery draw on his wife’s MacBook - no, Mac OS no longer “just works”. Apple buries some of the most basic settings inside a command line-only tool called pmset, and even then those can be arbitrarily overridden by other processes.

      And even after a fresh reinstall and new battery, it still drains the battery faster in hibernation mode than my Thinkpad T14 G1 running LMDE does while sleeping. Yeah, that was a fun discovery.

      That Thinkpad is by far one of my most dependable machines.

      • mbirth@lemmy.ml
        0·
        12 days ago

        If you have battery drain, make sure you’ve disabled the option to regularly wake up and do some background processing (check for emails, sync photos, etc.). Settings → Battery → Options… → Wake for network access. (Or search for “Power Nap” in the System Sertings dialog.)

        No need to use pmset for that.

        • Lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          0·
          12 days ago

          So here’s the thing - if you can think of it, I’ve already tried it 😅 I spent a week and a half sifting through countless forum posts on Apple’s own support center, Macrumors, reddit, and a host of other forums.

          The “Wake for network access” setting was the first thing I disabled after I wiped and reinstalled the OS. Among a number of other settings, including “Power Nap”. Still got the fucking “EC.DarkPME (Maintenance)” process firing off every ~45 seconds, no matter what I did, causing excessive insomnia and draining the battery within 12 hours.

          What I ended up doing was using a little tool called “FluTooth” to automatically disable wifi/Bluetooth on sleep (the built-in OS settings did fuck-all), set hibernationmode to 25, and a few other tweaks with pmset that currently escape me (edit: disabled networkoversleep, womp, ttyskeepawake, powernap - which was still set to 1 even with the setting in System Settings was disabled 🤨), and a couple others I can’t remember as it’s not here in front of me).

          I put several full charge cycles on the brand new battery before it finally calmed the fuck down.

          • SL3wvmnas@discuss.tchncs.de
            0·
            9 days ago

            I feel you. I still use an intel macbook with tweaks i cannot remember plus 3rd party utils like Turbo Boost switcher. That experience alone has kept me from upgrading to newer models.

            In retrospect my powerbook g4 (Ti) and os 9 was peak computing.

            • Lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
              1·
              9 days ago

              My Thinkpad T14 running Linux Mint (LMDE) gets better battery life on “Suspend” than that damn MBP does when hibernated. It’s an A1706, too, of ALL the variants it could be 😂

              • SL3wvmnas@discuss.tchncs.de
                0·
                8 days ago

                Oh no. Maybe some Incense to cleanse the demons? (⊙_⊙)

                Edit: I just remembered I had a similar problem, after changing the battery on my 2015. This thread at macrumors helped me tremendously especially the last entry (did it on three seperate days before it had an effect.) but I’m sure you already tried all of that. Just for the off chance.

                these Intel Macs were such a bad experience.

                • Lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
                  0·
                  8 days ago

                  That thread was a godsend. Turning off tcpkeepalive was the other one that I couldn’t remember, but that seemed to help out as well.

                  My wife has had multiple MacBooks over the years (I set up her old 2009-era A1278 with Linux Mint for the kids to do homework), and after I “fixed” it and talked about the longer wake-up process, she told me that’s what she was used to already and the “super fast wake up” was a very new thing for her when she bought it. So no complaints from her, and the battery performs better. Win/win.