Aha I see! thanks for the info. I think i’m going thinkpad though, just gotta decide which model. they are incredibly cheap! especially for what you get

wait a sec, kinda contradicting here. you said to avoid weird cheap brands but then you told me to buy weird cheap brands… lol sorry im confused

But I just may not be able to run the newer releases that come out and continue to come out? if the machine is a tad old? is that what I’m getting? because that’s what im trying to figure out

Wow, I truly appreciate this response. So i’ve been using Linux for a decade and know a “fair” amount, never made it a goal to learn the ins and outs, though I am now. So I hear business laptops make great linux machines. My main question is, most of the computers within my budget that are “known” to be decent linux machines are very old. Are they capable of still keeping up with all the newest and latest versions of distros? or are you stuck on older models just because the nature of the device being older?

haha yes me, no I was wondering about running the latest versions of linux on older machines. are they capable or more limited to older versions just because the age and the older hardware?

good advice, thank you! oh ok, so since im on a budget and i’ll likely be buying refurbed or used, it’ll likely be an older machine. would older computers but from the good companies mentioned still be capable of running newer versions/kernels of distros?

Very interesting and also such a shame. Manjaro seems to have most support and definitely looks and feel the greatest that I’ve tried, all well being newbish friendly

Hey buddy! sent ya a dm a little while ago

Very very helpful. I tried to install Silverblue last night, but couldn’t get it to work. after a successful install, when I go to restart, it just wouldn’t restart, it would hang.

Thanks. The time I was using Manjaro, I liked it alot but am also confused by the weird negative reputation…

Thanks again. Im not quite sure what these immutable distros are, I keep hearing about them. Gotta do some researching!

So virt manager, KVM, and qemu is the recommendation solution for this? Opposed to other methods like virtual box or gnome boxes or the other various virtualization platforms out there?

Because I would like three daily drivers, one for each main distro type so I can learn more and explore other types like arch and rhel based, since I’m not knowledgeable on those. But I also want them to be workstations too, for normal usage. Just variety… And of course for learning. I dont just want a live disk to tinker with and thats all. I want these distros to maintain everything I do inside them just like any physically installed distro. Maybe I’m not properly conveying my view idk

So this images will always remain the same as I make tweaks and download programs and such? And if I use flatpaks from my main distro, how would that install things on my VM distros?

Uhmmm so it would be interesting to learn about rolling releases and thats where my choice of manjaro could fit in. Sometimes I simply get bored of debian/Ubuntu but its what I’m most familiar with. The goal is to learn and USE other distros. Not just browse or hop around but I want to use the three main distro types all on one system. I want things to remain in tact like a normal workstation installed on your desktop. Idk much about virtualization, but I’m under the impression that they wipe your disk or a certain distro clean after each use. I do NOT want that.

If I utilize this route, do you believe it’d be more trouble than anything or should it hypothetically work just fine?

Darn, I do like to use flatpaks and occasionally snaps… I know I know, most people hate them lol. But the big question for going the VM route is, do the distros I load up remember all my settings, configs, programs, etc? I want them to be like actual desktop distros where everything stays in tact and I’m not resetting everutime I boot up a VM iso

Oh and just to be sure, I need to use the live iso for the distro in order to resize partitions, is that right?

Ok I’m following. that doesn’t make sense to me to make the mount points for one distro inside another. I dont understand that. In my mind, it seems like the mount points would all be to the bootloader? but again, I dont know much about this stuff lol

Ahh ok I understand the filesystem types but still darn confused about the mount points. So the first distro I should mount to root??? then how could I partition the next distros in empty partitions that don’t have directories yet (since theres no distro on them yet). Sorry, just getting a lil confused on some parts