For work I’ve found that Microsoft Teams no longer works on Debian + Firefox. My workaround is a dedicated VM running debian with Chrome installed (and nothing else). We’ll see how long that works.

(begging forgiveness, I haven’t read the comments yet).

Regarding backups - I started with using Ubuntu and its Backup application. This application is a front end for a command line package called Duplicity. One of the things that annoyed me about the backup app was that I couldn’t work out how to reschedule the scheduled backup.

Taking control of my own backup setup was the answer. Learn about bash scripting so you can create a short bit of code to handle your backups. Read up a little on duplicity, read up a little on mounting remote file shares, read up a little on setting up an ssh key for encrypting your backup.

This may be an heretical thing to say but I found ChatGPT quite useful in answering these questions (as always with anything you get from an LLM, double check it’s answers against reliable sources).

for me that’s enough of an inconvenience to wash my hands of the whole dual-booting scenario.

Damn you! Angry upvote.

Started with Ubuntu (but this was about 10 years ago). Tried out a few different distros - Mint, mostly. I’ve eventually settled on Debian. I don’t got time for shit to randomly break with high frequency (/s). I don’t really have a good reason for why I picked Debian. The best I can think of is that I considered that since so many other distros are derived from Debian, I may as well got to the source.

With my laptop, the biggest issue I have is it doesn’t come back from suspend reliably. Other than that it’s fully functional. I don’t even think I’ve had an update break anything. The only reason I’ve reinstalled is because I broke it myself (like a few months ago when i was trying to install a C++ depencency so I could play dwarf fortress).

Wine and Proton are covering my gaming and Windows application needs. KVM with a (legit) Windows VM is also there to cover the increasingly rare circumstances where I need a proper Windows OS.

No brainer. Restart at 6 years old. Time is priceless.