zib

In my case, I use a PCI card with an m.2 slot for my OS drive. I lose a PCI slot, but I already had a few to spare.

I use a 1tb ssd for the os/apps with my raid5 strictly for storage. Kinda nice if the os needs to be reinstalled or I want to migrate the raid cluster.

Personally, I found Arch to be difficult to get installed. I’m ok with command line stuff once everything is all setup, but having to use it for the installation process is something I found to be too easy to screw up and too time consuming overall. Also, I haven’t seen any drop of vanilla Arch with a GUI installer. For the Arch experience, I generally go with EndeavourOS since it’s easy to install, gives you lots of options for the window manager, and is easy to use once you get it up and running.

If you’d prefer the Debian environment, I think anything from Debian or any of its derivatives (Ubuntu et al) would be a decent choice. My favorite is Linux Mint. I’ve seen a lot of people describe it like “entry-level” Linux, but it’s very capable and user friendly. It’s where I tend to spend most of my time when running Linux and I would say usually requires the least setup since it typically just works out of the box.

There’s also OpenSUSE Tumbleweed if you feel like going a somewhat different direction. I get more “traditional Linux” vibes from OpenSUSE, but packaged up in a user friendly manner. I play around with it from time to time in a VM, mostly when I want to test out some new server package locally. But, that said, it’s still capable of handling anything else I throw at it, so it’s fun to use all the same.

This is really nice. I’ve been using Mint for years and didn’t know about it.

Wait, are you telling me that business ethics are actually a real thing? I thought somebody made that up as a meme. Every corporate executive I’ve ever worked for has been a borderline, if not full blown, sociopath obsessed with nothing more than getting richer at everyone else’s expense. Maybe they all skipped that class?