I have suffered from distrohopping. Now that I have settled for the last two years, here are some tips to save your time.

1. All distros run the same operating system at their core, Linux. They are more similar than different. Hence, the marginal cost (time) of looking for a better distro is much more than the marginal benefit of it.

2. Say no to distributions made for specific purposes like Kali, CentOS, and OpenSuse. OpenSuse is great, but it is made for enterprise use. An everyday user won't ever need most of its features. To maintain it would be a waste of time. The same goes for the RedHat family.

3. Instead of trimming Suse, you better pick a distro made for everyday people, such as AntiX and SolusOS. Read their descriptions and target users on Distrowatch.

4. Avoid technical distributions like arch, its forks, and Gentoo. They are for the programmer types. If you are not one, you will likely break it. Updates tend to be massive and very frequent. And you can't install a new package without updating first. You don't want to deal with this. If you want it only for AUR, just learn to compile a little bit.

5. Say no to most desktop environments (DEs) besides LXDE and LXQT. Prefer window managers (WMs) for maximum performance. DEs can be buggy and cause distraction. They increase boot time and update size. It may be reasonable to rule out all distros that don't come with a window manager so you don't have to do the work post-installation. Know the rule; the less stuff you have, the fewer things you can break, the fewer problems you will face. Keep it minimal. Don't allow the bling-bling to distract you.

6. Try out different Init systems. Ever since systemd was adopted, Linux has started to feel like Windows, complex and out of hand. I do have it on Manjaro (but I did have to mask a couple of unneeded services to lower the boot time). A particular init system might work better on your specific hardware. Try some isos on a virtual machine.

7. Avoid forks because they simply are not different enough. In addition, they tend to carry their parent distro's issues on top of their own issues. Developers can do only so much about it. Independent distributions can fix issues more quickly because they can. Prefer original and independent distros.

8. Don't worry about software availability. Every distro hosts tools to help you install packages not present in their repos. Furthermore, package managers like Appimage and Flatpak allow you to install packages on all distros. Avoid snap. It slows down bootup and doesn't allow you to control app updates. This may change in the future though.

Linux distros are usually more secure than their Windows and Mac counterparts. Linux Operating Systems being open-source leaves very less scope of unauthorized access to its core. However, with the advancement of technologies, incidents of attacks are not rare.

Are you in a fix with the coming reports of Linux systems targeted malware attacks? Worried about your online presence? Then maybe it’s time to go for a secure, privacy-focused Linux distro. This article presents a guide to 3 privacy-oriented Linux distributions that respect your privacy online.

Why You Need a Privacy-focused Linux Distro

But before jumping into that, let’s have a brief overview regarding the importance of a secure Linux Operating System. You may know that the Operating System is the core software of your computer. It helps maintain communication across all the hardware, software, memory, and processor of the system. It also manages the hardware parts.

If your computer isn’t secure enough to use, then hackers can get easy access to the OS and can exploit it to view your files and track your presence on the internet. Privacy-focused Linux distributions offer a lot of good choices packed with the most reliable features to select from.

5 Privacy-focused Linux Distributions

Now let’s take a look at the most privacy-focused Linux distros that allow staying secure.

Septor Linux

Septor Linux is an OS created by the project called Serbian Linux. Serbian Linux also produces Serbian language-based general general-purpose Linux distribution. Septor implements the KDE Plasma desktop environment and is a newcomer among all other distros.

The Septor operating system offers a stable and reliable user experience. It’s suitable for a vast range of computers because it is built upon Debian GNU/Linux. So, a solid privacy level is what you can expect. The distro routes all of the internet traffic through Tor network to earn privacy credentials. The distro used to use a launcher script to pick up the latest Tor, however, now Tor comes in bundles with it by default.

Are you in search of open-source ticketing tools for Linux? Well, this article brings a guide to 5 fair selections of open source ticketing software to provide uninterrupted customer support.

Why You Need Ticketing Tools

A customer trouble ticketing (help desk) is an assistance resource to solve a customer query. Companies often provide customer support using email, website, and/or telephone. The importance of ticketing software is a crucial part for any business to be successful.

Your business can’t run properly without a satisfied client base. Increased customer retention is what businesses need. Right ticketing tools help ensure the best customer service for any business. 

Linux makes sure enterprises get the best possible customer service software for their businesses to have sustainable growth. Because a powerful set of ticketing software provides undivided support that the businesses deserve.

5 Best Ticketing Tools for Linux

This section takes you through 5 different ticketing software to be downloaded on Linux and why you should use them. So let’s begin!

osTicket

For all the newly started businesses, osTicket would be a viable open source ticketing tool. It’s a lightweight and efficient support ticket software used by a good number of companies. If you run an enterprise or a non-profit and are not ready for paid ticketing tools just yet, osTicket is a must-try.

osTicket provides a simple and intuitive web interface to integrate customer queries via phone, email, and web forms. Worried of spam emails? osTicket helps reduce spam enabling captcha filling and auto-refreshing techniques.

You can work on a priority basis through this ticketing tool and get the issues solved in the lowest possible time.

PHD Help Desk

PHD Help Desk is a PHP+Javascript+MySQL-based open source ticketing tool and is used in the registry. PHD helps follow-up incidents in an organization. PHD has a user base all across the world. The latest version of the PHD Help Desk is 2.12.

This ticketing tool works in various ways. Using PHD, incidents can be classified and registered into multiple levels, such as the state of incident, type, sub-type, priority, description of Incident, historical factors, to name a few. 

The database is consulted in a particular format depending on the user requirements. The data is then processed on a tallying sheet. Some of the advanced features of PHD Help Desk are the ability to export tickets into excel format, a PHPMailer Library to configure emails, and new password creation.

Are you in search of Linux laptops? This article takes you through 6 different places that offer the best Linux laptops. So get prepared to choose your Linux laptop in 2021.

Dell

When it comes to laptops, the first name that comes to my mind is Dell. For over 20 years Dell has been selling high-end Linux laptops. In a Dell store, you can get Ubuntu and Redhat Enterprise Linux laptops. These laptops are built to meet the needs of developers, businesses, and sysadmins.

For developers, who travel a lot, XPS 13 Developer Edition would be the confirmed best choice. Dell XPS comes at an expensive cost of around $1,000. So, if you’re in search of something less expensive, you can check Dell Inspiron laptops. Dell’s Precision workstations with RHEL or Ubuntu are designed for small business owners or CG professionals.

Side Note: Dell doesn’t have a separate section for Linux laptops. Type Ubuntu in the search to get a view of all its laptops with Linux preinstalled.

Slimbook

Slimbook is well known for its thin, rigid, and light durable laptops starting at a reasonable price of €930 (approx $1,075). These come with a nice screen, solid battery life, powerful CPU, and very good speakers.

This brand is from Spain. Slimbook came ahead of its competitors launching the first KDE laptops.

Slimbook brings laptops with a good variety of popular Linux distros, such as KDE Neon, Ubuntu, Ubuntu MATE, Linux Mint, Kubuntu. Additionally, their laptops have two Spanish Linux distros – Max and Lliurex. You can choose Windows OS as well with their laptops, but for that, additional costs are there.

Slimbook offers desktop systems too. So, if you ever need desktops, check it here. 

System76 

System76’s Linux laptops are very well built, powerful, and extremely portable. If you are a software developer, you travel a lot, and you’re in search of a laptop with 32G RAM and 1T SSD, then go for System76.

System76 laptops used to be Ubuntu-powered, initially. Later on, in 2017, this US-based company released their own Linux distro, called the Pop! OS. Pop OS is designed using Ubuntu. After that, Pop became the default OS with Ubuntu being still available.

As per NASA, “A black hole is a place in space where gravity pulls so much that even light can not get out”. Something similar exists in the Linux universe as well - it discards anything written to it and when read, just returns an EOF (end-of-file). It’s a special file which is also referred to as null device - /dev/null

So, it’s just a file?

Yes and most of the things in Linux is a file but /dev/null is not a regular file – lets dig deeper.

c in crw-rw-rw- tells us that it's a character special file, which means it processes data character by character. This can be checked using test -c as well:

What are the contents of the file?

Let’s check that using the cat command:

As stated earlier, it just returns an EOF (end-of-file) when read. So, it's empty!

What more can we know about the file?

Let’s find out using the stat command:

This tells us that its size is 0. Also, it’s good to note that the file’s read and write permission is enabled for everyone but it doesn't require execute permission. 

What happens to the file’s size when we write data to it?

Let’s try that:

The cat command returned nothing and as per the stat command, its size did not change.

As stated earlier, it discards anything written to it. You may write any amount of data to it, which will be immediately discarded, so its size will always remain 0 – Singularity?

In other words, you cannot change /dev/null

Not only the Linux distros are open-source but the apps for Linux are also free. Though some business apps come with a cost, most of the apps created for individuals don’t have any charges.

Want to know about some of the cool apps to download on your Linux machine?

This article walks you through 7 apps to download on Linux to make your life easier. Head over to the next section!  

Ulauncher

Before downloading any other application on Linux, we recommend getting Ulauncher. That’s because you can launch any application via Ulauncher just by using the keyboard.

Try adding Ulaucher extensions to get the most of this app inspired by Alfred for Mac. You can extend capabilities with the extensions, such as looking up dictionary definitions, launching web searches, finding and copying emojis to a clipboard, and lots more.

Ulaucher runs smoothly and allows searching files and apps using hotkeys. Ulaucher features include built-in themes, customizable shortcuts, Fuzzy search, a wide variety of plugins, searching on Google, Stack Overflow, and Wikipedia.

Thunderbird

Thunderbird by Mozilla is an open-source email client. Some Linux distros offer Thunderbird installed. If it’s not, hop onto your App Center or Software Center and get it installed. You can download the app from their website as well.

The setup wizard guides you through the process of creating your own email address. Thunderbird provides email settings for most of the common email application providers. So, an existing email account can be added too. Attach multiple email accounts as per your needs.

Want to make Thunderbird look cool? Add-ons, such as themes, Lightning extension, sorting out Mail folders, are some of the features to try out.

Steam

Looking for gaming clients on Linux? Use Steam from Valve. Steam is, admittedly, the best games distribution store for top OSs like Linux.

From Shadow of the Tomb Raider to DiRT 4, and from DOTA 2 to Warhammer – Steam boasts many thousands of indie hits, retro-flavored, and AAA titled games for Linux.