This shouldn't even be a question lol. Even if you aren't worried about theft, encryption has a nice bonus: you don't have to worry about secure erasing your drives when you want to get rid of them. I mean, sure it's not that big of a deal to wipe a drive, but sometimes you're unable to do so - for instance, the drive could fail and you may not be able to do the wipe. So you end up getting rid of the drive as-is, but an opportunist could get a hold of that drive and attempt to repair it and recover your data. Or maybe the drive fails, but it's still under warranty and you want to RMA it - with encryption on, you don't have to worry about some random accessing your data.
GSIs are the way to go these days for anything that's not a Pixel. I'm not sure if there's a fully-degoogled GSI out there though, but you can check the list here: https://github.com/phhusson/treble_experimentations/wiki/Generic-System-Image-%28GSI%29-list
Or here: https://xdaforums.com/f/treble-enabled-device-development-a-ab-roms.7260/
And once you found a GSI you like, install using the instructions here: https://github.com/phhusson/treble_experimentations/wiki/Samsung
But it's best to check XDA forums as well for any device-specific quirks.
That may be fine for ordinary gadgets, but many people wear their smartwatch at night for sleep quality and HRV tracking. With my Garmin for instance, I usually wear it almost all week for continuous health tracking, and only take it off for a short while on the weekend for charging. It would really suck going from that, to having to charge my watch every day.
On Windows, I would never need to know that the "File browser window" is called "explorer"
I do though. That knowledge is pretty handy for launching apps via the Run dialog, which I find faster than using the Start Menu with its horrible search. And this has become even more important to me with recent versions of Windows getting rid of the classic Control Panel UI, as you can still access the old applets without needing to put up with the horrid Metro UI. For instance, I find the network settings applet far more convenient and easy to use, so I just launch it via ncpa.cpl. Or if I want to get to the old System applet to change the hosname/page file size etc, I can get to it by running sysdm.cpl. Or getting to Add/Remove programs via appwiz.cpl, and so on.
Also, knowing the actual commands opens up many scripting and automation possibilities, or say you just want to create a custom shortcut to a program/applet somewhere. There are several useful applets you can launch via rundll32 for instance.
It's interesting, but it always seemed a bit too hacky for my liking and possibly prone to breakage. Eg seeing the compatibility table here doesn't inspire much confidence: https://bedrocklinux.org/0.7/feature-compatibility.html
I also don't like that it hijacks your host distro, it would've be been better if it was a bit more self-contained, like how Nix works on other distros. Feels like the mashup Bedrock does would be a PITA for troubleshooting (for instance, mixing binaries from different distros via $PATH is just asking for trouble). I also dislike that it uses FUSE to share resources between strata, given how inefficient FUSE is.
I think for most purposes, if you really want to mix-and-match distro features, a far cleaner approach would be to just use Distrobox.
It you use Affinity on Windows, you may be interested in this: https://github.com/lf-/affinity-crimes
.NET is now fully cross platform. you can absolutely run and debug applications on linux as you would in windows.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this limited to just console apps - as in you can't yet run GUI apps, unless you're using a cross-platform toolkit like Avalonia, or it's a WinForms app running under Mono?
This is not an answer or recommendation btw, just chiming in my 2c as an Arch and Fedora user who's tried Void for a while.
From what I've experienced, there was no visible difference in the startup/shutdown speed (compared to Arch). This was on a Zen 4 mini PC, with a Samsung 980 Pro PCIe 4.0 NVMe. But I suspect it'll be the same for anyone who's on any modern system with an NVMe drive. But, if you're on an older PC with a spinning disk or limited RAM, you might notice a difference. But both Void and Arch were visibly faster at startup/shutdown compared to Fedora, but we're only talking about a couple of seconds here. Again, on an NVMe, startup/shutdown speeds shouldn't really be relevant these days, unless there's some bug or misconfiguration slowing down your init.
I definitely do like the idea of using musl over the bloated glibc, but there's still far too many programs out there dependent on it, so you won't be able to get rid of glibc completely on a full-fledged desktop.
The package manager (xbps) wasn't visibly faster compared to pacman either (especially with pacman's parallel downloads). Also, I missed the unique features found in certain AUR helpers, like pikaur, which showed the latest Arch news and package comments.
However xbps is definitely a lot faster than the current dnf on Fedora, although that gap may close with dnf5 - which you can install if you want to. I haven't tested dnf5 yet though so can't comment on it. The xtools features in Void were pretty nifty, but in saying that, the lack of them on other distros wasn't that big of a dealbreaker.
Finally, for me, ultimately what I'm after is performance, and Arch with x86-64-v4 packages and the BORE scheduler performed much better overall compared to vanilla Void (or Fedora for that matter). If Void had x86-64-v4 as well, I might consider using it as one of my primary distros, but at present, I'd relegate it to niche scenarios where system resources are limited.
If you want to use Void without transitioning, just install it in a VM and give it a good try. With the state of KVM these days there's very little performance overhead and you can definitely daily-drive Void inside a VM, and then form your own conclusions as to whether its worth switching or not.
I wish they did this a decade ago, back when they tried to crowdfund the Ububtu phone - and subsequently scrapped all plans just because they didn't meet the target. There was already a big dev scene in the community with people porting Ubuntu to Android phones - they could've easily partnered up with them, like how OnePlus partnered up with CyanogenMod a year later. I mean, Canonical did raise $12mil through the campaign, which showed there was not only plenty of interest, but also plenty of people willing to actually fund it.
The problem now is Google and Apple have taken such a deep foothold on the market, it may be a bit too late. After the disappointment of the scrapped Ububtu Phone and subsequent loss of trust in Canonical over the years, I can't help but be sceptical about this whole thing. I'll celebrate if and when we have an actual, usable, flagship device in our hands, and not something gimped like the Librem 5 or the Pinephone.
First of all, it wasn't an answer, it was a question. I was genuinely curious if OP had a legitimate reason to use nVidia.
Second, it makes sense to use hardware that's best compatible with Linux - and avoid ones known to cause issues. Even two seconds of googling would show you how notorious nVidia is on Linux, heck, even Linus Torvalds had some less than polite things to say about nVidia.
And what's wrong with selling? People buy not-fit-for-purpose things all the time, or people's requirements may change, and what was once useful may not be ideal any more. There's no law saying you need to use something you buy for the rest of your life.
Nice review, thanks for sharing! I was curious about how the V3 was with Linux. I've got a Minisforum UM780 mini PC with a 7840HS, which I use as a homelab box, and it's been excellent on Arch. I was tempted to get the V3 as well, but 14" is a bit too big for my use case (primarily as a tablet).
But it's nice knowing that even the fingerprint reader worked out of the box, I know that's been a sore point for many Linux users. The battery life seems a bit on the lower end though - have you tried TuneD yet? Apparently some folks have experienced better battery life with it, compared to PPD. I'm also curious what the battery life would be like if you ran a distro which used x86-64-v4 packages, such as CachyOS, in theory you should get better battery life since you'd be using more optimised instructions.
So, how do you pronounce Porsche?