OldTweaker

About 20 years ago I created several custom live Linux CDs for a project I was working on. This week I looked into how easy that is these days. It is actually so easy that I created a bunch of scripts that make it quite simple. The scripts can be found here: https://gitlab.com/customlivecd/customlivecd
It works on debian based distro's (only tested on Debian 12). Run the prerequisites script, change some config files and run the runme.sh script. You can add any package from the repo's, .debs (for i.e. the Citrix Workspace app) or run commands. A way to include Virtualbox guest additions is included, but you have to download the files first yourself (to avoid license issues with Oracle 😉
Result: a custom .iso you can write to USB or CD/DVD with your files, your own user and passwords.
 
Maybe there are much better ways or projects to this, but it works for me...

I think you mean that the card has 512 mb 🙂 It should handle higher resolutions just fine. If it is limited now to vga (640 x 480) it probably is just a driver issue. 

This is such a weird take. I get that you value isolation, and the ability to run untrusted software, but what makes you think Docker is inherently bad because those are not the primary problems it's trying to solve?
 
They manifestly can't, and it's odd that you're so dedicated to pretending the can. The big one that jail cannot do (because they're not designed to solve this problem) is orchestration.
 
The reason why nothing like kubernetes exists for FreeBSD isn't some kind of failing in the FreeBSD community. It's because that's just not the problem that FreeBSD jails are made to solve.
 
Picking one particular feature of your favourite virtualization tool and then deciding Docker is broken because it's not there is so bizarre. Docker also doesn't provide much GUI support, it doesn't permit any emulation, there any number of things it doesn't do. 
 
No one piece of software can be all things to all people.

Maybe you can try ndiswrapper. That allows you to use a windows wifi driver within Linux. Not a pretty solution, but may work. 
 

Thanks for taking the time to read through all that, especially since bits of it were hastily and sloppily written, despite its length.

If you're curious about some of the upstream issues with Debian packaging and how Linux distro packaging as a whole could stand to improve, somewhat disgruntled ex-Debian developer Michael Stapelberg's exit letter and subsequent work on package management research are super interesting, imo.

Since I've said some unflattering things about Debian tooling I feel obligated to say something true and kind about Debian: at the same time as apt lags behind some similar tools like dnf, Debian is leading the way on upstreaming patches for reproducible builds, which (1) is a ton of work and (2) benefits everyone. It's in the interest of all Linux users for the Debian project to thrive and grow, including developers and users of ‘competing’ Linux distros. We should be glad that one of the oldest surviving community-powered Linux distros continues to push the ecosystem forward for all of us, sometimes in one area, sometimes in another.

@Patrick C. I guess citation given 🙂 
Quite an elaborate and interesting explanation and some good points, thanks. The way to add repo's in apt is indeed cumbersome. The term 'much better' I.M.O is too strong as for all intents and purposes it works quite well, but I do see the point that now maybe DNF may be the one that is ahead. 

I'll just ignore that you think that Ubuntu is great  🙂
 

I'm the founder and lead developer of Bedrock Linux.  While I'm certainly happy to see it mentioned in a positive light here, my recommendation for Linus and Luke would be against trying Bedrock for this venture at this point in time.
 
Fundamental to its nature, Bedrock is more complex than other distros.  There is more to learn, more that could go wrong, and more to wrestle with if something does go wrong.  It's perfectly manageable for adequately experienced Linux users, but not necessarily for everyone, and certainly not for those who are framing trying out even user-friendly oriented distros as a challenge.
 
Moreover, please consider how small Bedrock's community is.  This is concerning not only for Linus and Luke directly, should they run into difficulties and require more community assistance than Bedrock's small community can offer, but also raises concerns that attention from such a large media source would flood and overwhelm the tiny Bedrock community.
 
If Linus and/or Luke end up enjoying Linux and sticking with it, and if the Bedrock community grows to the point where it could handle such an influx of attention, the possibility of it being covered down the road may be worthwhile.  However, both my preference and recommendation would be against it at this point in time.

Do you have any idea what that support will get you? They are not going to hand hold you in how to use Linux. You may log an issue if something is wrong which needs a fix. But expect days before an answer and they still expect you to understand the basics. This may be useful for companies that need that kind of support, but for home user... You are better spending that money on a book in my opinion.  
 
If you want to switch to Linux as your daily driver, the suggestions such as Ubuntu make sense (I have no experience with Fedora but probably that is a good choice as well). Gentoo and Arch are great if you really want to get know how Linux works, but initially can be frustrating as lots of stuff doesn't work until you make it work. You could run one of these in a Virtual Machine just for learning purposes.   

Do you have any idea what that support will get you? They are not going to hand hold you in how to use Linux. You may log an issue if something is wrong which needs a fix. But expect days before an answer and they still expect you to understand the basics. This may be useful for companies that need that kind of support, but for home user... You are better spending that money on a book in my opinion.  
 
If you want to switch to Linux as your daily driver, the suggestions such as Ubuntu make sense (I have no experience with Fedora but probably that is a good choice as well). Gentoo and Arch are great if you really want to get know how Linux works, but initially can be frustrating as lots of stuff doesn't work until you make it work. You could run one of these in a Virtual Machine just for learning purposes.   

Stupid things I've done... Going back to the nineties: 
 
First: Scraped together a dual P166 mmx (96 mb memory!!) and as I was still using Windows (moved to Linux a few years later), had it running in dual boot with W95 and Windows NT 4 SR3. Why? because that would allow me to both play or encode a MP3 whist still having a usable computer. Window NT was needed to make use of both processors. However, whenever I booted in Windows NT, it would quickly BSOD. I ended up selling the the mainboard and cpu's second hand as it was no use. Then later, I think when installing the new main board that I bought as a replacement, I noticed that the fan in the PSU had completely melted. Turned out I hadn't thought about that two CPU's required a more powerful PSU. In those days (mid nineties) that wasn't really a thing. The PSU came with the case. No one looked at the power rating. Most likely a more powerful PSU would have solved the issue of NT crashing. 
 
Second stupid thing in those days: bought a second hand Philips SCSI CD writer for 500 Guilders.. A lot of money for me in those days. The thing however, wouldn't burn beyond roughly 500mb. Turned out it had been used by someone that probably burned a lot of cds with pirated software (which was a thing before widespread broadband). For this particular burner it was a known issue that after many writes a spring would get lame and it would not go beyond 500MB. I read somewhere that if you placed another CD on top of the writable it would go beyond. I tried ... and then the drive was really ruined. Learned a valuable life lesson that time on second hand stuff.

4Gb and an ssd, you should be fine with Linux Mint. Mate is indeed the lightest of the Mint options. Ubuntu Mate may be a bit lighter, but you may not like the UI. There are lighter UIs to be found, but with 4 Gb you should still be fine. 
As to the suggestion to use BSD and the remark that Unix used to run on much lower specs. That's true, but the issue isn't so much the OS or even the UI. The performance hit these days is largely due to websites having the UI run in the browser and not serverside (thank you Javascript...). You can optimize till you're blue in the face, in the end the demand of the websites is what will feed the demand for more power. Choosing a light UI such as Mate will give you a little more memory but don't expect miracles. Choosing BSD will not give you noticeable extra performance if at all. 
A tip on MS Teams: this is a very demanding app. Doesn't seem like your laptop has a discrete GPU. So the best tip is to: 'Disable GPU hardware acceleration' in the settings of MS Teams. Seems counter intuitive, but GPU hardware acceleration only works well with discrete GPUs and will kill performance with integrated GPUs
Also tip from someone that learned the hard way: make sure the fans of the laptop are clean. Seriously, something people often ignore, but it makes a ton of difference to prevent throttling. Made that mistake myself on a beefy laptop that made a ton of noise when Teams was running and became sluggish. Just cleaning the fans made it behave again 🙂
 

4Gb and an ssd, you should be fine with Linux Mint. Mate is indeed the lightest of the Mint options. Ubuntu Mate may be a bit lighter, but you may not like the UI. There are lighter UIs to be found, but with 4 Gb you should still be fine. 
As to the suggestion to use BSD and the remark that Unix used to run on much lower specs. That's true, but the issue isn't so much the OS or even the UI. The performance hit these days is largely due to websites having the UI run in the browser and not serverside (thank you Javascript...). You can optimize till you're blue in the face, in the end the demand of the websites is what will feed the demand for more power. Choosing a light UI such as Mate will give you a little more memory but don't expect miracles. Choosing BSD will not give you noticeable extra performance if at all. 
A tip on MS Teams: this is a very demanding app. Doesn't seem like your laptop has a discrete GPU. So the best tip is to: 'Disable GPU hardware acceleration' in the settings of MS Teams. Seems counter intuitive, but GPU hardware acceleration only works well with discrete GPUs and will kill performance with integrated GPUs
Also tip from someone that learned the hard way: make sure the fans of the laptop are clean. Seriously, something people often ignore, but it makes a ton of difference to prevent throttling. Made that mistake myself on a beefy laptop that made a ton of noise when Teams was running and became sluggish. Just cleaning the fans made it behave again 🙂
 

Epoxy resin is NOT electrically conductive.
Just get the no metallic additive epoxy, make sure its non conductive.
Then encase a desk pc in epoxy. 
Literally pour it into a mould with parts setup like a desk pc. 3+ inches thick, encasing the parts?  Yes, pour epoxy on a motherboard, ect.  Remove the mould, and you have a pc suspended within an acrylic looking desktop.
Epoxy is also thermally conductive.
- Epoxy can be done in layers; pour a thin opaque layer, then after that cures fill it with clear, so you're not looking at your knees.
- Cooling; custom water with reservoir (or manifold) encased with rads and pump mounted on the underside of the table, 
- VRM, PSU's and other specific parts may have a problem with it and need special attention,
- RGB the hell out of it,
- DEFINITELY a one time risk build, no upgrade path ever, no repair ... ever, and the chance of building it and it just not start is real ... might one day be a narly piece of wall art.
Sounds like the perfect LTT project.

Thanks, for the help. I know it doesn’t have to align, but then it still doesn’t fit in the case. For now I’ll keep it as a spare. The temps still look good 🙂 

Unfortenately I haven't got my first PC anymore, a 486 dx2 50 that ran 24/7 for years as  server without a even a heatsink on the CPU (we were living wild in those days 🙂 ). But from my own 'museum' some specials: an old Sony mini laptop (PCG-141C) with a Transmeta Crusoe processor (co developed by Linus Thorvald!)  and my Nokia 770 internet tablet with a foldable keyboard and the navigation kit. 
It all still boots and is complete.
 
The Sony originally came with Windows ME. I replaced that straight away with Gentoo Linux with Openbox and it worked well to watch .avi's in the train.  Unfortenately the HD in the Sony crapped out. At first is was dead when I booted it today. Now it is awake and makes a terrible noise. I tried to remove it as I don't have a spare IDE 2.5 inch left, but is is a bit too hard to get to, so I'll just leave it.
On the picture there is also a PCMCIA card for LAN and... 56k6 modem. Don't have the cables anymore that came with them so it's useless now.

Unfortenately I haven't got my first PC anymore, a 486 dx2 50 that ran 24/7 for years as  server without a even a heatsink on the CPU (we were living wild in those days 🙂 ). But from my own 'museum' some specials: an old Sony mini laptop (PCG-141C) with a Transmeta Crusoe processor (co developed by Linus Thorvald!)  and my Nokia 770 internet tablet with a foldable keyboard and the navigation kit. 
It all still boots and is complete.
 
The Sony originally came with Windows ME. I replaced that straight away with Gentoo Linux with Openbox and it worked well to watch .avi's in the train.  Unfortenately the HD in the Sony crapped out. At first is was dead when I booted it today. Now it is awake and makes a terrible noise. I tried to remove it as I don't have a spare IDE 2.5 inch left, but is is a bit too hard to get to, so I'll just leave it.
On the picture there is also a PCMCIA card for LAN and... 56k6 modem. Don't have the cables anymore that came with them so it's useless now.

Unfortenately I haven't got my first PC anymore, a 486 dx2 50 that ran 24/7 for years as  server without a even a heatsink on the CPU (we were living wild in those days 🙂 ). But from my own 'museum' some specials: an old Sony mini laptop (PCG-141C) with a Transmeta Crusoe processor (co developed by Linus Thorvald!)  and my Nokia 770 internet tablet with a foldable keyboard and the navigation kit. 
It all still boots and is complete.
 
The Sony originally came with Windows ME. I replaced that straight away with Gentoo Linux with Openbox and it worked well to watch .avi's in the train.  Unfortenately the HD in the Sony crapped out. At first is was dead when I booted it today. Now it is awake and makes a terrible noise. I tried to remove it as I don't have a spare IDE 2.5 inch left, but is is a bit too hard to get to, so I'll just leave it.
On the picture there is also a PCMCIA card for LAN and... 56k6 modem. Don't have the cables anymore that came with them so it's useless now.