Possible desktops (Gnome, Mate, Cinnamon, LXQT, Enlightenment, etc).

How to install Linux.

Open source apps and how to install them.

Favourite apps (survey of what people are using).

Alternatives to popular Windows apps.

Wine (a way of running some Windows apps).

Security issues (firewall etc).

Hardware issues (sound, printers, etc).

https://www.zdnet.com/article/my-6-must-have-linux-apps-for-productivity-and-why-they-make-work-easier/

And here's a big list of popular Linux apps (click "32 more" to see the full list).

If you use apps which are web-based rather than installed on your computer, it makes no difference whether you use Windows or Linux, you will have an identical experience when using these apps.

Instead of Microsoft Office you can use LibreOffice, or if you want an office application which is very similar in look and feel to MS Office then you can install WPS Office. Or you can use the web-based free version of MS Office.

If you are thinking of changing from Windows to Linux, this video is worth a look, and if you are interesting in installing Linux Mint, a popular version of Linux which looks and feels a bit like Windows, click here for a demonstration.

Comments / requests more than welcome !

• Home Assistant for home automation

• Immich for photo management

• Searxng for private web searching

• restic for backups

• docker-mailserver for email hosting

• Wordpress for my website

• Calibre for ebooks

I think its something like :

• Desktop - dominated by various windows versions

• Mobile - dominated by android (Linux)

• Cloud servers (eg web server) - dominated by Linux

• Home devices (set-top boxes etc) - dominated by Linux

When I was working I did a lot with Microsoft Azure (their cloud platform) ... then, even with Microsoft, vast majority of services were Linux.

Anyways, just wanted to make the point that Linux isn't an edge case ... its been around for years and is very widely used.

And, in case you think windows is the only option (or linux for that matter), the operating system family tree can be found here https://eylenburg.github.io/os_familytree.htm

In the dim past I worked for UNIX System Laboratories who owned the System V UNIX source code (from Bell Labs / AT&T) and licenced it to HP, Sun, etc ... this ended up with UnixWare, just before Linux took off ... all just a footnote in history it seems !

I do recall buying a book + set of floppies to install linux (slackware I think), I probably should have hung on to that.

The only problem I had was that I did not verify the installation, as the available instructions were circular and incomprehensible. I used linuxmint.com/download.php.

(1) get a complete detail inventory of what they have - thereby cataloguing all the valuable software licences they own including the Windows OS licence key and details of all components and

(2) email the report as a pdf to the cloud so that if the PC hard driver fails, the report is secure in the cloud.

They should do this on day one of switching on a new Windows PC. To avoid burning bridges when installing Linux as a Windows replacement, they should certainly run this inventory report to provide a way back from Linux.

The free app I recommend for this is: https://www.belarc.com/products/belarc-advisor It produces a report in html format. Best to “print” the report as a pdf and email it to yourself for safekeeping.

Then install Linux and forget about the report because I predict Linux adopters will never want to go back.

I'm already using LibreOffice, Thunderbird, Scribus and Brave, all of which are available on Linux, so I'm well placed.

I have tried running "systemctl enable apache2", as recommended on this page (and others), but it doesn't help.

Any suggestions?

I found that the EFI System Partition had to be much larger than guidance suggests - mine is now 1 GB - and also the space required for each install is larger than suggested; far from being the 40-80 GB that's in the literature, I'm now using 150 GB (200 for Zorin) and still having difficulties completing installs.

I'm using ISOs on USB sticks for Mint and Kubuntu and have also tried DVDs for them. I have a DVD for basic Zorin and also a USB stick for Zorin Pro. All have failed.

Ideas anybody?

I've purchased Zorin Pro and wish to install it on my PC. But I've done 5 downloads of the ISO (one at night as the makers suggested), but every one has failed the SHA256 checksum test.

Does anybody have a validated Zorin Pro 17.3 ISO on a USB stick, that I could borrow next week? I can show the receipt to prove that I bought the right to download the product.

As it happens my wifes father has reached a point where he can't find things on his ipad ... I can't think of a more flexible desktop if you really want to configure everything to suit a person.

Feel free to sign up for an account on the site.

If you already have a fediverse account you can follow me at plord@u3a.social and/or join the u3acommunities computing group by following u3acommunitiescomputing@u3a.social .

I plan to run a talk soon, probabaly in the new year, about actually using the site.

phil@raspberrypi:~ $ sudo certbot --apache

That seemed to work and created a ploid-le-ssl.conf file under /etc/apache2/sites-available (and a symbolic link in sites-enabled). I then removed the old ploid-ssl.conf symbolic link using the a2dissite script.

At that point, my site was inaccessible. Firefox just reported an unspecified problem; Safari reported too many redirects. Looking at the config file, I saw that it was redirecting the URL for my website's home page to the very same page. That, of course, led to an infinite redirect loop.

Having commented out the redirect directive, everything started working again. So, my question for this group is, what did I do wrong that caused certbot to do that?