Updating servers is a pain in the arse. But obviously necessary. I know you get several years of support with stable versions of Debian/Ubuntu/etc. but at the end of that period you still have to do a full upgrade which never goes well. I currently lean towards just using Debian testing on servers which need to be stable but over which I have full control and responsibility (i.e. if it breaks it's *my* problem). Debian testing is still *reliable as fuck* but is relatively up to date and is effectively rolling. (When I'm not responsible I use Debian/Ubuntu stable and on home servers I use Arch cos it's easier).
My current laptop is this and it's fucking lovely. I use it for dev and writing and gaming (in the garden :| ). Everything worked out of the box with Arch (in as much as anything ever works 'out of the box' with Arch). I was dubious about the point of a 4k 15" screen but fell in love with it as soon as I got it - text looks fucking amazing. Decent (for chicklet-style) keyboard, nice trackpad and good hardware (it runs Rocket League playably at 4k (which is absurd and pointless, but still)).
I use libinput rather than xinput because it's moderner which means that the touchscreen only works like a basic mouse pointer, with xinput it would work like a touchscreen should but... I don't want a touchscreen on a laptop so I disable it in the bios anyway.
This won't fix Node, which still sucks because of it's association with npm and it's awful dependency directory structure, but it will at least fix most of the issues with the Windows command prompt (Even though 10's is massively better than before, allowing such things as ANSI/VT100 colours and being fully resizable.)
Why the fuck are people using Windows command prompt!?
Git for Windows has allowed running Bash on any version of Windows since long before Windows 10 even reached GA, and it doesn't have a dumb restriction of not running on Server editions.
I'm using whatever came onboard Fedora 19 (it says 3.8, so I guess they must have changed the numbering since).
I like it ok apart from a few annoyances like the windows jumping around when my cursor goes into a corner.
I put the "gnome-menu" shell extension on it, and dock on the side with 99% of the apps I regularly use (which would be 6), don't really like or use the "activites" thing. I really like that Nautilus file browser does split pane, but I think that's been done away with in newer releases.
I tried some 'lightweight' de's like cinnamon and mate, but they were relatively unstable and feature-poor.
“Satellite Navigation Switches Off Parts of Brain Used For Navigation”
I've been using cinnamon for quite a while but wanted something a bit more interesting, or potentially with a few more features that could improve productivity. Maybe simple is the best answer.
