If you go with dual booting this is what worked for me when I have done dual boot, so windows doesn’t mess with boot options:

1. Window have to be installed first or already there.
2. With a Live ISO use a tool like gparted and shrink windows main partition from the right.
3. During installation, choose custom partitioning to manage the free space

• Make a secondary /boot/efi partition so linux boot is installed there.
• Make the / root partition for linux and optional make a partition for /home.
• Finish the installation.

4. Boot into UEFI and change boot order to that secondary /boot/efi.
5. Reboot and profit.

That way grub will be running from the secondary /boot/efi, and it will detect and add windows and the primary /boot/efi

Windows only sees and care about the first /boot/efi and will only mess with that, so even if it does change something it doesn’t matter.

Fossify Keyboard can do it

Aside from having it disconnected while you are formatting or installing to be safe, you should be able to use it just fine.

If what you want is an alternative for the SMS on Desktop feature, I’m surprised no one has mentioned https://messages.google.com/web

You could use aliases on your .bashrc for git (and a bare repo), that would let you manage your $HOME and /etc directly with git without using symlinks, only downside is having them separated in two aliases and two repos.

# user config repo
alias dotfiles='git --git-dir=$HOME/.dotfiles --work-tree=$HOME'

# system config repo
alias etcfiles='sudo git --git-dir=$HOME/.etcfiles --work-tree=/etc'

It is also recommended that you run:

<alias> config --local status.showUntrackedFiles no

in the terminal for both the dotfiles and etcfiles aliases (you can pick the aliases and git-dir names you want)

The aliases help you have a custom named folder instead of .git located in a custom path, and you can manage them without symlinks as you use git directly on the file’s original location, this would solve your issue of other solutions that depend on symlinks

Note: you could technically have the root directory --work-tree=/ as a work tree to use only one command, but It is not recommended to give git the possibility to rewrite any file on the entire file system.

Some reference links:

Text

Video

can I use gparted on ventoy to resize partitions on a notbook?

Yes, you can use the gparted ISO on ventoy or any other live ISO that has gparted to resize partitions.

As I said on the first line, no ranking of any kind can be trusted 100%, I pointed out an alternative to distrowatch, and why I would trust it a bit more, not saying I really trust it, or that I believe every result.

It is less popular so it could be a case like OpenMandriva has it integrated to upload automatically for all its users by default, or they found another way to game that ranking.

When I see any ranking, I do research when I see a distro that is suspiciously positioned, and I haven’t heard about outside the place I saw it referenced, and even so I always stick to mainline distros.

Honest results would need a standard way that every distro adopts and make an opt-out (not opt-in) regular upload thing similar to what linux-hardware.org does, and be actively trying to mitigate or deny certain distros or specific actors from tampering with the results, and we don’t have that.

Page rankings, clicks, scripts, etc. are not enough if every device doesn’t ping it in a legitimate way (fake user agent or other means), and there is always the case of people that will opt-out or block this as they don’t want to be tracked.

On your point of something like Alexa Page Rankings, the thing I would add is that, at least for me, if it is a ranking shown by a corporation, it is not trustworthy.

I think there is no ranking site that can be 100% trusted.

That said, I trust linux-hardware.org a bit more than distro watch, even if it’s not as popular, because you have to intentionally download an app/script for it to scan and upload your distro/hardware data (so no page clicks or just traffic, you must have the distro installed), and if you repeatedly try to upload the same distro/hardware data, it doesn’t count multiple uploads on its statistics, if they are not at least a month apart.

Edit: and even on linux-hardware you have strange results like OpenMandriva and ROSA as Distros on top 15, and I have never heard of them outside there, and from what I can find they are somewhat popular in Russia and some parts of Europe

Same, have used it for years, both on terminal and with qtpass GUI, on Linux and Windows desktops, the lack of a maintained android client, has me looking into keepassxc and vaultwarden, still haven’t made a switch.

There is an intro video to see the features, is really good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15_-hgsX2V0

• Not everyone that uses Linux is against proprietary software or only uses FOSS.
• There are people that just heard of Linux, are just trying it out, or have an issue, and already use Reddit, or is what the search engine points them to go for help, or to ask questions.
• Reddit has a lot more reach for the common people than any other platform at the moment, there are still people that prefer to ask on Reddit, than go to a specific forum or another platform to ask (If I remember right, it still happens with some apps like Jellyfin that moved out of Reddit, but people still ask there)

These are just a few of the reasons that come to my mind.

What would you recommend that is not NixOS or a Bash script and can be used agnostic of distro?

This is not correct as pass uses GPG, and you can do symmetric encryption with it, it is just a different parameter in the command.

You can use a different password per file, or the same one

I use qtpass as a GUI for pass

Can I use it fully offline?

Yes, it is fully offline, you can back it up by any mean you could any other file, and it should be fine as the files are encrypted (should store the keys separated), can be a USB, an external drive, another computer in your LAN, a git repo, nextcloud, syncthing.

How do I back it up to USB drive?

You copy and paste the files

What does the day-to-day operation of Pass compared to Keepass look like?

As I said I use qtpass as a GUI so, open qtpass, search for the specific password file, double click, put the password for my gpg key and then the password I need is stored in clipboard for 30sec (this is customizable or can be disabled) and I paste it where I need it.

If I need to store a new password, just use the add password button, and input the data, it is that simple.

I’m going to mention Ansible as I haven’t seen it mentioned, and it can be used to locally manage a reproducible build.

It has already been mentioned, but as a minimum to replicate your system you need two things:

• Transfer/copy your entire /home directory as there is where the majority of the configuration files of your system pertaining the software you use (there could be configs you could need on /etc and on /usr/local or other dir), that is why it is recommended to partition your disk on installation of your distro, so the /home directory is already separated, as if you reinstall in the same machine you don’t lose any configuration in addition to your personal documents/pictures/etc
• Have a way to automatically install a list of programs/apps/drivers/libraries, and that is what something like a bash script, Ansible, nixOs, etc. could help you with.

The truth is that using any of the tools in the second point requires learning a bunch, so if your skill level is still not there, there is some work to do to get there.