I think I read this is how HP supplies their “no OS” machines - a very thin Linux with a VM running the FreeDOS fullscreen.

“UEFI does have a legacy compatibility layer” And this is how one may have a “system firmware” that allows both. Could DOS be made UEFI compatible maybe by loading a .sys driver or maybe by replacing io.sys with one that made use of UEFI?

Actually, I do have a quite usable FreeDOS running in DOSBox on my Linux machine, but it’s not quite the same as running DOS / FreeDOS on the metal. Getting floppies to work as seamlessly as they do on a machine meant for DOS for example.

Linux for example will boot easily under both UEFI and BIOS - but I suppose that is because Linux does not ask anything of either once it is running.

A bigger question is will anything be damaged if you try it?

KDE - Was Gnome, but I switched for a reason. I, uh, forgot the reason.

My ASUS Vivobook has a slider that blocks the camera physically. It is bright red so I can easily see it is closed.

Well, I am not in Australia, but so far my AT&T Uverse has worked well. We don’t need the VOIP or TVOIP we use our cell phones and don’t watch TV so it’s all Internet.

The central office at the other end of that fiber probably has emergency generators too.

I use a small band-aid - no gummy glue on the lens!

In an area power outage, if one keeps the router alive via UPS does the router have anything to talk to? In my case I am “Fiber to the node”, there is a box on the sidewalk at the other end of the block that receives the fiber, then copper to my house.

Sure, it couldn’t hurt - The phone is restarted.

Debian lights up an icon in the System Tray. When I am ready I can either click on that icon to bring up the package manager GUI or I can open a Konsole window and run ‘sudo nala update’ then ‘sudo nala upgrade’. (Nala is a beautiful front end for apt)

This is true of any OS, The people who build the OS for you to use can build in all kinds of sneaky stuff - see “Trusting Trust” about an invisible trojan in the C compiler. An issue with Microsoft Vs. Most Any Linux is the whether the maintainer’s goals and the User’s goals are oriented in the same direction. Microsoft wants to get data about you for whatever purpose whereas Most Any Linux maintainer’s main goal is to produce an OS that is as free of bugs and is as useful and as secure as possible.

Funny, that Linux manages to 1) Tell you when updates are available and leaves it up to you to apply them 2) Apply updates quickly, rarely over a minute. 3) Even more rarely requires a reboot. Because of these three features, I am usually more than happy to install an update any time one is available when I come to a convenient point to do so.

So far, and since I have been running Debian for a while now I don’t know about Ubuntu specifically, All the distros I have used either show an update is available, or you check for updates.

You have the choice and control to install the update and can do it later if now is not a good time. Or don’t install it at all, it’s your system.

Unfortunately, all it takes is a change in the HOA board to turn a better HOA into a badder HOA.

You will not find a developer standing at your front door saying “Sorry, Updating the house- you can’t go in right now” - and if you buy a home usually you can remodel but if you are in an HOA you probably have to beg permission to do anything that would be visible from the street.

Perhaps Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, etc are either pre-built homes delivered complete by truck or a stick-built home built to specifications provided by an architect.

In any case, remodeling is a possibility.

One only relies on ChatGPT for 1) imagining science fiction story lines and devices 2) Only where one knows the correct answer already. This instance is kind of a one-off. Spicy autocomplete - lol : ^ )