Microsoft increased prices for all of its Surface PCs this week, with most models priced hundreds of dollars higher than they were when launching. Windows Central highlighted the increases, which now see Microsoft's mid-range models priced above $1,000 and flagship models priced starting at $1,500. A Microsoft spokesperson said the price increase was due to "recent increases in memory and component costs".
Turning off fast boot is still a good idea, but Linux distros do work with secure boot these days. So there is no need to turn it off anymore. Not saying it can’t cause some issues at times, though rarely anymore. But Microsoft does provide the keys for secure boot. Where you can find an issue is with proprietary drivers like Nvidia. But Fedora has good and clear instructions on creating and installing MOK, (machine owner keys) to solve the secure boot issue them. I know the Arch wiki has them also.
In any case enjoy CachyOS and whatever comes after!
I didn’t know that—thank you for the info! I’m only really trying various distros to learn more, so I appreciate any and all advice anyone gives me!
I don’t know anything about MOKs, so I’ll do some reading this morning! So far Fedora is prolly gonna stay on the living room media computer, as it works a dream, is super fast, and now that I’ve solved the few issues it had, it’s excellent! My partner who has only used a bit of Linux has no complaints about it haha.
I’ll eventually have to settle on a distro for our main game machines. They’ll still be dual booting W10LTSCIoT for games that don’t work in Linux, but if I can switch every computer in the house to main Linux, I’ll be a happy Rai! Right now, there’s just a couple big things that either only work on Windows, or are so much easier to manage on Windows (hosting a Valheim server with multiple different worlds and modlists that can be easily switched between is a big one right now for me) I gotta boot windows for those.
I have been lucky not to have had issues with NVidia, but on our third game machine, I went with Pop as it was recommended for easy install with NVidia for games hahaha. I made that machine specially for Beat Saber (no Facebook code on any machines with PII in my house!) so if can get Beat Saber with like a thousand songs modded in playing on my ASUS WMR kit on Linux, I’d be over the moon. Alas, it looks like Oasis only works for Winders right now, but it sounds like some smarter folks than I have been working on a WMR driver for Linux.
Older NVIDIA cards tend to be pretty stable, but the latest and greatest stuff not so much.
Since you have a fair number of boxes to manage. If it was me, I would take a look at Atomic distros. And Fedora is a big driver of them. Since you like KDE, you could test the Kinonite spin. And if you do want the hassle of installing nVidia drivers, then maybe Aurora, (a direct fork of Kinonite), might be a better choice. You can choose your graphics card when you download the iso, install and then have everything working on first boot. Aurora also has all the codecs included. Atomic spins make managing multiple computers for users so much easier. Your partner can install/uninstall user software with little worry about breaking the system. And you sleep better at night.
Not saying you need to do it, go have some fun with CachyOS and other distros. But maybe start learning about it and thinking if it might have a place for you.