Be aware that the rpi4 onboard ethernet adapter is not capable of an mtu above 1500 which means that the ppp interface for the adsl or ftth connection has an mtu below 1500. This breaks some websites (most notably duckduckgo) and mobile apps, and hampers performance. Also the rpi4 has only one interface, which will work, but two interfaces would be more natural for a router.
A Raspberry is incredible value for money though.
@ookhoi
Definitely with a WiFi adapter as a dongle.
I did not knew about the MTU problem and that it has implications on how some websites break.
Do you have more info on the topic? Especially on why a website would care and break because of MTU below 1500. Would the MTU not get smaller wenn using tunnels like VPN or Tor?
About 70% of Raspberry Pis are made in Pencoed, Wales, but some are made in Japan and China.
I am glad I hit a UK made one.
I second the Raspberry pi option. Perfect for messing around and learning linux, and there is a ton of community support for it. For example, searching the web with “how do I do X on a raspberry pi” will yield lots of results.
If you want to get an affordable screen for it, you could set up something like this, or similar from second-hand parts online: https://www.canakit.com/raspberry-pi-4-lcd-display-case-pi4.html?defpid=4606
I would not go for a raspberry pi. I think that the arm architecture will throw up more roadblocks for you and frustrations.
Take it from someone who has had up to 8 laptops at any one time as I did what you want to do. After much experimenting I’d go for Dells. The older latitudes E6430 ir E5430. Go for the i5 not i7 as the i7 can have hiccups with virtualbox if you get into that. Both of these run anything, qubes included, that I throw at them.
I also have Lenovos. A x230 which is almost as versatile as the Dells and a W530 that can be finicky with qubes. They are ok, but if you want hassle free, the Dells.
Both Dells take 16gb ram as does the x230. The w530 takes 32gb which is nice but not essential as 16gb of GOOD ram is ample.
Just my experience over the past 5 years. And you’ll pick one of these Dells up cheaply. I prefer the E6430 for size and its closest in size the Purism v14.
with the current prices of the bigger raspberry pi4s or 400s I’d go with either the Cromebook advice from MrChromebox or maybe us a Virtual Machine on your Librem depending on the amount of RAM on it.
within the VM you can also try everything and just kill respectively reinstall it if you broke something.
I switched internet provider last month and had to return the Fritzbox. Instead of buying myself an off the shelf router, I configured an rpi4 to set up the ppp connection over ftth, act as a dhcp- and RA-server for the local network, do routing, dns and firewalling.
With this provider (Freedom in The Netherlands) one needs to configure vlan6 on the uplink interface with an mtu of 1508 bytes so there is room for the 8 bytes pppoe overhead to configure the mtu on the ppp interface to the ethernet default of 1500 bytes.
Setting an mtu of 1508 on the rpi4 network interface gives back an error which I cannot retrieve at the moment as the rpi4 is not up. With the default mtu of 1500 bytes on the interface, the ppp interface comes up with an mtu of 1492 bytes.
Normally packets should be fragmented to match the smallest mtu on a network, but for reasons I did not understand that did not work on my network. The issue is very obscure as you can see the requests go over the line and come back, but somehow just get ignored. Hard to translate into a proper question to ask the internet (even if ddg would actually work).
As to why a site would (not) break, I guess that for most sites the packets get fragmented down the line on the internet, and simply were able to traverse my network back and forth.
The reason for a vpn to work with a smaller mtu is that this vpn interface is directly on your device. So your laptop or phone sees the actuall max mtu it can use.
I’m not sure tor is actually a vpn with interfaces, but same would apply.
I solved the issue by using an intel based supermicro server used for backups instead.
Today I ordered an [1]IdeaPad Duet 3i 10. This tablet-with-keyboard is quite underpowered with 8GB of ram and an old intel pentium cpu, but it is just 550 euro and is supposed to be able to run linux. I’m going to use it to try out window managers and software for when my Librem 5 gets delivered.
Wow, OK there’s a lot more info then I know what to do with. A few differing opinions and options for me to think about. Thank you to the community and everyone’s time. This forum is really active, and a great resource.
I would recommend linux mint. It is still my favourite OS because it is easy to understand and works well.
They also sell a thing called a mintbox mini 2. It isn’t a laptop, but laptops tend to cost a bit more than something that needs plugging into a screen and keyboard.
Plus, it makes it super easy to get all the drivers and multimedia codecs you might need.
OP explicitly said they already had one Librem and wanted to run PureOS (ideally) on this secondary device. Why are ppl recommending they run another distro?
I’d second the motion, it also receives and installs updates well.
Dual boot on my existing Librem 13, or I can also try to dual boot an older ThinkPad or Chromebook. Sounds like that’s the best path to try first.
dual boot what? Having two instances of PureOS installed, or even PureOS + another distro doesn’t make a lot of sense. A separate device or a VM for tooling around is a much better option
Dual boot by running a second version of PureOS, beside my “good” working version, to avoid messing up my daily user. Sounds silly, but for example even just trying to update Pure is a battle each time… today I am getting an “unmet dependency” error when trying to run the update and upgrade commands… there goes a few more hours of scrolling through the message boards and stumbling around. It has been quite a battle trying to switch off of Mac, as a lot of the things I try to do just don’t work. I always seem to run into a goofy situation with everything.
dual booting on the same device, even with a different drive, simply adds to the possibility that one OS will screw up another (eg, via a grub update). Either use a VM or a separate device IMO
Aha! So me messing around with one OS on a dual boot computer could mess up the other OS. I thought there might be a chance, but thanks for pointing it out. That clarifies things - best to get another laptop and have/install PureOS onto it. Thanks again!
I used to have fun seeing how many O/S I could install. Things worked fine until they went from grub1 to grub2. I didn’t lose any O/S but I had to use my GrubRescue thumb drive to reinstall grub. Then I picked ONE O/S to reinstall and detect all my other O/S and repopulate grub.