People have already given direct answers, and the indirect answer of ‘set up regular automated backups’ (which everyone should set up right now if they haven’t already), but for the sake of throwing another option out there, people could take a look at ‘trash-cli’: https://github.com/andreafrancia/trash-cli

(P.S. I know OP might not have actually deleted the files with ‘rm’, but this addresses a broadly similar issue.)

I think it’s worth emphasising here: Don’t put it off!

There are millions who can tell you from experience that good intentions count for nothing when it comes to backups.

I’d recommend going and setting up Timeshift right now: https://github.com/linuxmint/timeshift

It’s easy to set up, it takes literally 10 minutes, and if you decide later you want to use something else, you can just uninstall Timeshift and delete its backups. But in the meantime you’ll be protected with backups.

It’s literally the first thing I install on a new system and it’s saved me multiple times from having to do a complete reinstall.

Void - https://voidlinux.org/

HP, as well as being hostile to its customers, is also complicit in the Israeli occupation, and is a major target of the BDS movement: https://bdsmovement.net/boycott-hp

Don’t buy HP products.

Ain’t nothin’ but a heartache

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if this is to protect kids on your network

Sadly, I suspect this is to protect adults on the network…

where the port is rotated 180 degrees so the push is between the plug and the back of the screen

That ought to be a crime! I would be getting fed up with that pretty quickly and making some improvised modifications to disable the retention clips!

a plug that claws itself in place

Just FYI, you can get DP cables without the retention clips. I too find them unnecessary and annoying.

New to Linux so I’m sorry if I’m being ignorant, but it does seem crazy you can get access to a machine without the password.

This is always the case, no matter what OS you use, unless you use full-disk encryption. User credentials are all just data on a disk, so if someone has physical access to your machine, and your disk isn’t encrypted, then they can access (and change) those credentials or any other data.

See also: https://ostechnix.com/reset-windows-password-with-linux-live-cd/

What’s even the point of having a password

As you say, preventing remote access is one, but also a password will slow someone down a bit, and stop low-knowledge adversaries entirely, possibly. Also you will at least know someone has messed with your machine if they change the password.

Really, though, there’s nothing malicious someone can do to an unencrypted computer by changing the password that they couldn’t do without changing the password (copy all your files, delete all your files, install malicious software). Except I guess annoying you by making you change your password back. 😆

They mean ‘Guix System’. Just like there is ‘Nix’ the package manager and ‘NixOS’ the distro, there is ‘Guix’ the package manager and ‘Guix System’ the distro.

See here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Guix_System

Thanks for the info!

Not sure where to find those kind of benchmarks, but you may want to look at Gentoo. It compiles everything locally, optimising specifically for the hardware.

EDIT: Best I could find for benchmarks: https://www.phoronix.com/review/spring-2020-distros

This is not true, but the National Geographic Facebook page posted it, so it’s been perpetuated:

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/false-hippopotamus-milk-pink/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphere_at_The_Venetian_Resort