u/Remarkable-Muffin655

am currently running a server off an old laptop hooked up to a brand new yottamaster DAS and 4 TB WD Red +. The DAS drops connections randomly like completely randomly. There is 0 pattern it never drops when writing usually it's just when it's doing nothing. It's not going to sleep because I have a Cron job that touches a file on it every 5 minutes. I literally don't understand what's happening like is it just the USB controller that's ass?? But then what's the point of the mf product if the USB connector is bad like I'm so confused. It's just surprising because the build quality is quite good and then they decide to cheap out there...is there anything I can do? Is there an alternative external DAS I can buy?

For some more context I am also using this as kind of a TV console. I literally just have Firefox loaded up on xfce so we can watch Fifa streams or play Amazon Luna lol. Idk if that's doing anything but it usually crashes when xfce is turned off anyway (I have commands set up to terminate the desktop environment when noone is using it. I know it's a jamk setup but I don't have the funds to ball out unfortunately :( )

Any help would be appreciated I'm still able to return the DAS so yeah.

I am currently running a server off an old laptop hooked up to a brand new yottamaster DAS and 4 TB WD Red +. The DAS drops connections randomly like completely randomly. There is 0 pattern it never drops when writing usually it's just when it's doing nothing. It's not going to sleep because I have a Cron job that touches a file on it every 5 minutes. I literally don't understand what's happening like is it just the USB controller that's ass?? But then what's the point of the mf product if the USB connector is bad like I'm so confused. It's just surprising because the build quality is quite good and then they decide to cheap out there...is there anything I can do? Is there an alternative external DAS I can buy?

For some more context I am also using this as kind of a TV console. I literally just have Firefox loaded up on xfce so we can watch Fifa streams or play Amazon Luna lol. Idk if that's doing anything but it usually crashes when xfce is turned off anyway (I have commands set up to terminate the desktop environment when noone is using it. I know it's a jamk setup but I don't have the funds to ball out unfortunately :( )

Any help would be appreciated I'm still able to return the DAS so yeah.

Let me open by saying windows sucks. I have a ryzen 5 5600, Rx 7600 32 gb Ram so a solid mid ranger from like 2 years ago. It crashes so much and it's so bloated and windows search is terrible and file explorer sucks still and bash is so much better and a BAJILLION more things. On top of that I just watched the LTT Linux challenge video AND the infographics channel put up a video about windows sucking. Yeah it's time to switch.

Now I'm a CS major and am very comfortable with tech and can probably navigate more complex issues if need be but I know Linux has gotten way better so that might not even matter. Currently I've dual booted my school laptop and main Ubuntu on that which is smooth and snappy and only use windows for OneNote (which is also ass, like why are my PDFs uploaded as pictures??) but now I'm looking to switch over my gaming PC.

I am comfortable with tech but tbh I just want an OOTB system that I can play games on, do a bit of coding, and the regular browsing stuff. Don't wanna deal with weird driver version stuff or whatever and don't need any hyper customizability. I don't want to do Ubuntu because I wanna try something different and also snap is stupid and the fact that snap installations and regular installations differ is also stupid.

Anyways my main priorities are:

- feels smooth and snappy

- runs games well

- can do dev work on it

- isn't bloated

2 ones I'm considering rn are Mint cinnamon and PopOS (though I've heard this one has a couple issues?). If you have better suggestions pls lmk 🙏 Thank you!