After working with it for a bit the only con I have at this point is my drafting program isn’t supported so I run it within a virtual machine on a second monitor. It’s hard to even tell it’s running in a vm but it’s kind of annoying. So far drafting and robust PDF editors have been the only weak area. That’s not even Linux though, it’s a lack of support from software vendors.

Yes.

I run an old Roomba that’s offline. It works perfectly fine without being connected to anything. It’s a vacuum, not everything needs to be smart. I’ll upgrade at some point and not let the new device on the Internet either

Makes sense but it’s still annoying. Thanks for the heads up

Lemmy in general blocks posts from vpns which is total bullshit but I can still view with vpn

Edit: in my experience anyhow. Also added bold for bs

I don’t think having a server somewhere is necessarily a bad thing. If you choose to use that server it’s up to you.

I’m a big fan of mullvad

It might have been fluxer but I’m not positive. I’ve been looking at all of the options because I need an alternative so there’s lots of mixed info in my brain. I should have started a spreadsheet

Read the privacy policies too. I can’t remember which one I was reading yesterday but it read like they were going to monitor every word I said… All the while saying they are privacy advocates and based in Europe

Yeah I’ve tried both. Stoat looks good and seems like the best option for similar organization but matrix seems better in terms of privacy. If matrix wasn’t so clumsy it would be hands down the best option.

Is there a new "default"platform everyone is moving to? I’m kind of surprised there isn’t an open source discord clone that comes with e2e encryption. I’m not tech savvy enough to understand the challenges involved I’m sure.

Uncle joke

All the options you listed are downstream from a company. Fedora is from red hat, mint is a fork of Ubuntu, open suse is from… Suse? I can’t remember. That’s not necessarily a bad thing but figured I’d mention it.

Any distro you choose can look however you want. This is something I didn’t understand at first. Your version of Linux lives below the desktop environment. You can install (almost) whatever desktop environment you want on top of your version. Then you can tweak your desktop however you want. Some distros come pre-tweaked but don’t pick a distro on looks alone.

So really your deciding between 3 base Linux distros. Most “distros” are just the base system with some choice drivers and software to help you get going. A few of them are tweaking at the kernel level. You can do the raw version of any of the base Linux versions if you prefer to control and limit any software on your system.

Debian - updates slowly but stable, focus on testing before stable releases. You might miss new Linux features but unless you’re running the latest hardware you probably won’t know the difference. Distros based on Debian: Ubuntu, mint, popos, elementary os (looks like macos!), a hundred other ones.

Arch - updates rapidly with the risk of something not working. If you want bleeding edge features or every drop of performance choose an Arch distro. Just know that you MIGHT need to help it along. I don’t think arch distros being difficult is as true as it once was. There are some excellent distros out there making arch accessible and easy for the masses. Notable distros based on arch: endeavor, cachyos (my personal favorite right now), omarchy

Fedora: kind of a mix giving you fairly up to date software with a stable system. Honestly it’s probably the best place for a newbie to start. It’s not perfect though and you’ll want to read up on install if you have a Nvidia card. Fedora based distros: nobara, bazzite, but most people just use vanilla fedora.

I strongly disagree with the order. To me, nobara has broken more than any of these (quite frequently actually), pop os is clunky and not intuitive, cachy is surprisingly the most stable for me and easiest despite it being arch based. Bazzite I use on my home living room computer and it’s been pretty solid. I’m a little concerned with it though because I believe they are having some maintainer issues that might impact future releases.

For the life of me I can’t find the alien spaceship or 2001 a space Odyssey. Granted, I’ve had several drinks and looking on mobile…

For real. It’s basically do you like typing apt, dnf, or pacman more? Do you want stuff ready to go with potentially things you’ll never use, or do you want to do it all yourself? Do you want daily updates or just occasionally updates.

The iso is 2.9gb and I don’t think it gets bigger when you burn to USB. I think you’ll be good. Welcome to the Linux crew. Mint is a great starting point

I don’t mind an AI summary with references when I search. I do not like ai in almost any other context. Ai has ruined the internet with garbage click bait and fluff articles.

As long as you didn’t overwrite the other os you can always boot from bios to the other drive or maybe even f12 during boot for menu. Temp workaround at least

I like the cosmic look and the idea of the built in tiling manager but in practice I haven’t had a great experience with it. It’s frustrating to customize or find things and had been buggy on my systems