Lettuce eat lettuce

Never been happier to be 100% on Linux.

I adore Linux Mint, it’s my goto workhorse distro. If I need a general use computer that I want to #JustWork I throw Linux Mint on it.

If you want to keep up with newer hardware and software and get the best performance out of your games, you’ll want to use a distro with faster updates.

I’ve been using Nobara on my gaming computer for about 2 years and it’s been pretty good, I get great performance in all my games.

Are you a huge fan of Debian as a base? And what Desktop environment/window manager do you prefer?

I used Ubuntu Studio many years ago when I was going through an electronica phase lol. It worked fine for me.

Don’t sweat it, there will always be the hot new distros on the block. Right now it’s Bazzite, CatchyOS, and NixOS, back in the day there was Garuda, Arco Linux, Bunsen, MX Linux, and a ton of others. Some are still around, some are long gone. Doesn’t mean they are bad distros, many of them are/were great, but don’t choose a distro just because everybody is talking about it.

Plus, as you get more experience with Linux, the differences matter less and less. There are only a handful of package managers, and unless you have some very specific technical requirements, they all do the same thing and work the same way.

“apt install firefox” becomes “yum install firefox”, or “pacman -S firefox” it’s all pretty much the same under the hood.

And if you use KDE Plasma on different distros, the Discover store works the same across distros, same with any other GUI package installer.

If you keep getting better and get into home lab building or just have several different computers, you might end up using a bunch or distros at the same time on different machines.

Right now across all my physical computers and virtual machines in my home lab, I currently have 9 different distros installed on various machines. Different distros for different purposes.

My general #JustWorks laptops and VMs use Linux Mint, my hardcore gaming rig uses Nobara, my test junker laptops run Debian 13, Void Linux, and Arch for testing random software and messing around. For my Docker containers, I run Debian 12 as the base, for my Minecraft server, Ubuntu Server, my Steam Deck is SteamOS which is just Valve’s heavily modified spin of Arch, and my main lab’s Type-1 hypervisor is XCP-ng, which is basically Fedora under the hood.

I can’t speak to any other countries, but in the states, Magic Earth has been great for me. Been using it for over two years now, several different regions of the USA. It’s not as good as Google Maps, but it’s plenty good enough for my needs.

Navigation and routing is solid, traffic data is acceptable, and the dashcam feature is awesome.

You’re on the right track. Linux technically refers to the kernel, the low-level core of the operating system that everything else interacts with and is built on top of. Distros are just collections of components that have been standardized by some group or company.

Linux Mint is heavily customized Ubuntu with a different DE and all of Connonical’s stuff removed. Nobara is a gaming-focused distro built on Fedora with a bunch of kernel modifications and pre-installed software to help games run better. CatchyOS is just Arch but with a really friendly installer that allows less advanced users to still enjoy many of the heavy customizations and cutting-edge software of Arch, etc etc.

Think of it like an engine. You can use the same engine in a bunch of different vehicles. You can also make modifications to the engine itself, but it will still essentially be the same engine.

The #1 rule for new Linux users, especially ones who aren’t interested in becoming power users or tinkering with their OS, is if you’re happy with your distro, stick with it.

There’s no objective “correct” distro. The best distro for you is the distro that works and you feel comfortable with.

Lots of new users become worried that they are missing out on some major improvement in their experience of Linux or feel like they picked the “wrong” distro because some random user dissed it. Don’t pay attention to that, if your distro does everything you need it to do and you enjoy using it, there’s no reason to go looking for something better.

Now of course, there’s nothing wrong with checking out other distros, and if you are somebody who likes to tinker with your setup and doesn’t mind risking breaking things sometimes, then by all means, distro hop away. Almost all distros have a “live boot” option, which allows you to test the OS off of a flash drive without having to install it on your computer. It’s a great way to quickly get the look and feel for a new distro without having to commit.

And of course, there are tons of Linux YouTubers who do reviews of distros, so you can watch those to also get an idea of the different options out there.

Because of the nature of FOSS and the linux ecosystem, you can make most distros look and feel just like any other, so that’s always an option too.

There’s quite a few places that you can host a simple site for free.

Plus, linode’s cheapest Nanode option is $5 bucks a month, you could spin up a very minimal LAMP stack on that.

Favorite heavyweight Type 1 hypervisor: XCP-ng. It’s open source, runs on a ton of enterprise and consumer-grade hardware, has always been rock stable for me, even when forgetting to update it for like 6 months, still ran everything like a champ.

I need to try ProxMox, has some cool features. XCP-ng is pretty intuitive though, UI makes sense and is cleaner than Proxmox. The integration in Proxmox with the Incus project is pretty cool though, especially being able to run VMs and containers and manage them together. I’ve been thinking of trying that and seeing how it goes.

For containers, I just install Debian and run Docker on there. Stable, simple, nothing fancy. If I need something more up to date, I typically use Ubuntu Server.

I’ve messed with Porteus before, it’s still janky, and locked down, not fully open source. Better than nothing, but still not as easy as Windows.

No easy/simple kiosk mode. One of the very few things Windows does well, you can turn any computer into a kiosk in less than 5 minutes.

With Linux, you have to jank a bunch of stuff together and it’s a huge pain.

Phew! I was worried it might have been an innocent victim.

Steam Deck easily. Everything you said you’re worried about Valve possibly doing in the future goes double for Microsoft.

Steam Deck is a great platform for playing any games on, pirated included. I have my whole GBA ROM collection on my Deck and play them through RetroArch, works perfectly.

Shoulda gone easy on the roids, brotherrrr!

I only mentioned it because it’s what I’ve been using for a while and it’s been a good experience so far. Cheap, runs well on Linux, and is one of the few that still allows you to port forward.

There are several good ones to pick from, defs would stay away from Nord because of their advertising practices, but Mullvad is solid. I think they removed port forwarding though.

Don’t subject your family to nasty letters in their mail from your ISP. You won’t go to jail, but you might risk your internet service getting canceled, which won’t be a fun conversation with your parents.

If you’re 18 and healthy, go donate plasma at a local clinic. In the USA depending on where you are, you can make $40-$80 per week, sometimes even more if they have a big shortage. Takes about 90 minutes a session, and you just chill with a needle in your arm and browse on your phone, super easy.

Proton VPN’s most expensive plan is $108 for 2 years, you can afford that. Go to your friends or neighbors and offer to do some yard work for cash. Mow their lawn, shovel bark, dig up dead shrubs, whatever. That’s the main way I made money when I was in my teens. People will pay 20-30 bucks an hour in most places for that kind of work, so a few hours of that in a week or two and you’ve got your $108 for Proton VPN, or whatever other VPN you want to use.

Sell some crap on eBay, FB marketplace, Craig’s List, etc. Old clothes, computer parts, consoles, weights, people will buy anything. You’d be surprised how fast I’ve gotten rid of junk buy posting it online for 10 bucks.

Did you mean to say, preposition instead of proposition?

The only reason that’s true in the US at least, is because our long distance public transport infrastructure is horrific. Trains here are slow, dirty, expensive, and limited in their routes.

If we had a dense network of cross-country high speed trains, cars would be far less necessary. It’s a vicious cycle. More cars requires more car-centric infrastructure, which creates incentive to continue using cars, which feeds the need for expanding the car-infra, etc.

I’ve got plenty of human touch, I’m touching myself right now!

I use Nobara with KDE for my gaming computer, Mint with Cinnamon for pretty much everything else.

Mint is the closest to a “Just Works” experience for me. Cinnamon is rock stable, especially on Mint Debian Edition. I don’t remember the last time Cinnamon crashed or had any major bugs for me.

I use Debian for most of my servers, stable and simple. Arch on a junker Thinkpad to test and mess around with new programs and window managers.

~50x

My policy is double my download, minimum. But I almost always hit much higher than that, my average is probably between 5-10x

All my torrents are public sites, and I only torrent pretty common stuff, so I don’t feel too bad about killing a torrent after a week or two. I figure 5-10x average on easy-to-find, mid quality media is plenty in the karmic sense lol.

As far as I am concerned, always give better than you get, even if that’s 1.01 but try to aim higher.

Of course, if you’re seeding a rare or otherwise hard to find piece of media, then you should keep it alive for longer. I am in the process of upgrading my torrent machine, and once that happens, I will be able to hold far more active torrents, and my average ratios will be significantly improved.

Happy sailing!