DM me, I got a few bridges to sell you.

About to build my first really nice homelab NAS for Jellyfin, archiving, etc. targeting between 30-40TB if all goes well :)

All the times where we narrowly avoided nuclear war.

Fair points. yeah, there’s a reason I use KDE on my main gaming rig, I love the look and feel, and it’s super customizable.

That’s my only complaint with Cinnamon, is it looks kind of dated. Not bad, but dated for sure.

Like I said, if you already like something else and it’s working for you, no need to switch. But, if stability and out of the box functionality are your top priorities, Mint with Cinnamon is a great choice.

There’s the enshitification we know and love! Freetube for desktop and Tubular for mobile is how I’ve been watching YT for over a year now, and it’s great!

I might have missed it, but why isn’t Mint on there? From what I read on your list of requirements, it fits in. I will say this, Mint with the Cinnamon desktop has become my workhorse distro of choice.

It’s the most stable and no-fuss distro I’ve used, and I’ve tried many.

That being said, I personally use Nobara for my gaming PC and it’s been really good. It’s not as stable though, and that is partially my fault, I’m a tinkerer on that system. Part of it is KDE Plasma though, especially on Wayland.

Don’t get me wrong, it still works great and plays everything super well! But there are several little annoyances that happen. Menus not popping up in the right place. Windows sometimes opening completely off screen so I have to manually drag them back into view, some recent flickering with certain games in the menus. Once every 4-6 weeks, my mouse will stop responding when I unlock the PC., and I have to unplug and re-plug it in.

Again, nothing game-breaking or super frustrating, just little annoyances. Comes with the territory of tweaking your systems and using newer tech like Wayland.

If you like Kubuntu and it’s been working well for you, stick with it, it’s a solid Ubuntu spin for sure. Don’t fall into the grass-is-greener trap.

Been 100% Linux for over 3 years. All my servers, my fancy gaming PC, my personal laptop, my side business laptop, my work laptop, my Steam Deck, all Linux.

No dual boot, I have a single Windows VM on my work laptop to test Windows apps because my workplace is a Windows shop.

I don’t miss Windows even a little bit. I am so much more free and enjoy computing way more now.

Yeah babyyyy! All the way to the floor!!!

Good.

Yes!

Absolutely!

Not sure this has been said yet, but Neocities is a pretty great throwback to GeoCities and the early 2000’s web.

All a bunch of small, handcrafted websites and personal blogs by individuals and small groups.

Exploring feels like I remember back in the early 2000’s as a teen. Crazy and weird sites, hidden links and easter eggs, ARGs, random annon comments you can post to a wall, .gifs all over, pixel art, hacker manifestos, links to other similar sites, etc.

The Fediverse is pretty great too.

I wish there were more site directories curated by communities, that would reduce my reliance on search engines for sure. RSS is great, I’ve been using that to help build my personal content feed.

I had a cheap automatic in college, sadly lost it in a move.

But I loved it so much, kept itself wound up without issue, and it was amazing to look at all the tiny parts that made it work.

If you eat meat, the breakfast crunch wrap supreme is made by angels.

If Taco Bell ever releases a Breakfast crunch wrap supreme with impossible sausage, I will eat it 5 days a week and balloon to 400 pounds.

when they are available, the nacho fries are incredible also.

Depends on the pizza. If you are eating a traditional pizza just like mamma mia made back in the old country, skip the Tabasco.

If you’re eating greasy sloppy pizza from a dirty little place called, “Joe’s” load up that Tabasco and the chili flakes, and add some of that artificial Parmesan powder that comes in little packets!

Most people don’t care, they won’t even notice sadly. They will walk into Best Buy, get swarmed by 3 sales people, tell them, “I’m looking for a new laptop.”

And the sales people will take them straight over to the laptop section which is all filled with the latest Microsoft swill and sell them one of them.

There will be no discussion of privacy, no discussion of Microsoft’s recent scandals, no discussion of alternatives. They will parrot whatever Microsoft’s talking points are, “it’s safe, encrypted, secure, fast, etc…”

If we want consumers to care, we have to reach them before they buy their new upgrade. This often starts with your family and close friends. You need to inform them, you need to tell them there is a better way.

This is how I got my parents switched from Windows 10 to Linux Mint. They were asking me to help with their computer problems, (10 year old computer that was pretty low-power when it was new.)

I told them that Windows 10 was EoL next year and their hardware was way to old to upgrade. I said that I could put on Linux which would be much faster, more secure and private, wouldn’t require a new computer, and would do everything they needed. My mom was nervous, but I went over everything her and my dad used it for, (browsing, email, Word and printing, PDF reading, Turbo Tax, and Spotify.)

Only slight pain point was getting my mom onto Turbo Tax cloud. But she is slightly tech savvy, so it wasn’t too bad.

They’ve been on it for about 9 months now and it works great. Their computer is much snappier, and I don’t have to worry about them getting viruses, (my dad is 0% tech savvy and will click on almost any link he sees.)

Pretty solid extension. It’s wild how nasty click bait algorithms have made the modern web experience.

?..It’s a great tool that provides all the security of VPN access without having to struggle with the more technical aspects of spinning up your own VPN, and it’s zero cost for personal use.

You could also use Netbird if you wanted, but I have been using Tailscale extensively and it’s awesome.