but I’m embarrassed to admit I actually don’t know what the difference between linux distros are.

I think you’re courageous to admit it in spite of feeling embarrassed, and I admire that.

If we all ask and share without ego, the world gets just a little bit better. :)

“I just get it straight from upstream” (Munches beans to build the coffee internally from source)

OpenSUSE Tumbleweed user here…

I’m gonna claim “the coldbrew” for us, because it’s always refreshing, chill, and in constant rotation. It might take a little longer to brew, but that’s so it doesn’t destabilize your entire system. Ahh…so smooth. :)

(I dunno if this analogy holds up but hey I’m taking a shot lol)

Not shilling but this is exactly why 3rd party services like iDrive are good: Cloud backup but you have the choice of keeping your own encryption key.

Apple, M$, Google, are all like “just trust me bro BTW a big chunk of our business is data sales” lol

There’s something that strikes me as fundamentally hilarious that “good with computers” in the Windows world means “disabling all of Windows’ pushy services that rip control from the user and sell their data.”

Like “I think I’m pretty good with computers!”

“Oh yeah? How much of Windows have you managed to sabotage so it stays out of your way?”

LMAO . It could be such a good OS but its dark and anti-patterns are truly bizarre.

Yeah, I still remember that ad where he irritatingly looks at the caveman ad in the airport.

Silly ad, but I thank them for introducing me to Röyksopp! :P

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H02iwWCrXew

It’s gonna have to be “Linux From Scratch” at this point…starting with the hardware.

“I work at Burger King making flame-broiled who-ppers I wear pa-per hats…”

It’s so dumb but also that was the joy of the old Internet. Stupid silliness like that lmao.

Okay yeah this is me too. Ideally I’d start working early, get to shut off at some reasonable time but…

Nope, apparently my “Let’s actually do this” brain might kick in around 14:00.

And I wonder why I don’t get to have fun anymore. =
I’m considering just stacking boxes somewhere, if it wasn’t for commuting. I long for independence but can’t seem to manage my own time.

Have fun with that. But last I checked, lots of us don’t have the freedom to just migrate across the globe to a region that isn’t collapsing and this would spell misery and anguish for countless people across the globe.

(Yes, if the U.S destabilizes, further global power imbalances will follow.)

So giving up and pretending to take the high ground over it isn’t exactly in anybody’s best interest.

(The US civil war comes to mind)

I mean hey you’re right, we’re still here…but we’d really REALLY like to prevent a second one of those…From the reviews I’ve read it wasn’t a fun time for pretty much anybody involved.

I also have this weird feeling that there was some assumption of gentleman’s decorum back then even with those one disagreed with.

I appreciate his “forgive them, educate them, and move on” ideal. As if surely, once they’ve learned how things are, they will calm down! I wish it were that way.

But I think he’d be (im/de)pressed with just how low the bar has fallen when it comes to civil human behavior, general education esp. in civic affairs, and practical reasoning. There is no line too far anymore. There is no punishment for violating foundational social contracts or civil discourse.

One half is constantly flabbergasted that the other half keeps flagrantly violating the power of their office and saying “So what? I’m winning.”

We’re just so far past the point of reason now.

Edit: Also remember, Jefferson wrote this long before the Civil War. I believe his point in “forgive them and move on” was optimistically more in the interest of preserving the young Republic at all costs, rather than letting it crumble from the inside with internal feuds. (As is the fate of many rebellions)

Yeah I honestly legit enjoyed my fond time with old Windows machines back when they were fun and user-oriented instead of the user-exploitative SAAS monsters they are now.

Win10 wasn’t even SO bad as everyone says…well, until recently when they started forcing Microsoft Accounts on install and harass you with their ads every 3 forced updates. Ugh.

Now they’re on the Ai bandwagon? Yeah they’re real small in my rearview mirror now.

I think it’s just a different landscape now, and I’m glad Linux was there to jump to after all these companies started losing their collective minds.

“Linux is open source and free! You can do whatever you want with it! It’s our thing!”

Microsoft: “Whatever I want with it?..Free?..Hm…This is my thing .”

XP was totally a wild time, to Dad’s credit though! hahaha

It was that funky era of needing like 4 different anti malware programs, and downloading game patches from various hopefully-trusty file hosts, or nabbing the suspiciously convenient “Linkin-Park-Meteora-FULL_ALBUM.exe” off of Kazaa which would promptly rootkit your whole system.

Routinely running Spybot Search and Destroy, Ad-Aware, AVG, and CCleaner to combat constantly-reinstalling spyware.

Heck, I consider myself kinda smart but I still had Bonzi Buddy for a while! …I mean, c’mon, funnee purpl monke. Who could resist?

Like wow, now that I think back on it, you really needed a bit of “street smarts” back then. Nowadays security has gotten a lot better and one can get away with just “Not downloading weird Russian Web3 games off the dark web” and they’ll usually be relatively fine. Lol.

TL;DR: Windows XP was compatible with Bonzi Buddy, Mandriva was definitely a more secure choice, seeing as it couldn’t run Bonzi Buddy unless you were determined with WINE maybe?

… It’s cool you got introduced to Linux so early. Cool dad. :)

That’s defo Broadcom’s fault. Unfortunately when Linux is a second class citizen, hardware vendors will make crappy Windows and maybe Mac drivers, but a lot of Linux support seems like it needs to be reverse engineered or something, if the company itself refuses to play ball. :(

This was the case with NVIDIA for a long while. Still kinda is. Hopefully that’s improving though.

Fair disclosure, I personally run OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, BUT…

Honestly for this situation I think Linux Mint might be your on-ramp. It’s very familiar from a user experience perspective from someone coming from Windows, and everything can be done with GUI apps.

It updates the entire system smoothly through an “app store” so it stays nice and secure. “Cinnamon” is also a highly attractive and smooth desktop environment.

I’ve switched a few people to it who were sick of Windows on older machines, but NOT computer people at all, and they’ve enjoyed it a lot! The nicest thing is it will feel like your computer again, not like you’re leasing it from Microsoft.

Don’t try and “completely switch over” in one go.

Look up how to try Linux in a virtual machine on your existing setup (so you don’t have to risk anything!) and just try it and play around with installing and using it.

An old laptop or something is also a great way to try it out.

You can always dual-boot if you want. I sure did for a while until Win10 started BSODing for no discernable reason, and refused to let me “refresh this PC” because “Sorry, can’t. Goodbye.”

I still have it, just in case, but it’s been most of the year since I’ve even bothered logging into it.

If you game: you’ll want Heroic Launcher for your GoG/EA stuff, and Steam of course, and maybe Bottles to run your old CD/DVD games maybe. :)

Sometimes things take a little tweaking, but Mint’s community is fantastic and helpful. You really will start to learn a lot about computers just by using Linux a little and trying things, while Windows makes every effort to hide things from you. (“wE’rE gEtTiNg ThInGs ReAdY” who’s “we”?!)

As you start to get comfortable with it, it will grow with you. You can start trying to get the hang of the terminal, or jump to another distro once you learn why you might prefer to.

But you really can’t go wrong just trying Mint out. It’s overall just a pleasant OS.

ProTip: You’ll be asked about a file system when you install any distro. I spent COUNTLESS HOURS on researching this question. BTRFS can be a bit of an advanced file system, but if you just “set it and forget it”, it has the ability to take incremental snapshots without taking a ton of space! So if something really goes south, you can use an app called “Timeshift” to just roll back.

This is great for your root drive / partition, but I wouldn’t suggest it for your home folder. :)

(Just like Windows rollback used to do, but…more reliable lol)

Lol sorry for the ramble but I hope this might help you feel a little less lost at the grocery store. ;)

We’ve had a GE fridge that’s probably older than about 10 years. But you know, it’s complicated enough that it feels like it’s made to fail at some point.

Well, stuff stopped cooling but all the lights were on and everything else worked. It was really weird. We were thinking it might be a dead compressor or something. Crap, do we need a new fridge?

Nope! What basically amounts to a glorified computer fan with a fancier proprietary plug does all the work of distributing that cold air through the rest of the unit.

The proprietary plug is totally so they can sell it for $45, of course. Lol anyway, works like new!

Also get a dust mask and vacuum + blow out the back of your refrigerators, people. They get grooooss!!!

You’ve hear of fever dreams but this here buddy had a freezer dream.

HOW DID I KNOW 😂