That’s pretty much my list, as well!

Luanti is great, and the server can nearly run on a potato. Maybe literally, I should try it on a LePotato (Raspberry Pi II ish SBC) some time.

Jellyfin for guiding the kids to a more thoughtful non-algorithm set of things to watch has been great.

Although, for as much effort as I put into Jellyfin, my kids are as likely to drop a DVD into the DVD player, anyway.

I am serious. But don’t call me Shirley.

Very cool. That’s the good part of AI. It increases access to existing solutions.

.htaccess files are pretty simple to set up, if not hosting anything too sensitive.

Twenty years ago, we were speculating whether open source browsers would survive or catch on.

Now there aren’t any closed source browsers left.

Vendors will find other forms of lock in, anyway, of course.

To pile on to your (excellent) suggestion, OP might try enabling POST (power on self test) in BIOS. It takes awhile on modern RAM, but I’ve had it identify failing RAM sticks for me.

I’m not a computer expert or planning to be.

I don’t use Arch, but my perception is that it is meant for people who want to be computer experts.

Do you have any reason not to use Linux Mint? As others have mentioned, Mint has 95% of the benefits over Windows that Arch has, and Mint is designed for folks who just want to use their computer.

how do you use cracks? or did you stop using them?

I make good money now and buy all my games, but I still apply mods.

Mod manager tools tend to just work on Linux now, thanks to the SteamDeck.

Haha. I don’t believe in destiny, but the things you like about Windows are the things I liked about Windows before I switched to Linux.

You’ll find many other fans of cracking / Liberating software, here. It’s where the “Libre” we talk about comes from.

Anyway, keep asking questions of you’re curious.

I’ll just add that I haven’t used the command line for anything basic on Linux in several years. Command line is really not necessary anymore, unless I’m doing something advanced like modding my games. Actually, I guess I haven’t modded anything in awhile that didn’t come with a graphical kit. But I’m sure I still might, for the right mod.

I suppose it makes sense for Ubuntu to slowly go down as the bad news about Snaps and the great news about Linux Mint spreads.

Edit: But if we trust the data, I guess the real great news is Arch, btw. Haha!

Also if they want malware infections through notepad.exe - I can probably accomplish that on Linux with Wine, but it would take more effort.

Edit: I might give up and just send the Malware author a few bucks, out of pity.

Yes. Great point. I do try to give each game a test run before I schedule a group of friends to play it together. I guess I did that on Windows, as well.

When I was a big windows gamer the result tended to just be it works or it doesn’t, on my current hardware. But maybe that’s just gaming today. I think we have better optimization options, in general, now.

I’m not sure when things changed, as my journey was Windows PC Gamer to console gamer to SteamDeck to Linux PC gamer.

I think PC gaming, in general, got much nicer while I was only playing consoles.

I was gonna partition my gaming PC’s main drive and try Linux Mint on it.

Nice!

If you can afford it, I lately recommend getting a separate harddrive, and physically taking the Windows drive out, and putting a blank drive in, to run Linux on.

Windows has never liked to share, and has gotten worse (more aggressive preventing other operating systems from booting) with various integrations into BIOS for secure boot.

Also, either way, be sure to back everything up while Windows is still installed. It is much easier to lose data today, due to secure boot and full disk encryption being the default.

(Putting the Windows drive back in and resetting any BIOS settings should be enough, but it is possible that Windows will decide it wants the full disk encryption (FDE) password. I believe I have found my FDE password on the web through Microsoft account, but there’s just more that can go wrong, today. So I prefer to just have my files backed up so I can relax.)

(And be aware that it may not be possible to backup files directly from a removed Windows drive, if full disk encryption was enabled. There’s probably a utility for it, as long as you have the FDE password. But again, it’s much less effort to just make backups before pulling the Windows drive out.)

I’ve had the best experience booting to a fresh blank harddrive and installing Linux Mint on it, and throwing the Windows drive into a drawer until I find I want the extra drive space more than I want a retreat path to Windows.

My oldish Nvidia 4xxx GPU worked immediately and automatically on Linux Mint.

Your mileage may vary.

Edit: To be clear, I didn’t do any command line, or even change a setting. Mint just automatically detected my Nvidia GPU and got it working during the install while I looked at pretty pictures and new user tips.

(Disclaimer: Folks here have warned me this may have been some combination of luck and my Nvidia GPU being a few years old.)

When my Mint install finished, I searched for “Steam” in the Mint software center and clicked “Install”.

A few minutes later I was playing a game from my Steam library without any issues, without any config changes, and without any command line use.

Edit 2: On Linux, there’s a little Penguin icon in the Steam library filters. Click that, and it’ll only show your games that Valve is pretty confident will run without any issue.

It took me a few clicks to realize it did anything, at all. Very few of my games were filtered out. None of my games that were filtered out happened to fit in the first page of search results.

So at first it looked like penguin filter button did nothing.

90-99% of the solutions originally for Ubuntu worked for me in Pop.

Yes. When I’m running Debian, Mint, or various other Debian variants, the vast majority of “Ubuntu” recipes just work.

Sometimes on Debian, itself, an Ubuntu recipe doesn’t work because some feature hasn’t made it into “Debian stable” yet. But usually it’s fine if the Ubuntu article is at least a year old.

Want to test if a game runs on Linux? Great, set aside a couple of hours beforehand: first to install steam and set it up, then to figure out Proton, then to troubleshoot the game not even booting up, then to fix any glitches or whatnot, then to get your controller working.

Alternately, install Linux Mint. Search the software store for Steam. Click Install. Let Steam do it’s first run install stuff. Sign into Steam. Click the little Penguin icon to see which games should run fine on Linux. Install some by clicking on them. Enjoy games.

I love the phrase “ricing my daily Debian driver”.

I do often have this feeling “everyone could be enjoying this”.

Once in awhile it comes out when someone asks me about how I countered some Microsoft or Apple bullshit, and I admit I jumped ship and have been enjoying software freedom.

A few have actually switched after interrogating me about my experiences.

If you have the luxury of access to multiple computers, or the expertise to dual boot, those are what worked for me.

I ran Linux and Windows side by side for years.

Over time, returning to the Windows shifted from “Ah, nice and familiar” to “oh, not this bullshit, again”.

Once I was comfortable with both, all the corporate bullshit became very noticable on Windows.

Your logic is sound.

The motive and skillet are certainly there.

But there sure are many eyes on RedHat’s source code, and IBM has a lot to lose if they got caught putting in a back door.

Plus, the US government uses it for their own sensitive stuff, so one would hope they have the wisdom not to shit where they eat, installing a back door that 100% would get used against them.

None of my arguments really outweigh yours, if I’m honest.

But I also don’t blame anyone who trusts RedHat Linux, today.

+1 to this line on inquiry.

When I’ve managed to get a modern Linux desktop to freeze, I’ve had a bad power supply, or heat issues, each time ( specifically when I have had a full freeze, where even the alternate terminals didn’t respond ).