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1 year agoYou got a lot of distro recommendations from across the spectrum and it’s honestly hard to go wrong with any of them. It’s mostly a matter of preference. As such I’ll give you two pieces of advice:
- Set up a multi-boot flash drive (assuming you’re currently using Windows, YUMI is a great utility) so that your can try a bunch of them and see what jives with you most. A great feature of Linux installers is that you can actually run the entire OS, full-featured, from the ISO. So grab a whole slew of them, throw them on the flash drive, and spend some time taking them for a spin.
- Do your research on compatibility. Laptop makers often don’t make Linux drivers, so the latest hardware has compatibility problems until the community covers the gap. There are also some laptop manufacturers that have Linux in mind when they make their products, like System 76 and Framework.
Good luck! IMO getting into Linux for the first time is a fun journey. Enjoy it!
As others have mentioned, video downloaders works. Personally, I would either use a VPN or proxy. I don’t have this problem in my state but when I traveled through Oklahoma I just used a VPN and it worked just fine.
The problem with downloading porn, I learned many moons ago before “tube” websites made it so accessible, is that unless you constantly hunt for new stuff it’s a waste of space as porn doesn’t have a ton of rewatch value (for me at least). So you amass a collection and then the collection gets boring after some watches/views.
If you happen to use a DNS-based ad blocking/security service such as NextDNS, ControlD, or whatever you can also often just have your DNS queries route out of another region. Doing that can get you around some regional stuff because you’ll get service URL’s and IP’s back from DNS for that other region, so you can skip the VPN and still get what you’re looking for. But that’s most useful for things like getting UK shows in your Netflix TV app. For your use case I would just VPN.
That said, if you’re set on downloading your porn, yt-dlp is the gold standard for ripping video off of the Internet. I haven’t tried it myself, but a cursory search seems to confirm that it’ll work with sites like PornHub (it’s apparently hit or miss depending on the site). You might still need a VPN for the content to not be blocked though.