Yeah, I’ve considered VR for a long while, but between the already existing headaches, and the Linux related headaches I’ve heard of, I’ll just wait until I’m retired for VR space games, VR racing, and VR porn. Hopefully it’ll get better before I’m dead.

Everything people are saying here checks out, but you might struggle with VR. I haven’t tried VR on Linux yet, but I’ve heard some things about support being pretty janky. Maybe others with experience can weigh in.

This is entirely plausible, but I don’t know if it’s there yet. I’ve long since moved to AMD GPUs so I can’t really fiddle and find out. Give the open source drivers some time to mature.

Until then, you are reasonably safe running Linux with secure boot turned off. I’m no expert on the matter, but I’m not familiar with any ongoing threats to boot loader in Linux distributions. Stick to your official repos to be safest, unverified user maintained sources like AUR and COPR are possibly more likely to harbor security threats, don’t use them if you don’t need to or don’t know what you’re doing. Password your bios and require a password to log in to your operating system. Common sense is a better defense than secure boot.

I’m well aware of the risks inherent to not running calyx or graphene, but my threat model doesn’t justify sacrificing a lot of the functionality that I enjoy on an iPhone. If my threat model required it, I’d have an unactivated burner and a pixel device running calyx in addition to my iPhone. I’m happy settling for “better than google” based on my needs. I also have a couple PCs running Linux, with steps I can take to ensure some level of privacy if needed.

Thanks for posting some good reading though, it’s all shit I’m generally aware of.

Okay

Same. I have come to trust Apple’s commitment and attitude towards user privacy substantially more than Google. I actually know a person that works in a fairly high middle management position in a technical department at the fruit company, and he told me that even their internal handling of user data is incredibly restrictive, even when it makes their jobs harder. I don’t think Apple is perfect, but better than the alternative.

There’s a ton of them on Etsy

Forgotten weapons will be fine, someone just sensationalized. Shocker. Read the policy for yourself. YouTube is disallowing certain content related to selling or altering firearms. Like, installing bump stocks or binary triggers. Muh Hickok 45 and the like will be just fine.

Love it when people speak with authority and are confidently incorrect. Eugenia is right.

You could potentially use flatseal to grant the flatpak the necessary permissions, and you might find out what those permissions are by looking for other users experiences with the flatpak version.

Or, you find the .deb file and it installs natively without being sandboxed. OR, you can find a PPA repository for it, load said repository and install your software.

But those things require learning a little. Linux rewards self starters who can use a search engine and forums. Hope this maybe points you in the right direction.

I would recommend Linux Mint. Yes it’s faster to update than Debian, but it doesn’t push the envelope nearly as fast as Fedora or Arch based distros.

Linux mint is just super easy, user friendly, you could use Mint without ever touching a terminal if you wanted. BSD would be a great pet project to fiddle with, but if you’re looking for a rock solid backup machine with zero fuss, Mint is perfect for that.

I spent my first year of Linux installing a new distro, or same distro with a different DE probably every other week, sometimes more than once in a week. The Linux ecosystem rewards self starters with curiosity and the ability to search for answers.

LearnLinuxTV is an amazing YouTube channel, high quality distro tours and reviews, as well as tutorials at various levels of mastery. ItsFOSS and Phoronix are great sources for Linux news that help you build some awareness and vocabulary. The official forums of almost every distro are extremely helpful places to find solutions to problems. You just kinda have to be motivated to seek out the answers you need as they arise.

That’s one thing I find particularly neat about Fedora, it has all of these software package groups that can be either added on at install, or installed at any time, including:

   3D Printing
   Administration Tools
   Audio Production
   Authoring and Publishing
   Books and Guides
   C Development Tools and Libraries
   Cloud Infrastructure
   Cloud Management Tools
   Container Management
   D Development Tools and Libraries
   Design Suite
   Development Tools
   Domain Membership
   Fedora Eclipse
   Editors
   Educational Software
   Electronic Lab
   Engineering and Scientific
   FreeIPA Server
   Games and Entertainment
   Headless Management
   LibreOffice
   MATE Applications
   MATE Compiz
   Medical Applications
   Milkymist
   Network Servers
   Office/Productivity
   Robotics
   RPM Development Tools
   Security Lab
   Sound and Video
   System Tools
   Text-based Internet
   Window Managers

I got a laptop with a touch screen for a young kid in my family, installed Fedora Workstation with its native Gnome desktop, and touch worked great without any tinkering.

Gnomes workflow is a big departure from windows, but with its gesture navigation on a trackpad, I think it’s a highly superior way to use a laptop. My desktop gets KDE Plasma, but if I had a laptop it would use gnome

It’s just a generally solid, stable, and easy to use distro. I use EndeavourOS nowadays, but when I was first getting started Mint was what I always returned to after spats of distro hopping. As far as it’s primary DE, Cinnamon, it’s less “windows like” and more “not gnome like”. Every DE that isn’t gnome could be called “windows like” in my experience.

Congrats and welcome. If you haven’t already, make an account on the forum. It’s super friendly and helpful. I’ve been on EOS for about three months now, and it’s the best Linux experience I’ve ever had.

I’ve been considering upgrading from my gaming laptop (intel/nvidia) with a secondary monitor to a monstrously specced out Thelio Major with a Ryzen 9 and RX7900. I have more money than time to build, I like the idea of coreboot and supporting system 76 as a company.

I’ve dealt with a slew of multi monitor issues already and my big hope for this new machine (aside from it being a gaming rig with some longevity spec wise) was that most of these display issues would be a thing of the past.

Reading this has me feeling a little crestfallen. Is this what I should expect from newer team red components? I usually run EndeavourOS and would probably install it before even booting Pop! which I’ve used and don’t really care for.

Thanks for the great share. I try to convince my loved ones of the value of even small, low effort ways to control their data slug trail. They don’t get it. Not even a little bit. And the vast majority of people won’t care until we’re all living in a black mirror episode.

Are we already living in a black mirror episode? Fuck.