I’m sure there is a hidden dependency from the file system or something…

When I can’t block the ads, I always opt for the “non-personalized ads” option, since I know they are getting paid less. Also easier to ignore an ad when it is random.

I tried the bing chat (part of the work license), asked it some random questions, asked for more accurate information and pointed out the flawed answers it gave. It told me that I was being rude and ended the session. (smh)

Sorry, when I said “life critical”, i mean things like email, banking, self-hosted NextCloud for files, etc. For me, everything else is flexible as I don’t have business things that have to run on Windows (that is my work provided laptop), so I don’t have to have the Adobe suite for photo editing, i can use one of several open source alternatives, and all of my hobbies have open source alternatives like Blender.

The only game I cannot get to run is Space Engineers. Numerous other newer and older games work great. To be fair, I’m not an online/multiplayer gamer, so the challenges people run in to due to anti-cheating requirements don’t affect the games I play.

What was really interesting to me, is that I tried Windows 11 Pro and 6 or 7 different Linux distros over several months before landing on Pop!_OS. I mention this because it was all the exact same hardware and so I was able to compare performance in an Apples to Apples situation. There is an obvious application loading improvement. Even comparing against something like Garuda that is supposedly all about performance tweaks.

I switched to Pop!_OS earlier this year and couldn’t be happier. All apps run way faster than they did with Windows on the same hardware. All but one of my Steam games run great (one day I’ll get that last game to work). My “life critical” things are web based, everything else is adjustable.

Recently I was thinking about how I missed webrings for websites instead of reliance on search engines, many of which aren’t even directing you to the sites anymore just showing AI summaries.

No MFA, and stale passwords up to 4 years old. And they say “anyone can do IT”…

After the recent Google AI stuff, I’d expect an AI children’s book tool to teach children how to make mustard gas with cute cartoon characters. :P

Was anyone else expecting an article talking about the subject? I was reading and then, “Oh they’ve set up an interesting topic to discuss… wait, other articles to read, where is this article?”

Also, the internet access mechanism (starlink) is incidental to the subject matter, why mention it in the title?

Also, what @paultimate14 said, “youth not respecting tradition”…

I have been ping ponging for almost two decades on the desktop. Currently on Pop!_OS (Ubuntu derivative) with a “safety blanket” dual boot with Windows. I went through a lot of these stages many times. So far, ~3 months on this has been the least frustrating Linux desktop experience. I’m still missing some of the power management controls and cloud file integration is kind of a joke, but an interesting time. For the many things that work well, the performance is so much better than Windows and all the other Linux distros I’ve tried on this same hardware.

2D/3D Simulation/Game creation Godot :)

How many times? Every single time…

Hadn’t realized that change was in there. What a mess.

The only thing worse is New Outlook. They took away all of the power features and a good deal of the customization, and so you are left with something that feels like it was designed for a mobile app while you try to manage thousands of emails.

Over the last few months I’ve tried half a dozen Linux distros. PopOS has been the best so far for me. Plays the games, didn’t have to force the audio to work, and regular apps open way faster than even other Linux options, it is astonishing. I have used Linux on servers for ~30 years, and this is the first time I’ve been really comfortable on the desktop side.

“You must go in to the office, so that you can get on calls with your team or other teams, which are in the other global offices.” (rolling eyes)

Thanks, I’ll look in to this and maybe dual boot and try it out. I tried with Arch/Garuda and liked the window manager experience, but ultimately ran in to problems.

but even as a relatively technical person, it was a massive pain sometimes.

I’m glad to hear this… I’ve been writing code and using Linux on servers since Red Hat (pre-fedora) had “Redneck” as a language option… But so often I get told, “Oh, you must be a technical newbie, because real techies can handle recompiling the kernel in order to get everything to work…” ( rolling eyes ) There is a world of difference between a headless server, and wanting to use an OS for your primary direct interaction. :)

• When I decided to get a new laptop, I failed to look for reviews of Linux driver compatibility while making my selection. That one is on me. I’ve run Linux on servers for so long, where I need network only and no graphics, sound, or even input usually (just remote in), that I forgot about the driver limitations.
• I’m also a developer. :)

Sound never worked right, occasional app worked, but not most things. CPU control was touchy, and this new laptop on full performance drowns out the TV on high volume, so I need fine control to manage the noise in order to stay where the family is and still use my system. :)

Blender was a problem until I learned you have to use “prime-run” (or something like that) to force the dedicated GPU, then that started working. Was trying to determine a system to make 3D environments (like Unity, Unreal, etc.), but didn’t find anything great, and then found out that that a secondary interest of VR/VR development is poorly (or not at all) supported on Linux (something about the window manager not managing display access correctly). File syncing with services like Dropbox and Google Drive were problematic.

Then of course is gaming. I have a small handful of games I enjoy, and after a couple weeks I finally found a Steam setting using an older Proton version that worked well enough (but a lower overall performance compared to native Windows), with only occasional crashes for no reason.

For Steam/games, i was trying to run “windows” stuff, as the games were not native. For other things, like sound (never worked right), Blender (took me a few days to learn i had to run Blender through an app that forces GPU), or the file sync, they were supposed to be native. But I was doing a lot of fighting. I wasn’t reading distro recommendation sites, I was trying to troubleshoot issues. “Here is how you fix this issue on Ubuntu, no instructions for any other flavor).” (but I installed a derivative of Arch because I was interested in the rolling release instead of fixed releases, and turns out there was significantly less troubleshooting material)

I might go back again, maybe with a dual boot scenario, and try again without