Beware, Gnucash is meant to be pro level accounting software. Is not a simple ledger or a tech/crypto gateway. I also use it for my personal life, but there’s like 30% of features I don’t use because they’re business accounting stuff I don’t need. It predates the cloud, it cares not for the latest trends, it crunches numbers and spits out reports. That’s part of what I like about it. It is not simple but it also isn’t bloated.

On the contrary. It relies on the premise of segregating binaries, config and data. But since it is only running one app, then it is a bare minimum version of it. Most containers systems include elements that also deduplicate common required binaries. So, the containers are usually very small and efficient. While a traditional system’s libraries could balloon to dozens of gigabytes, pieces of which are only used at a time by different software. Containers can be made headless and barebones very easily. Cutting the fat, and leaving only the most essential libraries. Fitting in very tiny and underpowered hardware applications without losing functionality or performance.

Don’t be afraid of it, it’s like Lego but for software.

Bazzite uses boxbuddy for distro box automation. It’s literally two buttons on a gui, then the app is just another icon in your start menu. It even works well with autostart and desktop integration. It updates on its own. It has an extensive but easy to understand documentation. I’ve seen literal children do this without issue.

Advocate for more Linux support with VR vendors. Remember that most of the time, what halts Linux development is not technical impossibility, but lack of political will. Companies refusing to spend money on development of compatibility for their hardware or intentionally blocking open source efforts is what halts the ecosystem. It’s the same exact computer, if it works on Windows but not on Linux is because someone in a suit angrily said “no”.

The counter argument is that some games don’t run on Windows anymore either. All the software, all the time is the classic disingenuous argument that is always levied against Linux. It has to do something that not even windows does anymore. Then people ignore the fact that Linux sometimes offer greater compatibility with old games than windows itself.

That’s still a five year old stance. Just install bazzite and have a steam deck like experience on any PC without ever touching a terminal. It even does nvidia drivers out of the box for you. The curve is not steep at all. It’s still there, but it’s getting much easier very fast.

Bazzite has never broke for me. One of the advantages of atomic immutable distros is that there’s no rush to push a new image. Either the whole image is updated when it already works, or it doesn’t get shipped. None of the issues of pushing a single package update without testing that later turns out to be incompatible with a different package update.

OpenSUSE is awesome, they’re undergoing a restructuring and rebranding right now. Which means that promotion of use and updates could be slow or even pause. They were asked to return to the community for a new governance model. They should emerge the other side with a different name and branding, as SUSE asked them to stop using the name. It’s a transition time for the distro.

The Linux Experiment, has been going for over 7 years now. But it was one guy’s journey into Linux. Be wary he transitioned to full time Linux YouTuber/influencer nowadays, with way less emphasis on the transition and more on the overall news on the FLOSS scene. The content has their dips and highs, and he does have some clickbait opinions from time to time.

Find an old laptop. Install TrueNAS community edition. Read about containerized server apps. There are alternatives like Mint if you still want to have and learn a desktop experience. Read online blogs. Ask here if any further questions arise. Avoid dual booting until you are comfortable with installing an OS and handling grub.

You think this is a win, but is just another step in the enshittification.

It’s usually the electronic drivers. They overoverheat and degrade. Most burned LED bulbs still have working LEDs and just need to replace some component of the driver board.

Bluesky was an EEE operation. Meant to kill federation by capturing users then forcing an instance monopoly. That’s why it is federated on paper only. In practice no engineering was done to make it actually federated at all. Now they’re far behind the Activity pub and mastodon, and the rest of the fediverse despite having much more investment.

I’ve tried it. I like that they’re carrying the torch of OpenBoard, but I don’t like that swipe typing requires manually downloading a third party library.

My only gripe with the Samsung keyboard is that their only alternative distribution is Dvorak, and by now I’m 100% a colemak user even on touch screens. So I use open board with swipe typing.

dual booting from Windows

Well, you see, that right there is your main problem. Today dual booting with Windows is highly discouraged. Windows is simply not meant for that and will actively fight you the whole time. Dual booting several Linux distros, on the other hand, simply trivial.

Now, if your data was a disaster on Windows (all dispersed across C:, no backups, not organized) then there’s nothing linux can do about that for you. But, linux does offer other cool storage options like btrfs which permits deduplication, snapshots, automated backups, and other features out of the box.

For a total beginner, I’m gonna spell it out for you out of the gate. Linux has never been the hard part of linux. The biggest hurdle of linux—the one thing beginners waste the most time on, old timers always insist you should learn, and won’t actually give you much value in return—is package management. Package management is an unnecessary but unavoidable part of traditional linux usage. For everything else, linux just works more or less the way almost all other computing devices commonly behave. Better in some regards, different in others, but always sensible and familiar.

Now, there’s a way to bypass this hurdle and just go straight to the fun part of using your computer. Use an immutable distro. I recommend Aurora as a good general purpose OS. But anything from the universal blue project is good. Bluefin for a different style of desktop environment, Bazzite for gaming. There are some nags here and there, and you can learn about the whole terminal commands and package management over time at your own pace, or maybe not at all, but you’ll always have a functioning system. Software is installed from an online store via containers. There’s little to no management as your data is always separate from the OS.

If you’ve ever used an android phone, then you’ve already used an immutable system. This is just better and more open for the desktop and laptops over Linux. But they’re the same principles. Let the experts cook and you focus on using your computer.

At my organization (tens of thousands of machines) IT has been racking their brains because W11 is such a pain to manage at scale in comparison to W10. It’s been causing more work, so much that the upgrade was postponed to next year and are considering paying for the extended support. W11 really is just that shitty. Managing the upgrades alone feels like arcane magic.

Wait, UserBenchmark is not a shitposting meme site? They actually present their reviews as serious?