Just remember to turn steam play on for all titles in Steam -> Settings -> Compatibility.

As others have said, Mint is a great starting option. It looks familiar when coming from Windows, and almost everything works without having to touch a terminal.

AAA games with anti-cheat may not work, but just about everything else will. Check Proton DB for each game’s compatibility.
You can add non-Steam games to Steam to take advantage of Proton. Lutris can also work for some Windows games.

If you want to try Linux distributions to see what they’re like before committing, VirtualBox or other virtual machine programs can give you a risk-free preview.

Another option is a live preview. Install Linux Mint on a USB using Rufus or a similar program, then boot your computer from the USB. So long as you don’t access your computer’s hard drive (under devices on the left of the file manager) or run the installer, no changes should be made from your computer. You can simply reboot and remove the USB to go back to your usual OS.

If you are going to dual-boot, install Windows first. Windows has a habit of overriding or deleting Linux if it’s installed second. If you just want to shrink your Windows partition to allow room for Linux, shrink it from Windows. Linux can move “unmovable” Windows files resulting in Windows not booting.

Always have a backup of everything you are not prepared to lose before you play with installing operating systems (and make sure it’s disconnected from that computer). Data loss from software issues is rare, but mistakes are difficult (sometimes impossible) to reverse, particularly as a beginner.

I expect he’ll ask Grok and believe the answer.

Peace of mind (knowing that your partner is ok) can significantly reduce stress and increase quality of life.

Even if the device can’t give an alert soon enough to do anything, just looking and seeing that they are ok this morning can bring a sense of peace, and that’s worth something.

It isn’t, but that’s still a great website.

Thanks for the recommendation!

Accidentally ruin the OS by running random commands?

I’d love to try Bazzite properly, but it doesn’t work well in my VM (possible host issues), and I couldn’t find a live image to try.

No thanks. I’d like to keep full control over my operating system and only accidentally ruin it every few years.

Trump is not what’s causing most of the issues in America. He may be a loose cannon and making everything worse, but the real damage is coming from a few very rich people bribing government officials to change laws, and they’ve been doing this for a long time.

Even if you killed every person who made the system this bad, you’d still be left with a system designed to oppress the masses and make rich people richer. Assassinations aren’t a silver bullet (unless made of silver).

I can find valid results with Kagi 90% of the time compared to about 40% with Google. There are some things I was been looking for using Google for several years without success that turn up as the top result on Kagi.

It just works.

Kagi (paid) advertises a huge list of bangs with the option to customise them yourself.

I second the Framework laptops. I’ve bought 4 Framework 13s so far, and no issues with any of them.

You can always try the live USB without/before installing. It’s a great way to start getting comfortable or try out several different distros with minimal effort and risk.

I’m looking everywhere I can. I haven’t found any OS that works with my current phone (Nokia G42), and the aren’t too many phones that meet my needs (dual Sim, small, headphone jack, repairable, runs open source OS).

I’ve given up actively searching and I’m mostly browsing Lemmy and hoping to stumble across something useful. Please let me know if you have any more suggestions.

I am using Android until I can find an alternative. I’ve turned off all optimisations I can find. I haven’t had the issue in a few weeks, but it did happen once since changing settings. I’m hoping that something random I did (like a phone restart) somehow fixed everything.

I’ve had a bug with the android app where sometimes notifications for emails just don’t happen. I’ve received a new email notification, opened the app, and found that the notification was for an email received 5 hours ago, and I didn’t get any notification for the email 3 days ago or the email 1 hour ago.

Despite this issue and several other minor issues, I still recommend Tuta. Mostly because I can’t find anything better.

I wanted to install an extra hard drive in my computer, but the power supply didn’t have enough connectors. I actually had a spare power supply unit, but upon testing, the 24 pin cable was too short to reach the motherboard.

I ended up using both PSUs. Only one had a power switch on it, so that was connected to the hard drives. I had to use a paperclip in the unused 24 pin connector to make it output power. The 2 PSUs had a wire running between the ground pins of a random unused connector, and they were on the same phase circuit.

The hard drive PSU had to be turned on first at the switch. Once that was on, I could press the power button to turn on the computer. I think I used it for about a year before buying enough upgrade parts to effectively replace the entire computer.

I still see this every few months.

I think it’s happening if a key is released at the same time as a window opens or changes to full screen, but it’s too rare to properly troubleshoot. The fix is still the same.

If you don’t mind paying to use a search engine, Kagi is actually pretty good. Not as good as Google was 20 years ago, but significantly better than any other search engine I can find today.

It’s likely been hacked by someone who guessed the default login details (when was the last time you changed the password on your washing machine), and is being used for malicious purposes such as DDoS attacks.

Start today. Download VirtualBox (or equivalent software) and if you make a mistake, you can just nuke the OS and start over without risk.