If you want an OS that lets you own the machine you bought, Linux is the most viable option. Conversely, Windows is not an option. I don’t consider an OS where you are the product to be one that works for me at all, much less one that “just works”.

Linux users seem to enjoy problem solving and tinkering for fun

Like with any OS, those are a subset of users, but not all. The thing is, Linux users spent the last 30y building a set of tools that enable you to use as little effort as possible to do very powerful things with your hardware, and yes, with great power comes great ability to break everything. But in the last 15y, there are distros designed for people who want an OS that “just works”, that don’t require you to know or use the risky tools that could break things, and they’re getting better every day.

Why did you switch

I wanted to use Linux for the last 15y, but gaming was a sticking point. Around 5y ago, thanks to valve, it is no longer a sticking point. I do all my gaming on Linux.

what was your process like?

I first switched to fedora on my laptop about 12y ago. I didn’t do a lot of gaming on my laptop, so this was fine. Eventually I switched to Manjaro. Around 5y ago I put Manjaro on my desktop. Then eventually switched both to endeavor.

I’ll admit, I create problems for myself by refusing fully featured Desktop Environments. But I always learn something more about my machine in the process. As a result, I believe I can now simply do more with less effort on Linux than I could on windows. I have bash scripts on keybinds that open custom UIs for various things. I can seamlessly access multiple servers on my network running various services. I don’t ever have to worry about some update overhauling my UI and sneaking an AI in the background. Any experimentation I do with AI is on my own terms, and none of my data gets shipped off without my consent.

What made you choose Linux for your primary computing device, rather than macOS for example?

I used a Mac 20y ago. It was solid. But eventually the cost outweighed the hardware capabilities. And then they deprecated every graphics API but Metal. Now there’s relatively nothing in the way of gaming on Mac. On top of that, it’s just as bad as windows when it comes to doing what some company wants it to do rather than what I want it to do. So I don’t consider it an option that works for me.

I am really having a hard time understanding what OP is describing. Does anyone have a video example of the phenomenon?

Ahhh I see. That’s really neat, I’ll have to try that.

Does sway have the feature OP is asking for, or are you just suggesting a different tiling window manager, and they would still be left solving the same problem?

Idk if I follow. I believe the default keybinds in hyprland allow you to switch between windows using super+J/K/L/;, and between workspaces using super+number. Hyprland, like all tiled window managers, are specifically designed to be used exclusively with a keyboard.

Are you asking for something more like alt+tab on windows? Where it shows a little preview of all the windows? I think that’s kind of obviated by the concept of a tiled window manager.

Hah yeah, I’ve definitely pulled the plug on my router before because I wasn’t sure what I was seeing.

I mean, cybersecurity I would consider to be a research field. In practice, yeah, it’s a bunch of people just doing their best.

I tend to keep everything inside my network and only expose what I need visible on non standard ports, one of those being a VPN. It’s not that I couldn’t run these services public facing, it’s that the people taking the time to constantly update, configure, and auditing everything full time to head off red team are being paid. I don’t need to deal with an attack surface any larger than it needs to be, ain’t nobody got time for that.

The ability to generate a bunch of traffic that looks like it’s coming from legit, every-day residential IPs is invaluable to disinformation campaigns. If they can get persistence in your network, they can toss it into a bot net which they’ll sell access to on the dark web.

A sucker opens insecure services to the open internet every day, that’s free real estate to bot farms. Only when the probability of finding them is low enough is it not worth the energy/network costs. I think hosting on non-standard ports is probably correlated with lowering that probability below some threshold where it becomes not worth it…don’t quote me, though.

At the end of the day, the rule is not to depend on security by obscurity, but that doesn’t mean never use it.

The resources required to port scan every port on every IP is generally not worth it. AFAIK they tend to stick to lower ports or popular ports. Unless they’re intentionally targeting a specific IP or IP range, they’re just looking for low hanging fruit.

Are you not actually open to the public internet? Is it running on a nonstandard port? Is it already pwned and something is scrubbing logs?

Fair enough lol, can’t argue with that.

where we didn’t have to assume every single god-damned connection was a hostile entity

But you always did, it was always being abused, regularly. That’s WHY we now use secure connections.

I think I’m just not picking up whether you’re actually trying to pitch a technical solution, or just wishing for a perfect world without crime.

If it just looks like a stream of TLS packets, so the content is encrypted, what would DPI be able to see? I feel like if it could detect it as a VPN, that’s just a bug that needs fixing, not an inherent weakness in the protocols involved.

But on closed source drivers, right?

If coding is the means to an end they want, they will learn it.

I started learning how to program because I wanted to mod Halo 20y ago. Gaming is often a motivator. I had a co-worker who started in the 80s, whose only option to play games on his C64 was to type up a bunch of BASIC from a magazine. He had to take care not to make any typos, then play the game, and then didn’t have any persistent tape to save it to, so he just lost it all on a reboot. Turns out, if you’re “forced” to type code in all the time, you start to figure out which bits do what, and you start changing it to behave how you want.

“Hacking” could probably work as a motivator, though with great power comes great responsibility.

But yeah, a kid won’t be interested in programming unless they see it as their only option to do what they want to do. PICO8 might be a good entry. Or something like Minecraft modding.

They use OpenVPN for some reason. Wireguard is superior in every way. In case you set up a VPN.

Agreed. I have a desktop for power, my fw13 is basically just a thin client. And it’s still very capable.

I was going to say you’ll probably be fine, but if you’re considering Mint you’ll definitely be fine.

Terminology you don’t need to know: Mint is still using x11, which Nvidia works fine with. I assume mint won’t switch to Wayland until it works smoothly on Nvidia too.

My partner is using mint on a 3080. I think she had one graphical bug in one game one time after an update. Mint has a program specifically used to roll back to a past Nvidia driver. She chose the driver from before the update, rebooted, and the bug was gone. Just gotta remember to switch back to using latest later when a new driver comes out.

Lol I definitely read the same thing twice. Assumed they were just repeating for emphasis. You’re right, my bad.

EoP, not PoE. Two different things.

Windows is constantly doing things I didn’t ask it to. I wanted something that didn’t do anything I didn’t ask it to.