I think it’s pretty normal for people to want their high end thing to look high end, or whatever high end looks like to them. My PC case is basically a black rectangle with a single pane of glass on one side. It has some rainbow vomit lighting inside that isn’t all customizable with Linux, but my razer mouse mat, mouse, and keyboard all glow a lovely purple, just one static color. My desk, peripherals and case all match in black, so really any color I choose to run with makes for an easy vibe change.

I think maybe a half a dozen people have even seen my pc setup, and I don’t really take visitors back there, so whatever cool looks my setup has are just for me, and I enjoy it.

That said, there is a such thing as it being too busy, too gaudy, etc, so I totally get what you’re saying. My shit is lit up but I still feel like it’s fairly subdued.

You’re overthinking the hell out of this. Just plug it in and go. My 8700x3d is insanely fast during any load I’ve ever thrown at it, your new chip will be even more so.

This is the answer OP, your flavor of Linux matters when it’s your daily driver work/play machine. But for a server OS? You’re not missing anything using Ubuntu, and your experience won’t change much with another distro.

Precisely. I’m a millennial, and this place has a decidedly millennial vibe. Linux nerds, privacy advocates, people seeking an alternative to the slop of mainstream social media. I would imagine people under 25 are a rarity here.

I know of a structural steel contractor in my area, and their ironworkers have shirts that say “erection specialist”

Sometimes the jokes write themselves

I think something I’ve learned over the years from several harsh breakups and big time abandonment issues, is that the pain you’re feeling is an actual physiological response to the loss of someone you are chemically bonded to. This is old biology at play, older than civilization, older than our species, because apes and various other animals exhibit grief.

There is no easy way out of it. Your brain has to unravel connections that once provided positive happy chemicals from your proximity to that person. It makes sense, oxytocin and other hormones reinforcing pair and family bonding, as they were once critical to survival. You just have to let it hurt, until it doesn’t anymore. It could take a long time, but one day you’ll be at peace with it.

I really agree with you about immutables. Not only are they awkward to use as far as managing and installing software, I feel like they prevent people from learning how a traditional Linux system works by keeping them in the padded cell of read only root.

As far as arch, it only really took me a year of fiddling and learning on Fedora and mint before I managed to get arch running. Yes there were hurdles and growing pain, but it made me a better user.

I commented elsewhere about endeavourOS, but I have some other wisdom to pass along.

Keep good backups of your personal files, stuff you don’t want to lose, and don’t be afraid to try something new. You dont like something about how your system is running? Nuke it and install something else. Installing Linux is a cakewalk in most distros and rarely takes longer than half an hour (your mileage may vary with the low specs on the laptop)

I’ve learned a ton about Linux by trying many different distros, breaking things, fixing things, and occasionally distro hopping to see how I like a different offering.

There’s a lot of great content on YouTube that can help you learn, and reviews of various distros so you can get an idea of how things work without having to install it yourself. Have fun and don’t be afraid to fiddle with things.

Absolutely. The desktop environment you go with will be the biggest factor for ram usage. Check out endeavourOS, it’s basically Arch with an easy installer with some basics preinstalled that vanilla arch doesn’t come with. It has a great community and runs like a champ for me. You’ll have to learn how to install software from the command line but a brief YouTube video can help with that. It also has one of the widest selection of desktop environments I’ve seen in a distro. XFCE would likely be your best bet for low ram usage.

Install your software from official repositories and flatpak and you shouldnt have any issues. My latest install has been going strong for about 6 months without issue. Linux in general is quite stable unless you’re mucking about with things you don’t understand, and if you do like to live dangerously in that regard, it’s a great way to learn a lot.

If you’re worried about stability, keep good backups. Back up your important personal files, as well as your config files so you can reapply any customizations you had in place.

If anything happens that’s too tedious to troubleshoot, reinstall, it takes like 20 minutes tops and gets you back to square one.

You could also use time shift to create system snapshots.

I highly recommend Hyprland if you want a truly infinitely customizable UI. But, there’s a big learning curve to even using it, let alone installing it and setting it up.

You could use endeavourOS as your operating system, which is Arch based yet easy to install. I can’t speak to setting up Hyprland on other distros as I haven’t done it, but I’m sure if you look around you’ll find out what you need to know.

The part about preferring mania? Super accurate. During the year or so of dialing in the meds, my wife alternated between numbness and depression, and eventually climbed her way up to “Normal”

She hated normal. I had to explain that this is how life is for everyone else. Sure there’s highs and lows, but not every day is an explosive rollercoaster of emotions, and that’s a good thing. Stay here with me a while and see if you can learn to love it. Well, she did. And life is good. But there really has to be a lightbulb moment where it clicks that life without the meds is chaotic, destructive, and unsustainable.

My wife of 3 years, together 6, I could basically copy and paste your explanation here and it would be 100% true.

We work together making sure the meds are on track, therapy and psych appointments are regular, and she’s a lovely, bustling, fun individual and our relationship couldn’t be better. We have contingency plans in case things go off the rails. I have phone numbers to her care providers for worst case scenarios.

My greatest fear is economic or political turmoil limiting access to meds, because the meds are key.

Big 2nd for Fedora. Fedora isn’t Debian stable but isn’t exactly unstable either, and I think having fresher packages in your main repo is worth it.

I’ve ran into the apple hate crowd plenty of times. I don’t think they’re any kind of tech paragon, but my household includes the Apple TV, three HomePods, two iPhones and MacBook Air and all of them work together seamlessly.

My main PC is running EndeavourOS and hyprland, so at least there’s no windows in the house.

Been running an AppleTV HD for two years, and I’ve never had to reinput my password, nor have I had any other issues with it. I charge the remote battery maybe twice a year, and everything just works, faster and smoother than any onboard smart tv os I’ve ever used.

Absolutely. One of the best parts of the Linux experience is the community helping each other in so many places on the internet.

EndeavourOS is terminal centric. If you try it out you might need to learn some new tricks, but its forums are fantastic and I rarely have issues with it. Cachy is supposed to be really good too.

I have never experienced ds4drv actually working. Maybe it is time for a distro hop if you’re feeling frisky. I highly recommend EndeavourOS as an entry level to Arch. I’m also curious about CachyOS and PikaOS.

Something like this just not working is usually what drove me on too a new distro until I found something that just works really well for me.

So yeah, this is the answer, or should be. I run EndeavourOS, an Arch based distro (btw) and I also installed ds4drv thinking I’d need it, and my dualshock4 wouldn’t connect. I deleted ds4drv, rebooted and tried again and viola, it connected immediately, with full support including rumble and touchpad. The drivers were in the kernel all along.

If FartSparkles is also correct about your old kernel after you sudo apt purge ds4drv, you can search instructions for how to upgrade to a newer kernel version, it isn’t very difficult to do.

So, I used to play valorant and pubg when I was still a windows user. It was around the time of my switch to Linux that I learned about intrusive kernel level anti cheat.

Honestly, I don’t miss them, and refuse to play a game that compromises the safety and security of my operating system, just as much as I refuse to use an operating system that even allows kernel level access to something as trivial as a game.

My latest run in with this issue was the Marathon pre-alpha. I was granted access only to find that Bungie was Linux hostile, and after making a few speeches about it in the discord I uninstalled it and left.

I’m fine with this scenario. If I want competitive multiplayer I have CS2, Apex legends, and others. If games refuse to support Linux, fuck em.

Just another lens to view this through. There’s a certain rebellious spirit that can come along with embracing FOSS, and that should be part of the appeal.