Auster

Got a gaming laptop some months ago, and it is actually very powerful indeed. But it came with Win11 by default, only requiring the final setup. Now… How can a system lag a decent laptop so much.

Needless to say, it didn’t take much for me to decide to swap for good ol’ Mint Xfce, and even try out a few other Linux systems, and now, pretty much everything runs flawlessly, at most requiring to avoid using the ultra settings.

But indeed, Windows is bloat incarnated, and it only gets worse. So much so it even feels like Win10 on a VM can clog the whole system. Weird how that doesn’t happen with Win7, no matter how long I leave it open on a VM.

I check sites that list hardware specs, and once I find a phone that seems interesting for an average price I’m willing to pay, I check places like XDA to know how much of a hassle it’ll be to unlock the bootloader and add a custom ROM. And if modding the phone has too many/too big drawbacks, I return to the first step until I find a phone that seems good.

I’d suggest Linux Mint.

• Simple UI
• (Xfce version specifically) is very fast (within reason; it’s still a modern OS)
• It’s already pretty keyboard-centric and it can be improved further if you like tinkering (my reason for dropping Windows was precisely lack of keyboard-centric controls, so if I stick to Mint, I guess it’s good on that front)
• Keys can be custom mapped, although I guess most bigger Linux systems allow that either out of the box, or through 3rd party software
• Unsure what a “dotfile” is, so can’t comment on that
• And Mint is still slowly adding animations to its functions (to some people’s dismay), and I don’t feel lag when alt-tabbing around, so I guess it is snappy too

Never understood why repeating the last word from the top text at the bottom is done in some memes.

Besides, Windows can be very laggy even on supported hardware.

Looking for a more stable distro could be a good idea. Some distros are pretty much only PoC, or too niche to have a good support, or the beta channel of another, better supported distro.

Brazil does, but while such a set laws exist, seeing those laws being enforced is a distant dream.

On that matter, if you haven’t dug on the topic yet and if I may suggest, look for Linux systems (“distros”) with either the Xfce or Wayland desktop environments, since they’re some of the lightest around (Xfce being the most stable of the two, but Wayland seems pretty promising already).

Likewise from Brazil and likewise would rather see whatsapp gone from my devices. Sadly, I still need it for work and other official matters. Still, I’m slowly but surely abandoning whatsapp, by either convincing people I talk to to migrate to other, less anti-consumer services, migrating myself to sister groups or alternatives in other services, and/or abandoning a group or chat altogether. And all the while being vocal about it by raising my concerns about whatsapp (just saying “I don’t like it and you should move too” can be pretty counter-intuitive with our countrymen). Hopefully, this way, I can drop it altogether once it becomes clearly irrelevant.

But this reminds me I haven’t deleted/left any chats for a few days, so I’ll take the opportunity to do just that.

Perhaps the reasoning changes from person to person, but for me, it goes along the lines of this image posted, oddly enough, on a memes page:
https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/cbae2e12-4fe0-45c4-8657-f033da6eab20.png

One problem is that you don’t know who’s actually hoarding your data and for what purpose.

Looks like it was around the end of March when Valve announced the date they’d end support for Win7 and Win8. So perhaps a part of the Windows userbase went to Linux. If for fear, as a final push to drop Windows, etc., I don’t know, but perhaps they may have influenced.

Previous 12 months:

June 2023: -0.03%
May 2023: +0.15%
April 2023: +0.48%
March 2023: -0.43%
February 2023: -0.11%
January 2023: no difference
December 2023: -0.06%
November 2022: +0.16%
October 2022: +0.05%
September 2022: -0.04%
August 2022: +0.04%
July 2022: +0.05%

It would seem Linux among Steam users shows a growth tendency.
Hopefully this tendency keeps going strong!

The majority of posts on Reddit are also like that. Perhaps a curse of a feed-oriented forum (or whatever this type of social media is called)

If you absolutely must get something from Google Play, I suggest Aurora Store, which acts as an alternative frontend for Google Play, so you don’t have to have GApps installed.

If you have use for command line programs, Termux, a terminal emulator, is a great option, and it also works with root.

For reading eBooks, I also have a recommendation, Librera Reader (but I’ll check the OP’s recommendation too).

Material Files and Simple File Manager are great file browsing tools. But if you need a file browser for root specifically, I recommend Material Files specifically.

This is just a hypothesis, since I never dug on the subject, but considering sparkling beverages overall, at least in my side of the globe (Brazil), use carbon dioxide, which, when mixed with water, becomes carbonic acid, which, when mixed with basic compounds, becomes salt, I’d imagine sparkling water would be a good way to increase salt levels in the body, which could perhaps be bad in your case, since you need water for medical reasons.

I agree it is an uphill battle, but it must start somewhere. Else, it only gets worse, and then movements against such abuses will get easily crushed. As I like to say, “the hardest part of a journey is the first step”, but also “the future belongs to those who prepare now”.

De-google, anyone?