Thanks for all the responses, I really appreciate it! I’ve editing my post rather than respond to each one. Just wanna say that while Linux seems intimidating, I’m realizing I was being overly cautious and thought each distro was like it’s own OS instead of just a variation. You guys really come out to help out newbies, so thank you!

To be fair, I’ve read that the Texas proverb bit was him cutting himself off mid sentence to prevent a sound bite of him saying “shame on me”. I have no idea of the veracity of the claim but it’s interesting if true.

Disliking the video is engagement, that’s probably why they show up every so often. It’s basically the algorithm saying “hey, can I suck you into an anger spiral today? No? Ok, I’ll try again later.”

He also renounced his US citizenship in Action Comics #900 like 15 years ago.

If you have a Pixel you can install Graphene OS

Yeah most comments sections are cesspools that only feed the negative wolf inside us. It’s interesting that now that I’ve cut out most comment sections, I realize how absolutely tiring it is being a part of them, or just reading them.

Lemmy is pretty good overall, but I really am starting to love just a basic RSS feed. Looks like what I’m used to (Lemmy/Reddit) but only links to articles, no comments at all.

This brings up an excellent point about addiction. A quick longer than I’d planned anecdote: over the last few years I’ve nearly completely dumped all social media (and big tech in general). Facebook, Insta, Twitter, all gone. The only social for the last few years I’ve had left was Reddit, and I dumped that a couple months ago (all social media is toxic, I learned).

I swapped Reddit for Lemmy a few months ago and noticed a huge difference, not just the fewer toxic people, but in the lack of posts overall by comparison. I found myself scrolling through the same Lemmy posts throughout the day, my brain trying to repeat the cycle from Reddit, but stayed strong and didn’t go back to Reddit haha.

Anyway, there’s still toxicity on Lemmy, and I realized how much it affects me without the cloud of all the other socials bogging it down. Not a lot, but enough. So I made a decision and went back to my old nerd days. I didn’t want to miss out on legit articles I was interested in from social media so I set up an rss reader. I started checking out Lemmy in the morning, and my rss throughout the day, which doesn’t update often.

What I found at first was I was re-checking lemmy, re-loading rss, and thinking about what else I can put on my phone to scratch that itch. I was (am) still addicted to the dopamine hit of forever-feeds of useless garbage. So instead, I picked up a book. It’s been a long time, and it’s a slow adjustment, but wow is it ever so much better. Aside from some small interaction on Lemmy in the morning like this, I don’t see comments anymore, I read the info I’m interested in reading and make my own judgments without comments trying to sway me, and use my former doom-scrolling time to read a book.

To sum up, you’re absolutely right. Addiction is a bitch and the average person doesn’t even realize they’re addicted.

Especially in today’s sociopoliticalathic climate

Thank you! Yep dumped Amazon, Meta, (never had anything Musk), and Google. All I have left is Microsoft for big tech, so Linux is my new focus.

That’s the problem, I’m freelance and barely scraping by haha. I’d love to grab something to try out but it ain’t gonna happen right now. My laptop is a Samsung galaxy book3 ultra which I slapped Mint on a while back and had issues and went back with a cracked windows 11. Apparently linux and the galaxy book line don’t play well. But, I’m very tempted to try another distro on it first, like bazzite. Probably be the smart thing before touching my main PC.

LiveUSB

I had no idea this was a thing! So I can basically put a Linux distibution on a USB, boot into bios and run Linux without installing anything over my existing hdd? Researching a virtual machine has been on my radar, is that basically what this is?

LiveUSB>

I had no idea this was a thing! So I can basically put a Linux distibution on a USB, boot into bios and run Linux without installing anything over my existing hdd? Researching a virtual machine has been on my radar, is that basically what this is?

Appreciate the advice, I’ll look into it more. I didn’t even think about an external cam haha. I use the laptop cam daily to video call family, I used to use Google home hubs for that but since I’ve deleted my Google account and stopped using the hubs I switched to Signal on the laptop. I’ll consider an external cam, though it’s not ideal. I’ll start digging again for options with Samsung chips.

As far as my main PC, I’m a freelance voice actor, artist, and musician. My main concern is recording software and to a lesser extent, art software (I’ve tried Inkscape, but it’s a hard transition from photoshop). For recording I really don’t like Reaper, and I use Audition (I know, Adobe, haha) and Cubase for music which unfortunately doesn’t have a Linux option.

As per the laptop, it had some standard driver issues which were no big deal but apparently Mint doesn’t play well with Nvidia graphics cards. The webcam didn’t work but that’s a semingly standard issue. The biggest thing was Samsung chips and such from what I read really don’t play well with Linux, or at least Mint.

This is my plan going forward. Linux wasn’t on my radar when I bought my laptop (and my PC but that’s a different story about just being scared to try since I use it for work and I’m not convinced Linux has comparable software I need).

I got a wicked sale on a Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Ultra, and of course a few months after I started cutting BIg Tech out of my life (I was an idiot for buying Samsung to begin with but too late now haha). No more Meta, Amazon, or Google accounts or devices for me, and all I have left of Big Tech is Microsoft on my laptop and PC. I tried Mint as my first Linux attempt, and put it on my Samsung laptop. It…didn’t play well unfortunately. I’ve read Bazzite may work better but haven’t tried it yet.

Moral of the story, you nailed it. Going forward every bit of tech I buy will be vetted for FOSS support first.

He’s absolutely a threat to what the US has become. His policies and views are dangerous to a fascist state.

That’s exactly what I’m typing this on.

Anyone using Session? I finally got most of my friends and family on Signal so I’m not gonna switch but I just heard about it, seems pretty good.

Successful is debatable. There’s no question he is financially successful, but he fails at every metric I personally measure success by: Honesty, integrity, loyalty, and kindness. I’m not saying my metric is the correct one by any means, just that the definnition of success varies across humanity.

Strange, maybe it has to do with scale in phone settings? I tend to have mine set to the smallest. I’ve also learned to not care as much about UI since dumping big tech and moving to FLOSS/FOSS (Libre Office is amazing but definitley less polished looking than something like Microsoft Office) so maybe I’m just getting blind to it haha