Can someone explain to a Gen x guy what “listening data” gets me? I’ve been living off a folder of mp3s for 30 years. Does this use my music? Does this get it from the Internet somewhere? How is it different from asking Alexa to play music for me? Thanks.

You don’t need the cops, you need the FBI. They have people who can actually understand the jargon and follow up.

I just got a HIFI Walker G7 and I’m kinda loving it. It runs full android, is made to be an mp3 player, but operates more like a phone without the phone parts. It has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, but apparently has no location services, which is inconvenient if you want navigation, but great for privacy. It even has a camera.

They have non android mp3 players too if you want something more simple.

For me it was that all you did in your email was talk about how you didn’t want to compromise your ideals. All that stuff your told us about how hard you tried, how much you compromised, how many times you were blocked then reset aren’t there. Those are the things that make your experience actually meaningful and relatable.

It would have been a lot better to send your preamble and wrap up with, “if you are able to provide a functional setup with the required environment for me to continue my application, I am happy to continue, otherwise I am afraid I must withdraw.”

Garuda is Arch, and is also focused on being super easy, gaming focused, and performance tuned. It’s not immutable though.

After breaking my hard drive with Bazzite not understanding immutability and trying to bypass it with permissions changes,I switched to Garuda as a beginner. It’s Arch based.

It has been easy, gaming just works, updates just work, it came with the drivers I need.

All this Arch hate needs to go away. It’s not what it was. I haven’t had to learn anything more complicated than Windows was.

I’d say you’re first job is to determine what you don’t want. Google the differences between distros and pick the philosophy you like. Some have corporate backing, some favor stability, some stay cutting edge, some are more community developed, etc.

I started with Bazzite (Fedora) and switched to Garuda (Arch). What got me to each was researching “best gaming Linux” and later deciding I didn’t want immutability.

I mainly just wanted it to work right out of the box, but now that I have it I also love that Arch is always keeping me up to date. There is still a lot of fear mongering about Arch, but Garuda was just as easy as Bazzite, which is recommended for beginners all the time.

I think Garuda is amazing, and recommend it wholeheartedly, but no matter what you choose there will be some learning curve, so pick something that sounds cool to you so you stay motivated to figure it out.

We have passed the point where it has to be complicated. If you choose something like Garuda, Bazzite, or Mint, it should be a pretty straightforward switch.

All your points are valid, but I’m not going to put in 3rd party hardware and their default slicer seems great to me. There’s a group of users for who this is all more or less not an issue.

My Bambu had also been soooo easy. So there’s that.

Not enough plastic is coming out of your nozzle.

It really could be a lot of things… a clog, temperature to low, too much friction against the filament so it is hard to pull through, nozzle is bigger than your slicer settings say.

Try one thing at a time. Good luck!

I read this title as: If chat gpt is trying to kill you, you probably won’t be able to tell it to stop.

I started with Bazzite and moved from there to Garuda. Both have an Nvidia version that just takes care of that for you. I’ve never had to worry about drivers.

I’m on Garuda, every game I have tried has worked great, sometimes I just have to choose a different proton version with an easy pull down menu. The only game I have given up is Destiny 2, because they say they will ban anyone on Linux because of their anti cheat.

People always talk about the learning curve and compromises, but Linux is finally in the “shit just works” stage, so it’s not much different than the Mac/PC decision people make every day.

Heck, in a lot of ways it is more similar to Windows than Mac is, so it should be an easier decision. For some reason though, everyone still treats it like… Well… It would be like treating Windows like you still have to know DOS.

That’s just not true anymore.

I didn’t get a Bambu printer because of the price or design, I got it because of its “just works” reputation, which it does.

Unless Qidi matches that ease, it isn’t equivalent, and that’s important to mention. Maybe it does?

And yeah, I don’t love the recent changes, but that’s only ideologically. Practically speaking it is still amazing.

So… long COVID then. The vaccine doesn’t undo you having already had it…