That sounds like another good solution!

Re: Discord

You can edit a text file to get it to stop checking for updates. IDK if this is viable on Debian but on Fedora it was never more than 1 update behind so I never had an issue in years

I think it’s on the Archwiki, but it applies to any Linux

Hardware support is also two-sided.

For example: game controllers.

On Linux, any first-party Switch, Playstation, or Xbox controller works out of the box. Most 3rd party controllers also work out of the box. Even Wii remotes work once paired over bluetooth (and the pointing works but takes some setup).

On windows, xbox controllers work out of the box, except for very old ones which require a driver. 3rd party pc controllers will tend to work out of the box (or sometimes with a driver), but wired Switch and Playstation controllers need hacky workarounds to work or to get full functionality. Wireless controllers can often be paired with bluetooth, but I’ve had hit and miss luck with windows and first party Sony/Nintendo controllers

Don’t use an immutable distro like endless or silverblue. It’s a whole new paradigm to learn (in addition to learning Linux basics). You should get your feet wet with something more user-friendly first.

My big recommendation is Ubuntu. Normal ubuntu. Not one of the flavors or derivatives. It’s got everything you need, plus very easy to troubleshoot if something goes wrong. Try to avoid using the command line when following guides online, there is nothing on Ubuntu you actually need it for and the graphical tools are very good.

Don’t listen to the complaining about snaps. You won’t notice them, they won’t affect you negatively, they are designed to just set and forget. The complaints come from a highly particular and technical subset of the Linux community.

If you really don’t like the look of Ubuntu, then I’d second all the recommendations for Mint. Those two distros have the most number of non-technical users in their communities because they are both very user-friendly and well-tested. I’d recommend against trying anything else until you’ve gotten comfortable with Ubuntu or Mint.

When I commented it was a link to a random github comment that had nothing to do with the subject. I guess they fixed it and removed the second link between my comment and yours

There are quite a few niche window managers and desktop environments that it’d be a shame to loose. I’m quite fond of Windowmaker (and curious about Afterstep), Trinity DE, and NSCDE for example, and I’m not aware of Wayland plans for any of them.

Looking Glass is apparently broken on GNOME + Wayland in this exact way.

Ideally there would be a bare minimum server side decoration for Wayland apps (like Looking Glass) that don’t provide any CSD. Hopefully that’s on the horizon if it’s not what’s being discussed here.

That first link doesn’t have anything like what you describe

Edit: they changed the link, the new one is at least relevant. The old link was just some random comment.

Couldn’t finish it: too much whining, not enough substance.

I haven’t tried hyprland yet but if this is the guy developing it than maybe I’m good.

Cosmic seems promising. Best of luck to system76, happy to see an alternative opinionated desktop getting some momentum.

I had no issues with compatibility, just made sure to save documents to older microsoft office formats in the hopes of avoiding issues.

I never had to use an exam browser or anything like that, I’d imagine you’d want to have a polite conversation with the instructor if that were to occur, perhaps they can make an exception or allow you to do it on a library computer

Collaboration was always over google docs, so there were never any problems working with others. My CS classes were all expected to be done in Linux VMs so that was sort of ideal. Other science/humanities classes were totally software-agnostic.

One of the best apps on any platform

LTS kernels aren’t more or less stable. Rather, they have been selected by the kernel maintainers to get security fixes backported to them for a certain time.

Ubuntu does the same thing for the kernels on their LTS versions (technically they usually are not LTS kernels since canonical supports them instead of kernel team)

Overall I’d suggest going with what the distro provides unless you have very new hardware, in which case a newer kernel may be required

Haven’t done this myself, but supposedly you can do it with xboxdrv using the “–mimic-xpad” flag

I don’t hate systemd. However:

Units and service files are confusing, and the documentation could be a lot better.

That said, when systemd came out the traditional init stack was largely abandoned. Thanks to systemd (and the hatred of it) there are now a couple of traditional-style init systems in active development.

I was really impressed with the hub. Such a well-implemented feature. I also miss the led that would blink a different color for different types of notifications or conversations

I think you have it right, I was being clumsy with my phrasing

Pretty sure it just had an emulation layer for Android. I had a Passport when it was new, and I remember the phone was emulating a version of Android a few years old, so a few apps didn’t work properly

Stardew Valley is a very relaxing and fun game where you start a farm in a small town. It has also has optional multiplayer. I found it very addictive.

That’s what I’m thinking. A menu entry that just runs chown -R [username] on whatever you click is the idea

Just saw your edit. One thing you should be doing is taking ownership of directories you plan to be working in. So for an external drive for example, you’d want to make sure your user(s) have r/w/x permission recursively (granting permission for all files and folders underneath using the same command) on the root folder of the drive then you can move stuff on and off freely.

I agree it could be more straightforward, but ideally you’d only have to do it one time when you first use the drive with that machine