Ye i just had the idea yesterday, playing around with EndeavorOS rn actually and it seems to be much easier at doing some things compared to a based version of arch
I was reading about a new distro based on Arch that was beginner friendly, minus a few glitches that weren’t too bad overall. now, I’m not a Linux guy…not yet, but getting pretty close to installing Mint on my aged ThinkCentre M900x. 
Its slowly been getting easier to transition over from something like windows to Linux. Microsoft has been making the installation so annoying with all the account stuff and then you spend most of the time waiting for it to download only for you to have to uninstall half the stuff. EndeavourOS as mentioned before is an arch based distro that took me honestly 15 minutes from USb to fully installed. I be lucky to get the microsoft account ready in that time period let alone drivers. I still am dual booting now in case something goes wrong though.
If you are a gamer most likely you can just play the game on steam unless it has some anti cheat that bricks it though usually those games don’t have the best reputation it best to maybe step away from the computer for a bit to not lose your sanity. There is heroic games launcher if you want to use GOG or Epic games on Linux.
There are so many other graphic based interfaces to download the most common stuff now. A good bonus too is that downloading stuff from terminal usually is like one line for the most common applications and so many things are on the browser now anyways. Even Nvidia has announced and been rolling out more linux stuff to make it a better experience. Will give a word of advice is to pass through the camera to obs and if you screen share in discord or somewhere also have obs handle it first. Also for some weird reason with ubuntu based I always had to reinstall the graphics drivers after the initial install.
Either way for anybody getting into linux, I just recommend looking up desktop environments (DE) and choosing one that you like the looks of and seems to fit your needs. Look up beginner distro with the DE and put it on a USB stick and play around with it. Don’t be deterred by the online gatekeepers who criticize the “beginner” distros, although it might be best to avoid manjaro since the company behind it do have a case of just not updating very important security patches and nuking their installer. Can’t learn something new and adapt to something if you do not try it.
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Not much of a rant but right now I am feeling a bit sad when it comes to the community that I am in, and don’t worry this is not that community for this community is one of the best I have been in and have learned a lot of stuff thanks to this lovable forum. But much to my dismay, a community server that I am part of, feels like doesn’t want me there anymore, for nobody wants to converse or have a chit chat with me and hell I cannot even join the VC, they just flat out say that “You are not invited” based on that VC group’s name and I don’t know what I did for as much as possible I try to be a decent person online. I’ve never done anything wrong and if I did I am sorry for it for I don’t want to hurt anyone, for the online space is already filled with assholes and I try not to be one, regardless of the anonymity privilege that we have.
I wish they could just straight up say it to me like “Dude, I just don’t like you because of this.” Or “I don’t like you because that’s how I feel about you, I cannot explain it but every time you’re here I don’t like you.” Then I would have had understand more. My best friend is right, I really do need a social life, not gonna lie I have anxiety when it comes to talking with people irl especially to folks I don’t know and don’t have the common interest as I. But it just sucks when you’re part of the community that you have the same interest as, yet that welcoming aura that it used to have is gone for a reason.
It sucks man, at least you guys are cool. Hope there is like a Discord server for the Hifiguides forums, so I can discuss a lot of cool things. But yeah, it hasn’t been that good for me when it comes to that community server of Discord.
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For the moment I need Windows in order to run MusicBee. Why? It’s synchronization features work perfectly with my Sony DAPs.
If I saw a clear path to getting MusicBee to run under WINE on Fedora, I’d take it.
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Anxiety sucks. My wife, and two of my grandkids have it bad. You get in the loop of needing the interaction, but not wanting to deal with the social risks.
I don’t know what is going on in your case with that discord, but there are lot of communities that you can be part of. Never base you feelings on one space, there are good and bad in every hobby. I tend to find the best rando communities tend to focus around video games. They accept people leaving for a while when neeeded, and the focus is reasonable in cost ( for most games ). I think audio has some elitism, but the summit-fi stuff is out of range for most folks, and it occasionally reminds me of my time collecting wrist watches ( I have about 30 ).
I didn’t even know there was a discord for here, but there are some sub-communities that I don’t get here, and there is a ton hifigo shilling behind the scenes that I don’t really like either.
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what’s neat and really cool is how there are so many beginner friendly distros out there…ones even from ones that are not considered easy to use. ZNET has had an article they’ve shared a few times in the last year about how the only thing really holding Linux back from taking more market share is that there is no ‘official’ version of Linux. one that all the OEM’s, etc., can get behind for support like they can with Windows. of course it’s a hell of a lot more nuanced than that…but I agree. pick a flavor and make it easy to change the desktop environment to suit user tastes and then make it LTSC or stand behind it with a decade of feature and security updates.
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I am an OG Linux guy from before the 1.0 kernel, and I love how simple Linux is to get going today.
I have an ancient netbook with an Intel Atom that I run Lubuntu on and it is a fantastic small computer. That is the LXQt desktop environment on Ubuntu. It is great for old machines or VMs because it has a small disk and RAM use.
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What’s even worse is that when I am anxious, it’s not so obvious to most people. Even though I know deep within that I am freaking out deeply, and really don’t know what to talk about, especially with women which I hate to admit, and yeah the lack of confidence within myself can be a deal breaker overall to some people. Also I am glad I am not alone with anxiety, for it makes me feel a bit comfortable discussing it, but for some reason that particular topic seems taboo for others, and I don’t understand why.
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Well, I finally got the Windows apps MusicBee and Mp3Tag to work under WINE on Debian. I am even able to sync my playlists and their contents to an older Shanling DAP I have. Everything works, although a bit differently than under a native Windows installation. In WINE I have to use a “virtual device” in order to access my microSD card for the synchronization.
To think I bought a Windows computer, when I could have stood pat and fought my way through the WINE setup and configuration I needed to run those necessary programs for my Sony DAPs! That was so weak, man.
Oh well. I found that I kind of like Windows 11 along they way, anyway. I don’t trust it to stay that way, though, with all the annoyances Microsoft continues to pollute the OS with in their periodic updates. If it gets too bad, I have this Debian set up at hand to tweak and fall back on.
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I feel the same way, microsoft making windows worse and worse and with some really scummy moves as well. Is the reason I have my eye on switching to Linux Mint, have tried running it in VM and on a random SD card+reader I had on hand.
Waiting for my nvme SSD enclosure to arrive (and need to order the kingston KC3000) and then I will install it on the SSD and dual boot it for a while to see if I will ditch windows or not…
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I easily love Linux more than the two main players, but software gap is an issue. Small projects like the program I use to generate certain geometry problems all the way up to the Adobe suite… there’s something wrong about having to emulate all the software in Wine if that even works well enough.
I fully appreciate the open-source programs that can replace a lot of these for home users and in some cases even advanced hobbyists… but GIMP and Inkscape (again, full props to them for how impressive they are in their own right) aren’t going to replace industry standards like Photoshop and Illustrator any time soon.
If I could install all my creature comforts like those on a given distro… that’d be terrific. No financial incentive for the big companies to support a third platform though.
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They brought back the 2 most annoying things that people instantly hated about windows 10 in the preloaded ads and the account manager that a shame. At this point make the ads more targeted and embrace the full big bad with all the data they be gathering. The ads that they run now are honestly so bad that they can call “targeted ads” a feature in windows 11. I am still salty about the locked taskbar stuff its annoying
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Thought chifi companies were scummy, but seems there are bigger fishes out there. (still a chinese company though…)
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Wow, this is just asking to get reviewbombed…
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I’d like to know just what “a certain period of time” means. Not that it matters, I doubt I will be ordering anything from them now anyway. Just sayin…
Good question. But yeah I guess this is why they dont mind partnering up with “Good e reader store” (reseller with terrible rep)…
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I bought the Kobo Clara 2E a while back, and I really enjoy it, and I was able to put most of my existing ebooks on it. The backlight is great in dark rooms. I read a ton of work related stuff just to keep current ( software is a moving target ), so I find it hard to carve out time for recreational reading, and the kobo got me back to readying a couple books a month just for enjoyment. I was also able to put PDFs for TTRPG games and stuff like that.
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My God, man, that’s awful! 
That actually sounds like a good thing. I’m in the same boat with the technical literature monopolizing that time space. If I’m readin, it’s either a manual, training material or this forum! 
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