The ROMsMegathread to add to the other recommendations. Also I do have to mention GoG again for DRM free games.

That was certainly a good deal you found yourself. I personally don’t like paying off a phone from a cell provider

Hallelujah!

I just ordered an 8a because of how affordable it is used on eBay (~$250USD) and specifically for long support time it still has. Probably the best bang for your buck version

Get a Pixel that still has a good amount of time left for security updates. So don’t buy a Pixel 6 for example as it’s almost end of life. Make sure it’s a carrier unlocked model. I don’t know too much about Verizon issues, maybe it’s sim card related but grapheneOS supports eSims if that’s an option with Verizon.

Thanks everyone

Raspberry Pis are not difficult to tinker with. Don’t let your intimidation stop you from trying to assembly one the way you want. Just don’t be walking around on a carpet before touching it and it’ll be okay. The circuit boards can slip out of your hand and land on the table and be just fine.

Get a RPi5 4gb, a case with a fan that connects with the standard fan pinout (for simplicity. No special scripts needed), and put Batocera on it. It’s a very easy to use retro gaming software.

The cool thing about a small SBC like a RPi is that you can try different operating systems out without loosing your old data by simply swapping the micro SD card with a different thing, then just go back and it’ll boot like nothing ever changed. You’ll learn a lot and not be intimidated anymore.

If you go this route you’re welcome to DM me for help setting it up.

Purchase DRM free music to have locally. HDTracks and 7Digital are two great resources

Gotcha. That makes sense. Thank you

Opt-in analytics to be accurate

Benchmarks online tend to show very minimal performance difference between distros. The main difference with gaming distros will be ease of installation of gaming stuff like gamemode, etc. Some distros also have a Steam Picture like mode if you prefer that. Besides the “gaming” stuff, the distros are otherwise just a normal Linux experience so yes you can install a VM software like normal.

Bazzite and CachyOS are two popular suggestions. Bazzite is a Fedora atomic spin for gaming and has specific images setup for your hardware. CachyOS is arch based and has optimized packages for your specific hardware

Thanks, this is great

Use Fedora workstation or Fedora Kinoite if you want an atomic version. If you just want a system to work and you don’t care to tinker much I highly recommend Kinoite as it won’t break easily on you and is very stable.

Unfortunately I don’t know how yo help with your original question then.

CoMaps is a recent fork because Organic Maps shows signs of corporate takeover and going against the principals of FOSS More details here https://lwn.net/Articles/1024387/

I know it’s on Linux as a Flatpak, it’s also on Android

Totally agree with the FreeTube recommendation. Libredirect will even open links in FreeTube. I use IVPN and use non obscure servers but every once in a while I do have to try a different one.

You could also try Grayjay instead of Freetube

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Hahaha so many articles on different percentages

I’ve got Mint XFCE on two old laptops

A number of things are integrated to make a simpler setup, it’s a single binary, and can be installed easily on an openwrt router and opnsense.

I really think convienence is a huge difference as that’s what gets people using stuff and to continue to use stuff