No. I daily a Galaxy S23. I really like it except for all of Samsungs preinstalled apps that can’t be deleted.

A couple months back, I bought a refurbished OnePlus 6T (2018) to mess around with Linux and de-Googled Android, and guess what, my phone which is 5 years newer feels virtually no different. It does have a better camera, granted, but personally that doesn’t effect me as I do any serious photography with a proper camera anyway (also, I have to acknowledge that the 6T is slower as it’s not really a flagship phone like the S23, but the 6T feels comparable quality and performance wise to some mid range 2024 phones I’ve used).

Bottom line, unless we see more Apple M-style chipsets in phones, imo, we’re at a plateau. You could get a $200 5 year old phone and be fine.

I’m biased towards AMD in general, I just find them to be a slightly better value, but Intel CPUs are great too, and I don’t think they have any noticable issus on Linux.

As for other hardware, it depends. Just make sure to do a bit of research and compare multiple options, especially for something like the storage, motherboard, RAM, or power supply. It’s usually pretty easy to sus out which brands are trying to catch your eye with low prices and tons of RGB, and which brands are offering a great product (I will suggest Seasonic for a power supply. They aren’t the cheapest but the build quality is excellent).

I think you may be out of luck with a built in achievement tracker unfortunately, although I personally haven’t looked into it. I’ve never been a big achievement hunter, but I’m sure there are external Linux compatible tools for tracking such things.

As for recommendations, you’re going to see a million names thrown around. As a broad suggestion, I might start with something based on Debian (tried and true, tons of resources, huge community). Maybe Pop! Or Mint. There are purpose built gaming distros with more tools and optimizations out of the box, however these are often small projects with shorter histories so I’m hesitant to recommend them.

As for desktop environment, it depends on what you want. KDE is my go to. By default it handles very similarly to Windows, but it’s incredibly customizable so you can really set it up however you want. KDE also has basic HDR support, which can’t really be found elsewhere. Gnome is a little more MacOS like, but it’s really its own beast. Gnome is great if you leave it default but I think it sort of falls apart when you try to customize it.

Also, if you do decide to go with Linux, I emplore you to look at getting an AMD graphics card. Their drivers are built into the Linux kernel so they require little to no setup, and usually perform better than NVidia. NVidia cards often have niche, hard to solve issues (speaking from experience. I spent a few years with a GTX1080 and often had the strangest bugs that I just couldn’t solve. Switched to an RX7600XT and everything just works). As a bonus, AMD is also usually cheaper than NVidia.

Fyi an alternative to Playnite with a similar goal is Lutris. You can even integrate several platforms like Steam and GOG to download games directly through the Lutris interface.

On top of that, it’s super easy to install games via exe’s, custom install scripts, add existing install folders, etc. The UI is a little bit spartan compared to Playnite, but it’s very powerful.

I say this because, among other things, a huge benefit of Linux is that it’s great for older hardware. From the sounds of it, you aren’t looking for the latest and greatest in terms of build specs, so Linux may be right up your alley (also no built in spyware, ads, forced online connections, and resource hogging processes that can’t be disabled).

My vote is always for plain ol Debian. If you don’t need a bleeding edge system, Debian will just work.

This kind of opens up its own point: people need to accept that non-free software isn’t the devil. It actually can be really good for a community to have large entities investing real, actual USD dollars into it, and creating products and services that people want to pay for. It absolutely shouldn’t be the only option, FOSS is a beautiful thing and I love that the Unix community puts a huge emphasis on it. But, without some heavy hitters putting some money on the table, Linux/BSD will always be niche. They won’t go away, but they won’t blow up either.

Control+W = "Where is," Control+O = "Overwrite", Control+X = “Exit.”

Makes just enough sense to me, and those are really the only three binds I ever need for editing config files.

I don’t want to come off like a vim hater, because I do believe it when people say it’s powerful, but… I don’t need powerful. I just need to edit text files.

First suggestion: commit to using Ubuntu for a set period of time. Could be a week, could be 2 hours. When you encounter issues, force yourself to stay on Ubuntu.

What you’ll find is that at first, errors will seem like gibberish, then you’ll do some snooping online, and find out how to access some log files or poke around your loaded modules. You’ll slowly learn commands and what they do.

Eventually, something will click, ie; “wait a minute, I just checked to see which kernel modules are loaded, and I’m missing one that was mentioned in my error, that must mean I need to load that module at boot.” You load that module, reboot, try your command again, and bam, everything works. You’ve learned how to troubleshoot an issue.

The best way to learn Linux is to immerse yourself in it. You can’t efficiently learn German if, every time you hear a phrase you don’t understand, you switch back to English, right?

This is my thought process exactly.

I get it, for a power user, vim is probably incredibly powerful. However, I just want to edit text files. I don’t want a text editor where I need a cheat sheet just to save my changes and quit.

*gdm is Gnomes display manager, which is the confusing Linux name for a login screen. Gnomes window manager is called Mutter.

He reviews/discusses mostly audio related tech (mainly headphones) but also dabbles in more generic mainstream tech like smartphones and laptops. The past few years he’s been expressing major frustration with the likes of Microsoft and Apple and I guess for the last few months has moved all his production over to Linux rigs, and even ditched his smart phone in favour of a modern flip phone.

Also he has a car channel called “garbage time” and a drumming stream called “garbage stream.” Very funny guy who’s definitely worth a watch.

Sadly, no, the Oculus software suite is Windows only, no exceptions. If there are a couple must-plays on your list that are Oculus Store only, you’ll have to keep Windows around. Who knows, maybe someday there will be some workaround, but that’s not the case at the moment.

The good news is, for anything that isn’t exclusive, ie on Steam or even Epic/GOG, there are options. I use a piece of software called ALVR. You install the ALVR server on your PC and the client on your Quest 2 (look into how to use Sidequest if you havent already). You launch both pieces of software, launch SteamVR on your PC, make sure the ALVR server sees it, connect the Quest client to the server, and voila, wireless PCVR on Linux. I’d say the performance is at ~85% of what you could expect on Windows natively, give or take 5 or 10% depending on your setup. By no means unplayable.

There is also OpenComposite. I know much less about this so it would be worth doing some research, but it basically bypasses SteamVR entirely. This would be especially handy for, for example, a VR game installed via Heroic Launcher (Epic, GOG, and Amazon games), where getting a game that requires SteamVR to actually see SteamVR would be a huge headache due to the separate prefixes/wine versions. There may be a way to accomplish that, but from what I can tell, OpenComposite is specifically designed to help avoid those headaches.

Bought a Raspberry Pi back in 2019 or 2020 with the intention of making a little handheld emulation game console. I tried Ubuntu on it and thought it was neat enough to install on a secondary drive on my main computer to tinker with. At that point, I didn’t care so much about the FOSS/Unix philosophy, I was just fascinated by the technical aspect; my computer can run an entire other OS besides Windows, which was the only thing I knew for almost two decades.

Now I exclusively use Linux and would only use Windows if it was an absolute necessity.

One crash will absolutely not make this big of an uptick. The amount of highly specialized software and hardware that is OS dependant means switching will only be possible when those companies, hell really entire industries, decide to move over to a more open standard soft/hardware setup. In this case, a crash is a big deal, but the IT teams get on it and fix it in a day or two.

Also, certain Linux machines were affected by the cloudstrike outage. Even less reason to switch when the alternative was effected as well.

Buy Raspberry Pis in bulk and make pointless SBC projects. It’s the only thing that will fulfill you.

I think the defining feature for me on Gnome is the workspaces. It’s just so fluid in a way i personally haven’t found KDE. Not saying KDE is trash on touch or anything, I just prefer Gnomes feel.

I absolutely love Gnome, but only when I have a touchpad/touchscreen. It blows KDE out of the water in that regard. However, it loses its shine for me when transitioning to a traditional KB+M, and KDE takes the cake there.

Basically, KDE for my main desktop, Gnome for my laptops, tablets, etc.

Same boat here. RaspberryPi running LibreElec, which is okay but can be unstable and lacks power. Been looking at an AMD 4x4 pc to boost performance and run some form of full Linux distro.

Out of the box experience is valuable though. No every user wants to tinker for an afternoon to make a system suit their needs. Some want to install and go, nothing wrong with that.

Honestly, take away the PR blunders, bloatware, privacy nightmares, and ads, and I really just dislike how Windows works.

The file structure is the main one that really made me feel like Roddy Piper putting on the glasses. I was perfectly happy shambling around between Program Files this and LocalAppData that. As soon as I understood how logical and elegant the file structures that Linux uses is, there’s no way I could ever go back.

Also, things like Settings, Device Manager, Control panel, and 2 or 3 other separate GUIs all containing A, the same settings 6 times over, or B, all containing different settings that should be consolidated. It’s almost as if Microsoft can’t stick with a design language or feature scope to save their lives, but they also can’t get away with completely removing these old GUIs, so they just bury them and add another on top.

However, I can’t say I actually hate Windows. I cut my teeth in computing on XP, and I see XPs DNA all over modern Windows (the aforementioned Control Panel being a remnant). I think without all the added garbage, Windows is actually an incredibly powerful, albiet obtuse and frustrating, piece of software.