I’ll research the device but at a glance this looks great!

The find phone functionality is more of a convenience. I can also do this via FMD (FindMyDevice) https://fmd-foss.org/

I updated my post to indicate it as optional.

First I’ve heard of it. It sounds like it’ll be a similar flavor to Stranger Things, and that’s enough for me to want to give it a try.

I can recommend Debian or Fedora. They are both mature distros that are pretty easy to install and generally work well with minimal fuss and are easy to maintain. I often see Linux Mint recommend, including in this thread. I’ve never used it so I can’t speak to it. But I have every reason to believe it’s a solid choice.

As for transfer process, since you mention using spare disks, NTFS filesystems are supported and you may be able to just copy files off of them. I don’t know if bitlocker is supported.

Phone, wallet. Keys if I need to drive. YubiKey if it makes sense.

I feel like soulseek (nicotine+) doesn’t have much of a learning curve. Someone competent enough to get and use a command line utility to download YouTube content could probably manage fine. Though optimally you want to be able to open a port, which isn’t always an option for everyone.

I quite like this idea, thanks! If I did this I could adblock all the rest of my network, which might help with blocking ads on things like smart TV’s. I could also DMZ that wireless network. I would consider their devices untrusted (not malicious, just not careful), and they wouldn’t notice the difference.

What I’ve found helpful, specifically to the threadiverse is to occasionally scroll through all and find communities that sound fun, interesting, or uplifting to subscribe to. And otherwise browse by Subscribed. Makes it a more pleasant, less doomscrolly experience.

It’s not perfect. This is still a pretty niche place so that’s not a huge amount of content. And it doesn’t solve the problem of the vast, soulless modern internet as a whole. But still, it makes one thing a bit nicer, and that’s not nothing.

Also this. On some unremarkable HP office PC that’s probably about a decade old. No ad filtering or anything as it interferes with others in the house. I’ve thought about trying a second unbound service with adblocking for me, but haven’t gotten around to it.

Depending on your needs, syncthing might be worth looking at. Here’s a copy/paste description.

“Syncthing is a continuous file synchronization program. It synchronizes files between two or more computers in real time”.

If you have two or more devices, it fulfills most of the same functions. But it doesn’t inherently provide offsite storage.

I ditched Fedora because I didn’t like the way the wind was blowing. I mention because despite having a bias against Redhat, I agree with most of the sentiment in the comments. I don’t think the future of Fedora is in any kind of jeopardy and if you’re happy with the distro, you should keep using it.

I love Linux, but I admit these are valid. I’ve had some of these same issues.

Sleep mode that doesn’t work consistently,

I haven’t had any issues with sleep on my devices, but I have in the recent past on previous hardware.

WiFi driver issues, printer driver issues, touchpad driver issues,

My WiFi doesn’t work at all on my desktop. Though it’s worked on a live image from another distro so seems likely to be an issue with the distro’s distributed kernel, not a Linux one. I run a rolling release distro so won’t be that the kernel is too old. But don’t care so haven’t troubleshot it much. My printer requires the use of vendor provided drivers, which are only available for some distros. It works, but not a solution I’m happy with. Never had touchpad issues.

several different wonky ways to install programs instead of just double-clicking an .exe and pressing “next-next-OK”,

I think package repos > collecting and installing your software piecemeal from all over the place. But having to deal with repos, flatpaks, appimages, etc. can be daunting.

random shutdown of programs for no reason or error codes

Sounds like an OOM process kill maybe? That’ll show in your kernel logs if so. But no immediate visual feedback.

…the list goes on. And on topnof that, all the stuff that people are used to using that just doesn’t run on Linux at all.

If there’s proprietary software that doesn’t run on Linux that someone wants/needs to run and there aren’t any viable alternatives then yeah, probably a non-starter. There’s wine of course but it can be a crapshoot. No shade intended towards the project. It’s amazing what it can do, even if it can’t do everything.

No specific negative association. I can’t say for certain, as it’s too long ago to remember. But I think at one point when I was young i felt more lukewarm about the song, but it was overplayed which soured me.

Tangentially related: anyone else have a strong dislike of “Dancing Queen?” That song has annoyed me for as long as I can remember.

Just that song, not Abba as a whole.

Correct!

Death Stranding

I’ve hated tofu every one of the few times I’ve tried to prepare it. Undoubtedly because I’m doing something wrong. And it’s just OK when I have it at a restaurant. But this looks and sounds pretty good and straightforward. I’ll give it a shot!

I hope they pull through. Not because of any loyalty. I’ll buy whatever is providing the best value for performance at the time. But I don’t want to see a monopoly in the x86 market.

Their relationship never felt like it clicked to me.

74 miles/119km.

I don’t consider that specific place home. While it’s not particularly far, I have no memories of it and it is different culturally. The state in general though I do consider home.