That Pac Man isn’t eating pellets, he’s eating burritos, but because if you look at a burrito face on, it kinda looks round, and the graphics at the time were so limited… Pac Man is secretly shilling Mucho Burrito (or whatever your local Mexican fast food joint of choice is.)

Cantook used to be called Aldiko, and it was literally the first ebook Reader I ever got for Android. I don’t know if it’s the best, but it opens epubs and lets me set dark mode and use the volume buttons as page turn, and doesn’t gum up e-ink with animations, so it’s ideal for the Hisense. I don’t know why it only has 2/5.

Climbed a tree, tried to jump to the next tree. Failed. Fortunately, I snagged a wasp nest on the way down. Nothing broken, anaphylaxis. Not breathing sucks. (I lived.)

I always wanted to try catfish, and there was a restaurant I really like that does everything else really well, so I tried it and… Nah. Tasted like fishy dirt meat. I’ve had bad duck, too.

I have a Hisense A5 that’s a crap phone, but Cantook side loaded and it’s the best e-reader I’ve ever owned, bar none. I can use it for podcasts too, although I usually just use my regular phone for that these days.

Good to know! Legal, non-DRM? Do they have popular artists?

I literally got a tech support call last week asking, “How do I legally get MP3s to put on this new MP3 player I just got?” I was kinda stumped. “Umm… Rip a CD?”

We use ground turkey at home in a lot of our cooking. I like!

Goat! It’s the greatest of all time! Hehe. The only goat I ever eat is goat curry from a place down the street from me, but dang if it isn’t the tastiest dish ever! https://hotmillion.ca/ (Not AI, not affiliated with them, just a fan.)

Huh. Today I learned. I avoided snaps because Firefox snap took so dang long to load, and Firefox flatpak just launched…

Flatpaks: NOT Ubuntu’s containerized deliverable. They use snaps. Flatpaks are more Fedora’s thing. I know Mint uses flatpaks, and Silver blue relies heavily on them. Snaps v Flatpaks are like Coke v Pepsi. It’s all just sugar water, but people care, for reasons.

Tailscale: a VPN -esque service that lets you connect networks together in fun and interesting ways. For instance: I can use tailscale to access my home network from my phone!

Yup! Mint is, like, 90% Ubuntu, so almost every instruction that works on Ubuntu works on Mint. The only thing that’s different is that Mint “likes” flatpaks over snaps. These are two different ways to install apps, but honestly, you may never need to use either, and you can use either, both, or neither and not worry about it. Linux has a lot of “I like A over B for X reason.”, cue whining and moaning. You can mostly ignore it, or you can troll us Linux types over their particular A by saying “But I heard B was better…” None of it really matters. Gnome/KDE, apt/dnf, flatpaks/snaps, it’s all just a couple different ways of accomplishing the same thing, which is getting it done without paying some megacorp way too much money and giving up your data.

I use ProtonVPN on Mint, and I did have to type a command into the console to install it the first time, but I just click on the Icon in the start menu to launch it now. All the Major distros have an update feature that can be run from the desktop. My version of Mint (Cinnamon) has a little update notification icon on the bottom right just like Windows does. It’s pretty easy. I like Mint, but I have distro hopped for years, and I am mostly settled on Fedora, but I still have a Mint installer on a USB for rescue missions. Its Live Linux is great. Making the computer totally dead would require a lot of effort, since you can always boot into a live Linux USB and have a usable system. Heck, I have booted my Mind stick on a system with no Hard Drive and used the machine anyway. Linux is actually easier in that respect than Windows, since you never have to Putz around with licenses. My only caution would be to make sure you have access to another computer somewhere, in case you need to write a new USB installer. That’s about all for caution.

You can make the system stop booting for a bit if you screw up the install, but if you keep a Windows installer USb and whatever Linux USB installer handy, you can always get the system booting again. If you know someone who has done it before, dual-booting is a good way to dip your toe in. I keep a small windows install on most of my systems, just in case I have that one app or whatever I need to run, but I almost never boot into Windows anymore.

That the bazaar is better than the cathedral, every time.

Thank you, that was very nice! But I do love my car, too.

Prisencolinensinainciusol! That song rocks.

VROOOoooOOOMMM! Hee hee! I got a hybrid standard, and I will drive it until it literally falls apart (or I do.)

Yes!

This is what the community will likely tell you: Gnome is more for “I just want it to work and stay out of my way” and KDE is for “I want it to behave in some crazy fashion, and I CAN MAKE IT HAPPEN!”

I find the opposite.

I get Gnome, and I add tweaks, extensions, desktop wallpaper thingies, task bar nonsense, etc. I get KDE, and I just use it as is.

So clearly, the correct answer is: XFCE! Mwah hah hah!

Feel free to ask questions if you have them. I am no expert, but I am willing to try to help if you get stuck.