OK, in broad terms you want a distro that is reasonably up to date, but doesn’t have to be bleeding edge.

I run Mint Cinnamon and Arch KDE for the limited gaming I do, they both work perfectly fine.

Almost all games that have a Linux port will have the support & requirements specified for Ubuntu, which has a KDE flavour, however most people won’t recommend Ubuntu (for good reasons). An Ubuntu derivative with the issues removed however is a decent choice: Mint or PopOS.

Mint is by a long way the most recommended Linux distro for beginners and for good reason - the install process is easy, the community is supportive, and it does pretty much everything straight out of the box.

Cinnamon desktop environment is customisable, not as much as KDE. If you’re really keen on sticking with KDE then either EndeavourOS (which is basically a bundling of Arch so it’s easy to install) or KDE Plasma - which is Debian based but more up to date than Sid I believe.

I don’t recommend Arch for beginners unless you’re highly technical and willing to RTFM.

Most windows games will work in linux via proton/wine etc. You’re Your only really blocked ones are the couple of companies that insist on kernel anti-cheat and are anti-Linux (EA I think ?) it’s a handful of AAA games that are locked out.

Generally you don’t need any hardware changes nowadays, in fact it’s often the other way around - stuff that W10 & 11 no longer support can often be made to work on linux. AMD & Intel GPUs are less troublesome than Nvidia, but it’s generally not a big deal anymore.

Reddit’s /r/linuxgaming has fairly reasonable people (for reddit) and a fairly deep archive that will allow you to search for the specific games you most play, and ways to get them running.

Is there a way to get rid of the huge distracting “Swipe for next article” overlay on the-independent.com?

uBlock Origin and add “annoyances” to your filter list

Yes unfortunately that’s not true. Several reddit threads have suggested it is chatGPT fantasy, but regardless of the source, here is:

The actual regs in question https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2014/53/2024-12-28

Ycombinator analysing it (and saying it’s not an issue) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44765939

Xiaomi saying it’s fine (their article was apparently the source of the misinfo) https://xiaomitime.com/dont-panic-eu-isnt-ending-bootloader-unlocks-soon-59697/

GrapheneOS saying it’s not an issue https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114981731913328733 https://xcancel.com/GrapheneOS/status/1951434556957138962 and https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/24601-eu-is-banning-bootloaders-unlock/10

Less reliable sources reporting on it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sPFj9EP7YE https://biggo.com/news/202508021532_EU_Radio_Equipment_Directive_Misunderstood https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/new-eu-regulatory-what-are-the-consequences-for-jolla-and-sailfish/24015/10

Can you point me to this regulation ? First I’ve heard of it.

Umm I think it is Google who are trying to kill access to FOSS. How can you blame the EU for that ?

Google aren’t seriously trying to blame someone else for their own choices now are they ?

KDE is not a Mint supported DE and the KDE files are not in the Mint repos.

This can be made to work if you’re experienced but is definitely not a good idea for beginners. It will eventually break, and dependency hell is a thing.

For a KDE option suitable fir beginners, Fedora offers KDE as does Ubuntu, or there’s KDE Neon

Ubuntu touch project runs linux on a tablet while retaining the phone/android functionality

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Touch

https://ubuntu-touch.io/

https://docs.ubports.com/en/latest/userguide/install.html

https://liliputing.com/ubuntu-touch-mobile-linux-distro-is-now-based-on-ubuntu-24-04-lts/

There’s a list of supported devices there. Lenovo was one

And a “d” gently falling to complete the word

I love it, it’s a nice touch

Just a thought, if there seems to be a difference between US & Euro wheat it could be a pesticide reaction rather than actually the gluten. I know you guys have a lot looser laws on pesticide use.

The trick was to throw yourself at the ground and miss

Malicious communications, it’s in the article.

There’s no way they’ll make it stick, in fact I predict all charges will be dropped in a couple of days. It’s just a BS excuse to stop them until Mango goes

Not the slightest idea who the fuck the Stone Cold Steve Austin is.

Ditto but I’m going to guess a WWE wrestler by the stupid name

And Israel murders innocent children. You still haven’t answered the question.

And foreign journalists and doctors who very definitely aren’t part of Hamas. It’s incredible how some people justify cold blooded slaughter of civilians

Good find although not the article I was thinking OP was referring to. It was more recent, within the last 12 months I think.

My best recollection was that the person had a hotmail or outlook account which was suddenly terminated following criticism of microsoft (possibly their failure to address a security issue). That account was their login/access path to a high profile foss tool. I don’t think the tool itself got taken down in this case.

Not sure how accurate the above is, it’s my vague recollection.

Remember the Github dev who got blocked by Microsoft

It’s funny, I do remember the story, but I can’t find it across multiple search engines (obviously Bing are going to block it so DDG can’t find it, but I also tried startpage, searx, ecosia as well)

Can you point me to any links or give me a few more search terms to help finding it ?

What the actual fuck is “Europe doesn’t/didn’t want to help the US avoid their current fascist dictatorship” supposed to mean ?

What exactly do you think European countries should have done to stop Mango Mussolini being elected ?

Send in German troops to the red states to stand next to the ballot boxes and turn away MAGA voters ?

Send Keir Starmer to hand out leaflets for Harris at the Walmart in ButteFuck Wyoming ?

You dumb fucks voted for him, we can’t fix that for you. We certainly can’t send military in - the US has spent 50 years persuading and forcing the EU to be militarily weak (and 10 years bitching about the consequences of their own diplomatic efforts)

Piss off with this idiocy.

AsteroidOS is a linux based replacement for wearOS (android for watches) which is FOSS and removes all the google privacy issues.

https://asteroidos.org/

Kick the can down the road and download the MASgrave Win10 script (I think that’s it, I don’t use windows) that puts you on the Long Term support - iirc that gives you until Jan 2027. That’s enough time to get through the zero parental sleep phase and be able to think clearly…

If that’s of interest I’ll dig the correct details out (ping me) or I’m sure someone else knows what I’m waffling about & will drop the link

Yes but don’t use it for anything valuable. USBs have a high failure rate when used for heavy read writes.

You can get USB enclosures for M2 drives if you want to go that route a bit more reliably. Ensure you use USB3 (which will still be slow but not as boneachingly bad as USB2)

If you google Tankard-Reist you’ll find it’s not a conspiracy theory - she has actively tried to block queer representation at every level in every way for decades