Here's a treasure trove of filters that block so much more than just ads

and that's why I'm holding my face when people say ublock lite on chrome is just as good.. no, it fucking isn't. not because of gimmicks like this but because it does many things to protect your privacy which you don't see.

Beautiful... Now change AI mode to Slop mode for accuracy

Avoid Ubuntu - it's made by the Microsoft of the Linux world. If you want an easy transition from Windows specifically, then you really ought to run KDE Plasma as your desktop environment, as that is by far the most similar to Windows in terms of look, layout and workflow, and it is very flexible in what can be changed and adjusted. GNOME is the other big one, but it feels more Mac-like or tablet-like.

It's preferable to pick one of those two, as they support the modern Wayland protocol, whereas other desktop environments still only support X11 or only partially support Wayland - I don't want to infodump on you right now, but suffice to say that Wayland is more secure, and is widely regarded as the future of Linux, while the old X11 has security issues, and is only in maintenance mode now.

Mint, for whatever reason, and unlike almost every other distro, doesn't come with KDE Plasma as an option. I would recommend Fedora - it's very solid and well developed, an all purposes workhorse that can do anything you need it to, and it's a first class citizen anywhere, since it is one of the most commonly used distros by far. My runner-up would be OpenSUSE. If you're dead set on something Ubuntu-based, then I would take a look at Tuxedo OS, or perhaps just going back to the roots, and install Debian.

Linux Mint is a fantastic place to start (I would say the best place, personally). It's especially good if you use an Nvidia card, as it makes the driver install trivial with the built-in driver installer tool.

If you don't use an Nvidia card, I'd personally recommend going with the Linux Mint Debian Edition.

Got it down to Ubuntu or Mint

Mint is good. Avoid Ubuntu; snaps just make your life hard. You don't need to know what those are, and if you avoid Ubuntu you never will need to know.

It can be hard to convince partners and family, so congrats on the success. My partner worked in IT support but is not a computer person and does not own a PC. I simply provide a family Linux computer and some hosted services to be used by anyone in the family, usually EndeavorOS with KDE. They are aware of world happenings to understand why it is important and the biggest complaint I received was that I need to apply more scaling because the text is too small. :D

With all that said, I think both our situations are anomalous, though becoming more common.

Go with Mint, Pop!_Os, or Bazzite.

Ubuntu is only really a good choice if you want corporate/business level support. And even then there are other options.

'you guys are paying for subscriptions?'

Those are how to install Linux inside windows.

I tried looking it up myself just now, but I'm not really able to find anything that would indicate you'd have a bad time on Mint with your 5070 TI. There was one guy on the Nvidia forum that said he was having a bunch of problems, but turned out his BIOS was the culprit. Another person who reported a problem on the mint forums discovered that his card was outputting to his secondary monitor which happened to be off.

Support for the 5070ti was added in the 6.1 Linux kernel, while the latest version of Mint defaults to 6.12 now. You should be able to install it and then install the latest 580 Nvidia driver from the Driver Installer tool and be off to the races without any real trouble, at least from what I read.

System 76 (Linux laptop maker) now ships a laptop with a 5070 Ti, so I'd be quite surprised if you encountered significant issues.

I recently poked around online to see if my rtx5070ti would be supported and found a bunch of people facing issues, and that Mint and Ubuntu weren't recommended.

No idea what you could have been reading, but by and large, there's very little difference between distros when it comes to GPU drivers.

However, if you want the smoothest experience, then just use a distro that comes with drivers that install with the OS. Best one I can recommend is Bazzite. You won't have to mess around with GPU drivers at all and it doesn't matter which Nvidia card you have, they all use the exact same drivers.

I keep my Signal exclusive to personal contacts. I did just send them a link to a private Proton Drive share and got around it that way.

I can't fault them, their heart is in the right place even if they don't actually know what to do.

Give 'em tips as you can and wait a few years, we were all idiots at one point

I'd be happy to help (and if you run into problems going forward, just message me directly).

Linux Mint is probably the most often recommended for new people coming from Windows. But EndeavourOS will let you tell everyone that you use Arch without having to install your system via the terminal (EOS uses a graphical installer also).

For Mint, Choose the Cinnamon version (this can be changed later but this is a good default choice). KDE Plasma is the most popular DE and you can change to different DEs just by logging out and changing a dropdown menu.

I linked the install guide above. TLDR - copy iso to usb stick, reboot, click through the graphical install process. If you've ever installed Windows, this will be very familiar (where do you want to install it, what username, where in the world are you, and login to wifi)

It is much less complicated if you can have a Linux-only machine. But if you want to keep Windows around for a bit, you can dual boot: Mint

All of the software is installed with the package manager from the official repos. Everyone is familiar with this method of installing software because smartphones use them but call them App Stores/Play Store. You don't download executables from the Internet and just run them 😒

There's a lot of new terms and concepts so it'll be overwhelming. Lean on the official Mint communitues, they're generally helpful (there are assholes, like everywhere else of course), be prepared to read documentation and don't be afraid to ask an LLM to explain concepts if you can't get a community answer fast enough but don't trust the commands that it gives you yet (you'll learn how to do this safely but not at the start).

If you game, Steam can be installed from the repo, via and Heroic Games Launcher for GoG, Epic Games Store and(???, there are more but you get the idea) make the process as simple as pressing Play.

You'll probably use different software to do the same tasks so don't try to find ms-paint or notepad, but Krita and Kate do the same thing and there are many alternatives to those. If you can't figure it out, dm me.

Good luck. It's a lot at first but it is 1000% a better experience once you become comfortable with the software.

Not versions. Distributions. They're all developed and maintained by different organizations and are geared towards different types of users. It isn't like Windows where your choice is Microsoft or nothing.

This means that different distributions can have a completely different UI and even approach things like installing software in very different ways. That's why I tell people that if they install it and they don't like it, try a different distribution. Or a different version of the same distribution. Changing your desktop environment can make a huge difference. Most distros push GNOME on their flagship version, but I've had a much better experience with KDE. If you don't like the GNOME version, download and install the KDE version. If you like a Windows-style desktop, you can have that. If you prefer Mac, you can have that. Or you can do something completely different! The sky's the limit, really.

Mint is super easy to install if you want to give it a try.

It was (and is) spot on but Microsoft won the war for minds and lots of people in the Linux community started using Microsoft products like vscode and calling them good guys because they were running Linux datacenters and making kernel contributions. Microsoft employed some really good people working on some cool things. You were called out for being immature and holding outdated grudges if you used slang terms and you couldn't participate in conversations and be taken seriously.

Meanwhile Microsoft was still being Microsoft. They bought the defacto town square - github - in an attempt to control the platform. Then they mined the content to train LLMs. Now the LLMs bombard open source projects with crap. Even as Windows is dying they are trying to drag us down as well.

They are a big company and big companies sometimes do good things. No hate on their engineers. But Microsoft have always been the enemy and they will always be the enemy. It is their nature.

Micro$lop, why not both

Probably lost favor due to keyboard types, lots of folks type exclusively on digital phone keyboards where the $ is a bit more mechanically awkward than shift+4. But hey we still have Michaelsoft Binbows.

Doesn't work anymore because "money = good/powerful/special". You use Linux because you're a cheapskate, not because Microsoft is shit. Etc.

I wouldn’t say the extension was the beginning of the downfall; that kinda implies it caused the downfall.

I would agree that it was the canary in the coal mine – management types were ramping up their “just jam X into it” attitude, techies were starting to really feel it, and this was an initial, small protest. Unfortunately, despite the techies’ well-communicated newfound capability to run applications in my butt, the management types kept focusing more and more on their hype-oriented strategy – but that would certainly have happened without the extension too.