Interesting

I'm using Nobara and Fedora. I think Mint is the most popular.

Check out distrowatch.com it explains it well.

You can bypass the TPM requirements for windows using Rufus to get Windows 11. There are tons of videos on how to do that.

That being said, I use Linux as a daily driver and love it. You can always test it out on a USB and decide if you want to install it. It won't run games well from a USB, but it at least will allow you to see what you like.

Either way good luck with your adventure and if you have questions this community is spectacular and really likes to help people!

Lemmy has a lot of Linux users and I just wanted to throw it in there.

Sure!

My goals for dividends is to make enough to just barely get by in the event of a layoff. I put my desperation expense at around 8k-11k. I'd like that in passive income.

I have an emergency fund outside of the taxable brokerage. It's enough for a year.

My bills are all at the beginning of the year (mainly February - July) then my bills are non-existent almost. So Auto deposit isn't the best of ideas. But whenever I get over a threshold in my account then it goes to investments. I am very consistent with that when I am able.

My goals are to have enough money that I can do a soft retirement or I think people also call it Barista fire. If I stay at my place of work long enough, then full retirement. I just value my financial safety in times of uncertainty.

My guess of a plan would be ~3000 shares of SCHD on DRIP, and at least 2 other maininvestments leaving about 5-10% in risky investments such as QQQM. I want to focus on having enough dividends for the ability of having passive income.

Time frame is ~8k in dividends in 5 years if I can. All in a brokerage account. Then once I feel I have my safety net then go after more growth oriented. Plus that is what the 401k is focused on.

Going through 5 jobs in 5 years to me was stressful. I want a safety net of passive income first. I just don't want to throw all my eggs in one basket with an ETF that I like a lot. I want diversity.

Thank you. All very good points.

Hopefully none, why do you like Gnome? I thought it was okay, but I really love KDE more. I don't hate Gnome. It seems really good for anyone who uses a touchpad or touchscreen.

It's what I use!

Glad you said that. I had that issue on my fedora computer.

Well well well...

I'm using Fedora, but I'm not going to say it's my favorite. I liked MX and OpenSUSE a lot. Just had a hard time with running them on a computer. Fedora just worked out the box.

I like Fedora. Can't tell yoh why I rolled with it though.

Great write up, thank you!

Can you elaborate a bit on don't need or want software?

Nope. Other than a concussion and some face damage nothing came of it. The driver was a teenager just learning how to drive.

Got hit by a car. Blacked out. I have some scars on my face from being pushed into the road.

I don't think we will be losing optical disks ever.

If burned properly they hold storage for a very long time without data loss. IIRC Facebook burns optical disks for old photographs and instead of having a hard drive array or tape library they had a RAID based optical disk system.

Optical disks are great, but not for the daily user since most media content is online and most storage is judged on being rewritable.

I know a lot of people are going to say to use Linux.

I would honestly however go with a curveball answer you may not expect, try running Linux.