As was actually rare at the time i was born into a household which had a personal computer. As long as I remember, computers fascinated me. They still do. But that fascination came with an increasingly adverserial relationship with Windows and distrust of Apple. That changed in 2025, my first full year living with Linux as my primary OS and booting no Windows machines. I'm excited about computing again. I am more dedicated to FOSS than ever. Here are some of MY takeaways in listicle format for no reason:

1. Working on Linux is VERY good. Office suites are great. I'm partial to ~~Open~~Only Office. Developing is a joy because everything feels like its made to work with a few commands. This is in strong contrast to whatever Office/"Copilot" is and my experience developing on Windows.

2. I work in an IT-ish field and I've become a lot more knowledgeable about sysadmin and netadmin type stuff. Not an expert but enough to have more confidence when something does comes up. A lot of this comes from being in terminal more. I understand Windows is going in that direction too, but it won't push users there. Some is from self-hosting.

3. Multimedia is a mixed bag. Krita, Blender, and Godot are incredible tools but if you are a professional who relies on software for your job, some of the FOSS alternatives don't fit a majority of users. I personally don't think Darktable is reliable enough to replace Lightroom because I've had too many crashes on too many machines with it. Despite that, I'm still looking to get rid of Adobe.

4. gaming on Linux is "good" to "great", but not perfect. In some cases, Proton beats Windows, yes. In most cases, games just work on Steam. I think for the amount of tinkering I put in, I could run a barebones W11for gaming and get better overall performance than my CachyOS. I don't because I can live with less than perfect and kernel level anti cheat can pound sand.

5. I dodge an unknown but substantial amount of anguish from not having ads, ai, and surprise updates forced on me. I am sensitive to ads and am upset every time I see one. I'm always shocked to see them on other people's computers. My work computers (Mac) have forced updates and forced restarts which are jarring. My computers feel like my own.

6. I find and (hopefully) fix all kinds of problems. My discord muted itself randomly because of a Wayland bug a few times. There's an open issue about dxvk getting framerate drops after about an hour of gameplay. That one sucks. One of my door sensors stopped working with homeassistant despite it being prefect in mqtt2z; it's a confirmed bug as of 3 weeks ago. This stuff is annoying but I take it as the cost of not trusting black boxes with my hardware.

To wrap it up, I think Linux is better than ever, more accessible than ever, and probably better than Windows for most people. To me, I would recommend it to my mom who only uses basic office tools and a browser and have recommended it to my tech savvy friend who got tired of windows update ruining his super custo1. m W11 setup... but would obviously caution my DOTA-addicted DM or my dad who runs part of his business on Access ( cringe, I know). It feels human, empowering and is good because of the way it is today not just because of its ideals.

I hope this made you reflect on your Linux experience and maybe on how you can contribute to or help the community.

Edit: OnlyOffice, not OpenOffice Edit2: WHY did I post on memes?!? Someone take away my late night/early morning posting privileges

TLDR; tell me if this is a waste of time before I spend forever tinkering on something that will always be janky

I want to run multiple OSs on one machine including Linux, Windows, and maybe OSX from a host with multiple GPUs + igpu. I know there are multiple solutions but I'm looking for advice, opinions and experience. I know I can google how-to but is this worh pursuing?

I currently dual boot Bazzite and Ubuntu, for gaming and develoent respectively. I love Bazzite ease of updates and Ubuntu is where it's at for testing and building frontier AI/ML tools.

What if I kept my computer running a thin hypervisor 24/7 and switched VMs based on my working context? I could pass through hardware as needed.

Proxmox? XCP-NG? Debian + QEMU? Anyone living with these as their computing machines (not homelabs/server hosts)?

This is inspired by Chris Tidus's (YouTube) setup on arch but 1) i don't know arch 2) I have a fairly beefy i7 265k 192gb build, but he's on an enterprise xenon ddr5 build so in a differenrent power class 3) I have a heterogenous mix of graphics cards I'm hoping to pass though depending on workload

Use cases:

• Bazzite + 1 gpu for gaming
• Ubuntu + 1 or more GPUs for work
• Windows + 0 or more GPU Music Production paid vstis and kernel-level anti cheat games (GTAV, etc)
• OSX? Lightroom? GPU?

Edit: Thank you all for your thoughts and contributions

Edit: what I've learned

• this is viable but might be a pain
• a Windows VM for getting around anti-cheat in vames defeats the purpose. I'd need a dual boot for that use case
• hyperV is a no. Qubes Qemu libvirt, yes
• may want to just put everything on sparate disks and boot / VM into them as needed

Edit: distrobox/docker works great but doesn't fit all my needs because I can't install kernel-level modules in them (AFAIK)

I've been following the work that went into this video for a couple of months and have grown to love Level1Techs.

Check out their forum and especially Ubergarm

Just found this in a box and according to some Googling, its TPD is 6.8w!!! Got Debian on there with LXDE but I don't need another laptop. The big drawback is that it has a 32bit processor. It has a 100mbit network port, USB2.0, 2gb RAM and WiFi which isn't working but is listed in ip -a

I've used it to add wireless capabilities to my ancient Brother laser printer but it was extremely slow ( 15 mins before a text page started printing, PER PAGE)

I have an early 2000s house and they went wild with a) the sheer number of wall switches and b) the number of 3-way switches. I want to replace a good number of them while accepting my wife's requirement that they look and function as dumb paddle switches when necessary.

I've looked around and these seem to be the best at fitting all of my requirements but Mama Mia, the price 😭 😭 😭 😭

https://www.amazon.com/Inovelli-2-1-Smart-Switch-Dimmer/dp/B0BG329SH3

Anyone have some suggestions?

I've been toying with the idea to implementing HA for a couple of years.

I have no fewer than 10 "smart device" apps on my phone and the privacy implications make me sick. I've been a Google Home and it's been a sad experience.

Over the holidays, I got Proxmox working on an old laptop and ordered a ZigBee stick and some sensors.

Installing HA using helper scripts was dummy easy and the laptop is performing solidly. Got hung up on network setup and z2m but pulled through with some Google-fu.

Did I have to do some tinkering? Yes. Can I control all - literally ALL - my smart devices on one customizable dashboard? F*** YEAH!

I am looking forward to accomplishing more, unplugging from the cloud, learning a lot, and hopefully making some life tasks less annoying.

Thank you to this community for the awesome work, conversation, and inspiration!

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/23341185

Everyone has seen Antelope Canyon on their Windows login screens it whatever but just a few miles away, you can visit Waterhole canyon, which is bigger and quieter. A guide was and to let me spend as much time as I wanted seeing up and getting my shots, a luxury I did not have at the more famous location. My pictures came out ok but the experience was worth it.

Nikon D750 W/ Sigma 12-24mm 2.8 1/8 sec f/18 iso100 (??? what was I thinking)

Feel free to explain if you know what this means

Near Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau, Alaska