Thank you! Yep dumped Amazon, Meta, (never had anything Musk), and Google. All I have left is Microsoft for big tech, so Linux is my new focus.

That’s the problem, I’m freelance and barely scraping by haha. I’d love to grab something to try out but it ain’t gonna happen right now. My laptop is a Samsung galaxy book3 ultra which I slapped Mint on a while back and had issues and went back with a cracked windows 11. Apparently linux and the galaxy book line don’t play well. But, I’m very tempted to try another distro on it first, like bazzite. Probably be the smart thing before touching my main PC.

LiveUSB

I had no idea this was a thing! So I can basically put a Linux distibution on a USB, boot into bios and run Linux without installing anything over my existing hdd? Researching a virtual machine has been on my radar, is that basically what this is?

LiveUSB>

I had no idea this was a thing! So I can basically put a Linux distibution on a USB, boot into bios and run Linux without installing anything over my existing hdd? Researching a virtual machine has been on my radar, is that basically what this is?

Appreciate the advice, I’ll look into it more. I didn’t even think about an external cam haha. I use the laptop cam daily to video call family, I used to use Google home hubs for that but since I’ve deleted my Google account and stopped using the hubs I switched to Signal on the laptop. I’ll consider an external cam, though it’s not ideal. I’ll start digging again for options with Samsung chips.

As far as my main PC, I’m a freelance voice actor, artist, and musician. My main concern is recording software and to a lesser extent, art software (I’ve tried Inkscape, but it’s a hard transition from photoshop). For recording I really don’t like Reaper, and I use Audition (I know, Adobe, haha) and Cubase for music which unfortunately doesn’t have a Linux option.

As per the laptop, it had some standard driver issues which were no big deal but apparently Mint doesn’t play well with Nvidia graphics cards. The webcam didn’t work but that’s a semingly standard issue. The biggest thing was Samsung chips and such from what I read really don’t play well with Linux, or at least Mint.

This is my plan going forward. Linux wasn’t on my radar when I bought my laptop (and my PC but that’s a different story about just being scared to try since I use it for work and I’m not convinced Linux has comparable software I need).

I got a wicked sale on a Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Ultra, and of course a few months after I started cutting BIg Tech out of my life (I was an idiot for buying Samsung to begin with but too late now haha). No more Meta, Amazon, or Google accounts or devices for me, and all I have left of Big Tech is Microsoft on my laptop and PC. I tried Mint as my first Linux attempt, and put it on my Samsung laptop. It…didn’t play well unfortunately. I’ve read Bazzite may work better but haven’t tried it yet.

Moral of the story, you nailed it. Going forward every bit of tech I buy will be vetted for FOSS support first.

Anyone using Session? I finally got most of my friends and family on Signal so I’m not gonna switch but I just heard about it, seems pretty good.

Successful is debatable. There’s no question he is financially successful, but he fails at every metric I personally measure success by: Honesty, integrity, loyalty, and kindness. I’m not saying my metric is the correct one by any means, just that the definnition of success varies across humanity.

Strange, maybe it has to do with scale in phone settings? I tend to have mine set to the smallest. I’ve also learned to not care as much about UI since dumping big tech and moving to FLOSS/FOSS (Libre Office is amazing but definitley less polished looking than something like Microsoft Office) so maybe I’m just getting blind to it haha

My Signal screen fits 8 chats, and looks simliar to any other messenger I’ve used. It’s a messenger app and the UI shows messages. I wouldn’t want it to show anything else.

OsmAnd. There’s also a new fork of Organic Maps called CoMaps after Organic had some drama. A bunch of Organic devs left and forked it into CoMaps.

SmartTube on streaming devices!