It sounds like you’re really sensitive to workflow disruption at this time in your life. You can’t change from Windows to Linux without some pretty hefty disruptions, same as if you chose to go from Windows to Mac. If you really don’t feel like you have the personal bandwidth to deal with the workflow disruptions and learning curve, you should go with Windows 11. If you hate it, it’s not like Linux won’t still be there for you to investigate later when your life calms down.

“…you have the audacity to come to me for help?

Sure! Linux isn’t nearly as difficult to use as people think. There’s a learning curve since Linux does things differently than Windows, but you’d face that if you switched to Mac, too. Here’s a USB disk with [insert user-friendly distro here] loaded on it. If you can make your computer boot with it you have all the skills necessary to install Linux. You can test-drive it from the USB and if it’s just too different from what you’re used to, it won’t have made any changes. Have fun!”

I know which album I’ll be listening to on my commute this morning.

It’s so short that you might as well sit through it.

Futurama or Star Trek TNG.

My Mustang Mach-E has a physical key, or you can use your phone as a key, or in a pinch, you can set up a door code and an activation code to start it. The physical key still isn’t an actual key, though. It just needs to be near your car. There’s no physical lock in the door or the dash.

I like physical books, so I get the fun of hunting for books through the used bookstore, having them on my bookshelf, then I get to shame myself for my growing backlog of books. Once that’s done, I find reading to be very relaxing.

I think it’s just one of the GW texture pastes (Agrellan Something), then I hit it with either Nuln Oil or Agrax Earthshade, then dry brushed with Screaming Skull, I think? I think the tuft is an Army Painter one?

If I had that kind of money, you’d never hear about me again. I’d just stay quiet and fund a whole lot of charities and scholarships.

Thanks! The Sisters models are so cool.

This is my go-to. I have the old DVDs ripped onto my Plex server so that I can hit shuffle on all the old seasons and just watch episodes at random.

AMD support is baked into the kernel, so you really don’t have to do anything unless you’re on bleeding edge hardware and the drivers are in a version of the kernel your distribution doesn’t ship yet.

I’m currently on Pop for the last couple years and I’m really happy with it. Being stuck based on 22.04 is getting a little old, but at least it means no new big bugs (in theory).

The ground sections absolutely feel tacked on. They were what would end up killing my interest. That, and the F2P model in general makes for a bad experience in my opinion.

I’ve tried to get into STO multiple times over the years and I’ve always found it to be frustratingly buggy. It’s not unplayable, but it has enough bugs in it that I get annoyed and stop playing at about the same point each time.

The ship combat works decently well and is fun, but the ground combat is really rough in my experience.

I deleted my Facebook account during Covid. I wasn’t really using it anymore, but I really didn’t need to see anyone’s shitty takes on the virus.

I deleted my Twitter account when it was purchased by a Nazi shithead who has no business being as rich as he is for how dumb he is. I never really latched onto Twitter anyway, so that was no major loss.

I never used Instagram, but the idea seemed neat when it came out. Over time, it’s become less and less appealing.

I never had any interest in Snapchat. Still don’t.

Same for TikTok, but I don’t agree with the idea of the government banning it. The correct response would be to enact robust privacy laws, but that’s never going to happen.

I do still have a Reddit account, but I’m using it less and less. Pretty much only for some niche hobbies. I’ve never felt like Reddit fit with the other social media platforms.

I have a Mastodon account, but I don’t really use it. It still has the same problem Twitter did in that I don’t care about what’s going on there all that much. I want to follow topics, not people.

I did set up a PixelFed account that I use quite a bit, but only for posting pics of my minis and seeing other people’s pics of their minis.

Lemmy feels a lot like early Reddit, and I’m liking it a lot.

Same. It’s frightening that I can actually see that headline being true.

If you’re looking for the hopeful view of humanity’s future, I’d start with Season 3 of The Next Generation. It has that in spades, while also skipping over the first two seasons where it is really trying to find its footing. If you really like it and want to see how it all started, go back and watch the first two seasons.

If you like TNG and want a more character-driven experience that doesn’t focus nearly as much on exploration, Deep Space Nine is fantastic. Just like TNG, the first two seasons are kind of rough as they try to figure things out. They’re also a fair bit slower (some call them dull) than the later seasons, but if you like character and world building, they’re pretty decent. It really gains steam with season 3.

If you want to continue the theme of exploration, Star Trek Voyager is good. I don’t enjoy it as much as TNG and DS9, but Voyager has the advantage of the show runners and writers having fully figured out what life is like in that time period without the stumbles of the first two series. I’d say it remains fairly consistent throughout, but I personally don’t find that its highs are as high as TNG and DS9.

She did such a fantastic job making a character that I absolutely despised. It never once felt like she was acting. I hated her so much that I was concerned that if I met her in person I’d reflexively hate Louise Fletcher instead of Kai Winn just because she felt every bit as real as the actual actress.

That’s definitely fair. I play a lot of the ASOIAF miniatures game, so I figured I should probably brush up on the background material. The books are fine, but he’s never going to finish them. The game based on those books is fantastic, however.