I generally agree with you. I haven't seen Signal getting much hype outside Soatok mentioning it the other day, but I could see it as it's something close to Telegram and people always try to go to whatever is the next closest thing. That said, Matrix isn't without it's issues either. While I also prefer decentralized, open source, software, (one of the main reasons I'm here,) my experience with Matrix and XMPP hasn't been great. Largely because nearly no one I know uses them.

I've been using Signal for years, and I can definitely say it's not "garbage". I'm not telling anyone else what to use, but there are far worse options out there for sure.

Remnant is brutal. Same situation here with not having anyone to play it with. Good luck!

My Go to for when I get a little time to game is usually something like Steredenn or Judgement Silversword. But I've been playing Enshrouded with my boyfriend a lot the last week or two. Got a little server running on my Mac mini. (Whisky is awesome. :))

Any day that starts or ends like this is a good day. Fantastic work. :)

That's absolutely adorable. :)

This works for people in the state of Florida too.

I’d say ram first off, 8gb is going to make your PC hit that swap on your hard drive (ssd?) a lot more than you want it to and that’ll slow everything down. Go at least 16gb. Then video card.

It seems like the only company I can reliably find lined paper from is Rhodia. That said their paper is very good, and though it comes in tablets, the pages tear out easily and cleanly so you can pull them out and use them as loose leaf. I'm really surprised how difficult it is to find lined paper from companies like Tomoe River, Clair Fontaine, etc over here where I am. (SE US.) I have to basically import everything, so I'm at the whims of what I can get from places like Goulet, Jet Pens, and Amazon.

I bought a Lenovo Ideapad Gaming 3 for $600 US and use it with Garuda Linux. Everything works as expected and the onboard GTX1650 MaxQ handles gaming just fine. The hybrid graphics even work just fine with no fiddling around at all.

You don't see many of those. Neat. :)

That's really cool! :)

My only real complaint is that some of the groups I was in on reddit either aren't here, or are super small here. As far as the people go, maybe I've just been lucky but most folks have been pretty nice, and thus far I haven't really run into the extremist stuff some folks ahve mentioned.

The thing that really rubs me the wrong way about all this is we pay for Windows, I have 3 licenses for Windows 11 and it's gotten so annoying that I don't even use them anymore. I've been a Linux user for quite a while already and between Microsoft's doing more and more data collection, and more ads, I just walked away from it a couple years ago. Fortunately, I was in a position where I could do so. I feel bad for folks that must use Windows for this or that and can't escape it.

Idiocracy is slowly becoming a documentary, and I hate it.

Garuda is the OS I've been using as my main since 2021 when I switched from Ubuntu. While I love it, and Garuda is aimed at making Arch easier to use, it is still Arch. I would say if this is your first time installing Linux, Garuda probably isn't the best choice, rather it's something to move up to when you're more familiar with the OS. For a first time user I'd suggest Ubuntu, It's not the flashiest, and some people will doubtless deride it for this or that, but when it comes to being user friendly it's pretty hard to beat. Then once you feel confident with that, aim for something more advanced like Garuda if you still want to do so. Good luck in moving over to Linux!

At the moment I'm using a Platinum Preppy .2 extra fine with Platinum blue/black ink. My first EF pen, wanted to see if I liked a nib that small.

Actually came here to mention this. I can't imagine anyone that wouldn't know the difference considering how popular both breeds are.

I did something similar to that with my Twitter account, that and while I stopped using it in November of last year I didn't want to delete it right away in the off chance that things changed and it got better. But after a few months I figured anyone that wanted to find me on Mastodon would have found me and Twitter wasn't any better, so I hit the nuke button. I get ya'.

It's the only way to be sure.