I met a few good friends by joining a local, free run club in the area. We were all the slow people at the back đ
I moved and the friendships didnât last, but I think thatâs just part of life. The older I get, the more stars need to align to maintain relationships.
The longest friend Iâve ever had is someone I met in school that lives on the other side of the continent⊠I havenât seen them in maybe half a lifetime now.
Buy we send each other funny stuff and random updates. I donât know why it has lasted, other than that there are low expectations and itâs mutual. Itâs actually really refreshing.
If the PC youâre building has the latest and greatest hardware in it, you might find that Linux might not support that stuff yet. You might get lucky, but you might not either. It usually takes a little while to get new hardware supported. So it might be a better idea to install Linux on your older computer, then thereâs no reason to buy a new PC anyway. Linux uses about half the RAM that Windows uses, for example, so itâs like you did an upgrade anyway. As long as you have over 4 GB of RAM, youâre fine for desktop usage. Windows requires 8 to run as well that Linux does at 4. Youâd only need to upgrade if youâre after extreme gaming support.
When I first transitioned away from Windows. Linux was admittedly a little less stable and reliable but unlike windows, there was a well documented solution pathway to almost every Linux problem I encountered, whereas Windows solutions always amounted to recommending uninstalling/reinstalling hardware in the Device Manager and rebooting the computer. I remember a few times that windows updates completely crashed my install and I had to roll-back to an earlier version or even do a repair/reinstall from disc -The documented Windows solutions (aside from the reinstall) rarely worked. Now itâs 20 years later and I rarely have reliability issues with Linux aside from my one hardware failure -but thatâs not a Linux-specific issue.
I bet the others already gave a lot of good advice, but there is one thing I wand to emphasize. The way in which you install software matters more on Linux than on any other operating system. You are meant to install it through your distros package manager, which you will most likely use through the software management GUI of your distro. Do not download any executables from websites directly, unless you are absolutely sure that:
They are made to work on your distro
They come from a trustworthy source
You have complete and up to date instructions on how to install them
Sometimes you might need to add additional repositories to your package manager, the same rules apply there. You might also run into things called Flatpaks and Snaps, these are universal package formats and another great option for installing software. Flatpaks work out of the box in a lot of distros. Number one rule there is to stick to things that are marked as verified, unless you have a good reason to trust them. These universal formats might be integrated in the GUI software manager too, this varies across distros.
If you follow those rules and keep your system updated, I donât expect you will have much trouble with Linux.
I moved a lot during my life, living in the 4th country now, stayed in each one for about 15 years. Therefore I had to find friends from outside of school.
Here is a list of how I found them:
20's:
through my cousin, he was a coworker with my future best friend
started a band with a friend and his cousin, then we kicked out the friend and got a better drummer. Through the band we met a ton of other musicians while playing life and became friends with them
I joined a IRC channel about writing HTML and CSS, once a year we met in real life. Over time I became closer friends with some of them and we visited each other semi regularly. We still hang in the same chatroom, over 20 years ago. Half of us moved abroad, so we can't meet IRL that often anymore, but we are still friends
after moving countries I made a house warming party and asked my (now ex) wife's brother to invite his friends, I brought 50 liters of beer from Germany to this party in Sweden. This group became my core group of friends even after the divorce
30's:
work, I became very good friend with one of my coworkers, we even started a new company together because I was the only one who wasn't afried to try it
university, yeah normal
one uni friend pulled me in to the company he worked for where there were very many super cool guys and I became friends with many of them. Even now like 7 years after we don't work together we still meet regularly for grill parties, etc.
I was on the playground and there was another foreigner dad and we started talking about the kids and everything else, then we exchanges phone numbers and are meeting regularly and it's fun because conversations are easy, so he is the clothest thing to a friend I have here. But I have no idea how it would go if I need help in some bad situation, etc. because we didn't have any yet.
So yeah, this is kind of where I found my friends outside of school. Perhaps it can be some inspiration for you.
adjustable tension springs and locking mechanism for varied stick cap types (Xbox Elite series 2 does most of this but uses magnetic caps which would interfere with the TMR sticks so ball bearing connections or other option would be preferable)
Adaptive haptic triggers (PS5) which can be toggled to hair trigger mode via switches (Xbox Elite series 2)
multi-touchpad on face (PS5)
analog face buttons (DualShock 2 controller had this but only a few games utilized this⊠the best example was the PS2 era Metal Gear Solid games)
customizable âper-buttonâ color assignment / micro OLED or e-ink screens so button graphics can be swapped (PBTails new controller does the per button RGB color assignment)
USB-C / 4 wired connectivity + charging
baseplate contact-charging (PS5 controller has these so you can set them on charging docks)
hot swappable battery pack + AA battery holder pack or ability to not have a battery on at all when connected via USB-C (Xbox 360 controller had this)
swappable non-magnetic Zinc-alloy faceplates (PBTails new controller has these)
removable back triggers with dedicated button assignments (like the Steam Deckâs L4/5 and R4/5 buttons; not just cloned face buttons like Sony and XBox do)
integrated microphone with hardware toggle (PS5)
proper âseparate keysâ d-pad⊠not the mushy type
touch-sensitive surfaces for every button and stick (Meta / Oculus Quest controllers do this)
per-finger-joint touch sensitive grips for each finger segment (Valveâs VR controllers did this)
the ability to separate the halves of the controller so that each hand could hold one half independently and have them track similar to most standard VR controllers (think combining the switch controllers and Quest controllers)
NFC communication (Amiibo-stuff for example)
If any single controller did even half of this, theyâd easily be the GOAT.
I found Linux Mint good enough for 99% of things, and most problems can be solved without a terminal.
Problem is youâd still need to know enough about Linux (just like with windows) to troubleshoot. For example, the files app was causing an error when plugging in drives, I need to figure out that the files app wasnât call files, but nemo, itâs config lived in a hidden folder called .config in my home folder, and in .config I could delete my configuration to fix my issue.
In my view Linux is about Windows XP or 7 in terms of usability, a bit of a learning curve, but one worth learning.
A few modern improvements which makes using Linux easier.
Use Flatpaks where possible, itâs platform agnostic and usually supported by the actual devs.
AppImages (think portable exe for windows), are another option, but to âinstallâ them youâd need an app called Gear Lever.
Check with an apps developer before installing, flatpaks can be packaged by anyone, and they might loose support (steam for example is installable via Deb not flatpak).
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