I dare you to prescribe Linux to someone suffering from a headache

More like installing a subcutaneous implant

"It's easy, man. You just need to inject this needle under your skin. What do you mean you're uncomfortable doing that? Anybody can do it. And if you don't like it, you can just use the same needle to pull the pill back out and you'll be back where you started, no harm done. Now, there's about 48 different pills you can choose from that vary in performance and legitimacy. I use Grafff (yes, with 3 Fs, two Fs is the legacy version), but you could start with NBOSC or RBOSC or LBOSC. But you could also try Flan or Yellow Welly. You could try Trim, but it takes some getting used to not having eyes. Honestly, its not that bad though. Anyway, once you have QBOSC (I mentioned QBOSC, right? It meant replace RBOSC but they split and are just two different things now) you'll need to find this thing called DaemonFlare to make your legs work so you can play games and stuff. The whole thing should take like 20 minutes... or 9 days to work out the issues"

It’s not about the nail!

Mint is great! I use it for my laptop. Lightweight and responsive, perfect for utility. But for my desktop Bazzite is king 😎

Ok, what's the best distro to switch to?

I've been able to get LunaTranslator to hook into a visual novel by running them both in the same Bottle. Textractor worked in the past too. Not sure about other types of games though, I've only tested a few visual novels. And getting the visual novel itself working in the Bottle can be a bit of a crapshoot. So far I've had luck using the soda runner for my Bottles, and then in the Bottle settings, add the environment variable LC_ALL=ja_JP.UTF-8 and set the language to "Japanese".

If you just want translation then LunaTranslator should be enough, but I do sentence mining, so I have LunaTranslator and a VN running inside a Bottle, and LunaTranslator connecting to RenjiXD texthooker page (running in a browser outside Bottles) using the websocket method (in LunaTranslator enable "network service", then in RenjiXD texthooker page settings connect to ws://localhost:2333/api/ws/text/origin, more info here). Then I can scan words using Yomi-tan and add them to my Anki flashcards. I did have to write some hacky scripts to add screenshots and audio to my flashcards as well, if anybody is interested I can share them.

I'm on Fedora and have upgraded versions since 39. havent had a problem yet. currently on the latest 43.

I've had Linux Mint running on my ThinkPad T430 for a while now and haven't encountered a single issue. Some distros have awful quality control with their updates (ubuntu) which can cause the issues you've encountered. Going with a stable distro is key for a good experience.

Meh, that's tech details that you won't have to deal with at all

I've used Linux on desktop for decades now (started way back at 2002) and the lady time o touched the kernel for normal desktop stuff is literally multiple decades ago

Windows too has a kernel but nobody talks about it because you can't really do shit with it unless you're a developer

With Linux you can do whatever the fuck you want and it's all relatively easy. I can access and modify the Linux kernel in 10 seconds flat if I want to. THAT is why people talk a lot about the Linux kernel, because it's so easy and powerful to use. Microsoft Windows kernels aren't even worth talking about.

But as a common user, you don't HAVE to do stuff with the kernel if you don't want to. My 70 year old mother doesn't either and she's fine using the Linux desktop that I installed for her.

For high intensity gaming you might have to make small modifications here and there in human readable text files, and usually documentation about it is excellent.

Most of Linux is so fucking easy to setup that last time I installed both Linux and Windows, the Linux (Kubuntu) cost 30 minutes to install and that includes the time to download the ISO and burn it on a USB and includes drivers for printers and GPU which were all setup and installed out of the box.

The windows 11 install cost me 7 hours divided over 5 days.

Amongst all the problems I ran into, I had to make BIOS modifications because it refused to install at all, it fucked up badly because I had the gall to burn a standard ISO with a standard ISO burning tool on Linux, completely forgetting that Microsoft always sabotages their software so that it won't work well with Linux. I had to install windows on a virtual machine install some special fucking Windows ISO burner tool, burn the USB there, then it worked. That cost me hours over multiple days of searching the Internet on why the frack such a basic thing failed, plus the time required to set all that shit up just to be able to START the installation.

Then during the installation I got so many questions, so many questions... So many... Please sign up here, please pay more money, please rent our services, please please fracking please! The install itself took a bloody hour to finish

What I'm trying to say is: Linux is friggin easy. Windows is hell. Windows costs money, spies on you, serves you unwanted ads and your computer is no longer yours.

Why does anyone even use windows to begin with? I don't get it.

I made the switch a few years back, and have fucked with zero kernals. I installed Linux mint, and it just works.

Every now and then I'm forced to use a windows machine, and every time I go back to my rig, it's a huge relief. It works so much smoother and faster, no bs.

It doesn't slow down everything, because logging my data on my computer through my Internet connection just isn't a thing Linux does.

Linux Mint with Cinnamon is the easy one with good, widespread adoption. Been good for me.

I did it last year, and I've been very happy with the results.

I'm reasonably tech-savvy for a user. I can follow instructions, but I don't understand the super technical stuff. I watched a few YouTube videos and read a few tutorials, and it was all pretty easy.

The system updates are easier than Windows. I don't have to understand what a kernel is; I just have to click the update button.

Its like when I talk about cars.

I dont speak in make and model, I speak in chassis and engine codes. Replacing an engine is a 1 weekend job that I could do half drunk back when I was drinking. Unless you're swapping the engine for something not meant for that car I would describe that job as big but easy.

And then I remember a lot of people know make and model and thats it.

can't help people who don't want to be helped

Idk, Gnome is quite nice. The biggest downside of gnome is the lack of Settings, but apart from that I really like the look and feel.

Marvel Rivals has a gold rating on ProtonDB (meaning it works usually without tinkering).

If you're concerned about drivers, use Bazzite as your distro. It manages drivers automatically and comes preinstalled with support for pretty much anything on Steam. In addition to being a highly polished distro with strong gamer presentation.

Eh, the install for most distros is pretty hard to screw up, just be careful about your Nvidia drivers. I've had bad luck with laptops with Nvidia in past, but actually running the game in Linux (at least from steam/proton) should be pretty seamless.