This was going to be my answer!

Thank you for that article! He’s a truly good writer, and I read a couple more of his entries before I bookmarked his site.

Are you literally here to proclaim that Windows is the better OS because Linux gives you the freedom to screw it up?

My brother in computing, that’s on you if you’re having problems with fixing problems you’ve caused in Linux. As a former professional system admin, I’ve run into issues with Windows that Microsoft’s own support team could not figure out and had to refund their fee. I have never, not once, had an issue in Linux that I couldn’t fix or find someone who knows how.

So basically this is where I’ve landed on this after rooting, moding, etc. all of my electronics for the last 30 years: for devices where I want to customize everything, it’s going to be done with a Linux computer to begin with because there’s absolutely nothing standing in my way. For other things that I just need to work reliably and not become yet another chore, I buy some product. So I would buy a thermostat, but build my own NAS (with a 3D printed 7-bay case).

I’m beyond sick - as I think you might be too - of all the extra stuff I have to keep up with whenever I jailbreak/root/whatever a device just so I don’t fuck it up with some careless action or update. I just don’t have the same amount of free time and mental energy to dedicate to this stuff anymore. I wish I did though.

I can relate. I’m getting tired of having to do this kind of thing for all my devices just to make them work. I’m even probably going to switch to iPhone because at this point I just want my phone to work reliably, and my OnePlus 8T never has.

My advice is to go to the XDA forums and find your device there. You should be able to tell from replies and view counts of the threads which of the ROMs and mods are the most popular.

With respect, you can screw up Windows by doing things in a non-standard way too. That’s not the fault of the OS.

Try turning on the desktop version of the site once the link is open in the browser.

My life too, and the cat in the photo resembles mine. Having a 3D printer in the house means having to be constantly vigilant about small plastic bits not missing the trashcan because otherwise my idiot will try to eat them and then puke them up somewhere.

With systemd, you set the default target to something other than a desktop environment.

I always recommend Pop_OS! for beginners. It’s IMHO a lot closer to what Ubuntu used to be, uses apt and/or flatpaks (and no snaps), has sane defaults, a good installer, a decent company behind it, nvidia drivers included and their upcoming Cosmic desktop environment looks sick.

Also, I feel like this is a better Fedora-based distro for beginners since it’s harder to break:

https://fedoraproject.org/atomic-desktops/silverblue/

Whatever you decide, make sure you’ve got a backup of any important data before you start making any partition changes. Things go wrong occasionally even when they shouldn’t.

It’s called Greed

It’s worth discussing at least. I used to be a big fan of flashing custom software, kernels, recoveries, etc.

At some point though, it started becoming more and more of a hassle to get a phone with an unlockable bootloader to work with my mobile network operator. Limited choices of I even had one.

Then all the banking and p2p apps stopped being easy to use while rooted, so we had to hide root from those apps. Then that got harder and harder.

Meanwhile the custom features that I used to want became mostly standard within Android.

At this point, I don’t really bother with rooting anymore because there’s little that I need it for but lots of hassle involved in having it. Now Google is blocking RCS messages from being delivered to rooted phones.

So if Android is now basically iOS with how much it’s locked down from modification, why not just get an iPhone with better features I care about (their cameras and photo software) and better long-term updates? What is it that Google is even aiming for with Android now? If they’re going to be hostile to users owning their own hardware, then maybe the OS should see more than a single line item change for a major version (android 14). I don’t feel like Google has made any meaningful additions to the OS in a decade+ now.

Exactly. A backup isn’t safe until it’s tested.

I’ve been avoiding btrfs for reasons like that.

I always get a Clonezilla image made before I do any major changes, which I find takes the anxiety out of situations like this.

If XFCE feels too heavy (it probably won’t), you can try LXDE. I think XFCE is a good place to start though.

3D modeling in Blender or maybe CAD of some sort.

It was just too much greatness all at once. Like a fire hose of greatness when you just wanted a small sip