A phone! That honestly changes everything.

I haven’t really messed with any distros well suited for a touch-screen interface (and no keyboard/mouse)… except Ubuntu Touch. I’ve got it on my Google Pixel 3a.

I’m pretty happy with it. But it’s not like a Linux desktop at all. It’s not really set up to run, say, Libreoffice or Gimp or whatever. I’ve only used the built-in browser and haven’t tried any of the other browsers available, but the built-in one is very “mobile-brower-app-y” rather than anything like a desktop browser… It’s got apps and an app store like Android/iOS has apps and an app store. The ecosystem around it is way more open than either Android or iOS. (Like, you don’t have to register with anyone to side-load things.) And the kernel is Linux, not Android or anything. (There is a way with Waydroid to run Android apps on Ubuntu Touch, but I haven’t tried it.)

There are other Linux-based OSs meant for phones like PostmarketOS, but another thing about the phone distros is that device support is going to be very specific. You’ll want to buy one of the very few devices that is well supported by the distro you want.

So, whether Linux is good for you definitely depends on what you’re wanting more specifically.

Yeah, the ARM situation is pretty impressive now-a-days.

Again, I mostly know about Raspberry Pis (RPi 4’s specifically) and those are mostly pretty low-power/low-CPU-speed kind of devices. And so there are some limitations with regard to just how much “oomph” the Raspberry Pi has. Not because it’s an ARM device rather than an AMD64 device so much as because it’s really cheap (which is both a feature and a bug) and low-power. For example, last time I tried using Chromium, I found it nearly unusable for how slow it ran, but Firefox works great. (Though I do turn off things like smooth scrolling animations and such just to lower how much CPU it uses. It’s still “regular Firefox”, though. Not some “minimal” fork like Fennec or anything.) But again, that’s mostly because the Raspberry Pi is low power, not because it’s ARM. But the Raspberry Pi also has good 3d graphics support, so Luanti runs surprisingly well and very playably. I’m also kindof a terminal-or-die kind of guy, so not using heavy GUI apps isn’t much of a problem for me.

But as to the issues that are specific to the fact it’s ARM rather than AMD64, there are very few now-a-days. Binaries, for instance aren’t portable between ARM and AMD64, of course. Very few application just straight up don’t even run on ARM. (Cura is the only one that comes to mind, and it’s been a long time since I tried it, so that might have changed by now. Cura’s kindof a terrible piece of software, though. Good slicer, but the way they just don’t have any interest in making it cleanly/easily runnable on various systems makes it a huge pain to the point that some Linux distros (Gentoo, for instance) have given up supporting it even on AMD64.) I’ve never tried to run Wine on a Raspberry Pi, but it looks like there are options for doing so, and running x86 and AMD64 applications on it. But basically every feature of your browser (including streaming video and WebGL and stuff) works as expected (again, depending on how powerful your ARM device is). Aside from problems with Arch Linux Arm, whatever distro you settle on will have great support for the apps you’re used to using on AMD64. And you’ll have your choice of DE/WM the same as you do on AMD64. Etc.

Oh, I guess one more caveat I’ll mention. Some of the Raspberry Pi’s RPi-specific hardware tends to change a lot over time. The drivers update and there are new ways of doing things that don’t work quite the way they used to. The main places I’ve seen that happen are in the audio drivers (after one update, the audio didn’t work and I had to go down a bit of a rabbit hole to get that working again), the graphics drivers (a few years ago, they released FOSS graphics drivers for the RPi and that changed some of the options available and such, and the main symptom I’ve seen of that is that documentation may be out-of-date and apply only to the old way the graphics drivers work, so it’s definitely worth making sure you know roughly when changes have taken place and that you’re looking at documentation that applies to the latest), some of the miscellaneous boot parameters (on Raspberry Pis, there’s a /boot/firmware/config.txt file that has a bunch of boot-level kernel options), and GPIO pin access.

Which leads me to something else I didn’t think of until just now. The bootloader, driver options, kernel options, and the installation process tend to work differently for ARM devices. With AMD64, you kindof expect UEFI (possibly with legacy BIOS support) to be the norm. With ARM that’s rarely if ever the case. I don’t know that secure boot is likely to be available for very may ARM devices. Disk encryption isn’t something I’ve gone to the trouble to figure out how you’d do. You don’t use Grub, you use U-Boot, or in cases like the Raspberry Pi, the bootloader is kindof hidden away from you except that as you install it and configure it, the kernel/config/driver files go in the right place on the SD card to make sure the bootloader can find them. And the installation process tends to be “stick an SD card into another computer, DD this disk image onto it, and stick it into the target ARM device”. Depending which distro you’re using, from there it might take you into an interactive installer kind of thing (like with Raspian) or it may be more low-level (like with Arch.) And if you follow the default installation instructions for your distro, you most likely end up with a little less control over things like the partition layout, whether you’re using LVM or BTRFS, etc. If you wanted root- or home-partition encryption, my guess is you might have to take an existing installation disk image, dissect it, and build a custom disk image with certain partitions encrypted out of the result before DD’ing it to the SD card. (Ok, I took a break here to check and see if there are guides on how to do full disk encryption on a Raspberry Pi and there are.)

(Side note. You may have to decide when installing a distro on an ARM machine whether you want the 32-bit ARM distro or the 64-bit ARM distro. If you want to run on an older ARM device that doesn’t support 64-bit ARM, you’ll have to go with the 32-bit ARM distro. If you want to run x86 Windows apps on Wine, it’s definitely recommended to use the 32-bit ARM distro. Otherwise, 64-bit is the way to go.)

Ok. Jeez. This ended up being a long post. That’s about all I can think to say at the moment.

I wish I could recommend Arch Linux Arm, but it’s really poorly maintained. Literally zero packages available for update for months on end. And no hope of improvement in sight.

My experience is mostly with Raspberry Pis. (I’m typing this on a Raspberry Pi in fact.) I still have a couple of Pis on Arch. And the one I’m on right now is running Raspian. I have plans to migrate them all to Gentoo some day, but I want to build a build server first and I’m currently deep in another project. I’ll get to it eventually.

Raspian is boring and maybe a little simplified and restricted. But it’s fine.

I’m really happy with my Pixel 3a. (And I think the Pixel 3a XL is just as well supported by FLOSS ROMs but with a bigger screen.) It mostly checks all the boxes you had in your list, and I think it’s probably the only real option you’re going to find in that price range.

I ran Lineage for a good while, but I’ve switched to Ubuntu Touch more recently. It’s incredibly well supported by both operating systems and just from what I’ve seen, most FLOSS ROMs tend to support it. (One exception I know of is PostmarketOS, which last I heard didn’t support the 3a very well at all.) Being honest, Ubuntu Touch’s app availability is pretty abysmal. Writing apps for Ubuntu Touch seems more accessible than for Android, though (especially now with the bullshit that they’ve pulled with sideloading restrictions.)

One caveat: If you’re looking for 100% FLOSS, probably the 3a isn’t what you want. Even Ubuntu Touch uses a bunch of proprietary driver blobs. But again, the options for fully FLOSS-compatible phones seem pretty pricey.

Cura’s a fantastic slicer, but kindof a terrible program. They gave up on ARM support a while ago. And their dependency situation is majorly out of control. To the point that Gentoo has literally given up on supporting it and maintaining a working package.

Honestly, I’m starting to think in terms of what really would it look like to not use a (Firefox- or Webkit-based) browser any more.

Aside from random one-off things I wouldn’t know I wanted to use until I wanted to use it, a few things I’d want to be able to use on my desktop Gentoo machine:

• Discord (without installing the proprietary dedicated app, though I don’t currently give a fuck about video or audio – just chat)
• Lemmy (I might literally write my own client if necessary, but I’m curious about Neon Modem)
• YouTube (Minitube’s not terrible)
• Wikipedia (Dillo would probably work ok for Wikipedia, though I’d definitely lose features like link hovering previous and such)
• Twitch (No idea how to do that yet)
• Gmail (Mutt, maybe? Though, honestly, I should quit Gmail and get another provider anyway.)
• Various relatively-mainstream news sites and blogs (Dillo? RSS readers?)

There are probably plenty of things I’m not thinking of. We’ll see if I ever do that or not.

It’s wild to meet Any Austin fans in the wild. I was watching his stuff and supporting him on Patreon when he was really obscure. Now that he’s really popular, it’s a whole different thing.

Point Crow or Summoning Salt? Either way, I hadn’t heard anything.

I do know Point Crow used to do a lot of content of games like Breath of the Wild with mods that would do things like multiplayer mode or “the floor is lava”. And Nintendo recently got YouTube to mass delete lots of modded Nintendo game content. (I don’t think mods of Nintendo games are even illegal, but Nintendo is known for calling the perfectly legal illegal.) And Point Crow’s channel was pretty hard hit because that made up a lot of his content.

Man. Maybe I should consider boycotting YouTube. Heh.

Edit: Oh. Speedrunner historian guy. You’re asking about Summoning Salt. I can’t read. Yeah, I don’t know anything, but I’ll look into it. You’re not thinking of Karl Jobst, are you? He was sued by Billy Mitchell, but Mitchell is 100% provably in the wrong. And a liar. And a scammer. And a cheating cheater who cheats. (If you aren’t familiar with Mitchell, I recommend starting with the documentary “King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters”.) Also, unless you’ve heard something I haven’t, I would recommend Jobst’s channel. It’s mostly about cheaters in e-sports and speedrunning.

• I wouldn’t want to encourage others to patronize WotC. (And, if I’m running a 5e campaign - which I did for a short time - players who want to play are going to want books even if only the PHB.) So I wouldn’t want to run 5e. I might play 5e as a player if invited. But I’m kindof a “forever GM.”
• Yeah, I’m good with acquiring stuff in ways that doesn’t support WotC. I don’t consider buying used to be permissable, however. If I buy used, that’s one used copy that won’t be available to someone else who may instead resort to buying new from WotC. And WotC profits directly from DM’s Guild. Piracy is the only way I’d be ok with it. (And if I don’t want to run 5e, and given that I already have all the core books, the only WotC content I’d be interested in pirating would be Eberron stuff. If I wanted to support Keith Baker without supporting WotC/DM’s Guild, I could just pirate and join Baker’s Patreon. Assuming I can find a good place to pirate that stuff from, of course.)
• I specifically do want to participate in TTRPG ecosystems that are more explicitly dedicated to more sane licensing schemes and have very explicitly Ulysses Pact’ed themselves in no-takebacksies ways. Like maybe Paizo/Pathfinder 2e for instance. (I’m currently between groups… and have yet to acquire the PF2e books… and honestly am enjoying a bit of a hiatus from GMing… but when I get back to it, I’d love to do either PF2e or… I dunno. Something not 5e. Even though the 5e system is pretty decent, I think.)
• There was a short period of time during which I thought WotC was backing down after the OGL 2.0 debacle, and if they hadn’t immediately proved themselves 100% evil with the Pinkerton fiasco, I would have ended my boycott. But they did, so my boycott remains.
• I haven’t seen the D&D movie, nor do I intend to. And I’m not just boycotting WotC. I’m boycotting Hasbro. So, no Transformers movies either.

Well, I guess just to list off who I watch frequently, kinda sorted into categories:

TTRPG:

• Critical Role - Really famous. Live-play of TTRPGs. It’s really a huge investment of time to keep up with it, though.

Just people I have parasocial relarionships with:

• Any Austin - Kinda “philosophy of gaming” is how I’d describe his latest content. I’ve been a huge fan of his for many many years and am way more invested in him than the content he currently makes. But he’s really fascinating. His alternate channel “The Excellent Man From Minneapolis” is music he writes/records. Good stuff as well IMO.
• Memoria - Gaming entertainment content. Found her when she was featured on Austin’s channel.
• gl;hf - A podcast that Austin and Memoria do together. It’s about everything and nothing.

Long form deep dive investigative and social commentary stuff:

• OKI’s Weird Stories - Cool expos on things like conspiracy theories and cults.
• Fredrik Knudson - Similar cool expos on things like gaming communities, fandoms, niche infamous figures, scientific experiments, etc.
• Folding Ideas - Somewhere between expos and social commentary. Does stuff about flat earthers, gold, cryptocurrency, etc.
• Contrapoints - Insightful and really well-edited/highly-prodiced left-wing social commentary stuff.
• Philosophy Tube - Quite similar to Contrapoints but different. I’d imagine if you like one, you’d like both.
• Munecat - Also similar to Contrapoints and Philosophy tube.
• Innuendo Studios - Maybe discontinued, but really really good source for info on how the alt-right “works” and how to fix (particularly American) fascism.

Tech/hacking:

• Ben Jordan - Stuff about privacy, police tech, fighting scraping for gen-ai training, etc. Informative.
• Marcin Plaza - Hobbyist mobile computing device prototyping. Quite entertaining as well.
• James Channel - Fucking hillarious. Mostly game system modding content, but way funnier than that makes him sound.

Satanism:

• The Satanic Grotto - A small satanist group based in Kansas that made the national news big time not too long ago holding a “black mass” at the state capitol. I’m just fascinated by all the legal fallout of the whole thing. And… I think the Satanic Grotto is the good guys. “Part of the solution” if you will.
• Behemoth X - Just really dark and atmospheric content about rituals to commune with demons. Dude 100% believes demons are real and powerful and he does blood sacrifices to them and talks about what wisdom he claims they’ve shared with him. Also life advice. Lol. Really interesting. Only major downside to the guy: he’s really leaned into using AI art in his videos lately. It’s pretty cringe.

Other creepy stuff:

• Tales From The Trip! - Substance use trip reports. Only bad trip reports.
• Night Mind - Essays on horror media. Mostly video games and ARGs.
• Nexpo - Similar to Night Mind, but occasionally does stories about grisly murders or creepy cults.
• blameitonjorge - Similar to the above, but with a lot of focus on lost media.
• Nick Crowley - Mostly creepy internet and TV history rabbit holes.

Vidja gaming content:

• Summoning Salt: History of speedrun world records. Way more interesting than it sounds.
• Pointcrow - Bit of a guilty pleasure. Popular Twitch streamer who does speedruns and challenge runs and stuff. Quite entertaining, but a bit sophmoric.

I’m sure I could think of more if I thought for a bit. I should mention that I don’t usually log in to YouTube. I keep my subscribed-to list in NewPipe on my phone. But I also do a fair amount of just searching by topic or happening across YouTube content on Lemmy or Hackaday.

Quitting Reddit was hard in several ways.

Quitting D&D (because of WotC being assholes) sucked because I was an Eberron/Keith Baker fan and have a lot of money sunk into D&D.

But I don’t know if I could quit YouTube. If that happened, I’d try to find ways to hack my way around it. I might ask my favorite creators to migrate to other platforms. But if I had no options to get their content but to give YouTube my ID, I might honestly have to do it.

I can’t imagine you’re the only one in this situation. If I were in your shoes, I’d search for similar stories online and see if I could get a sense of how friendly the company is to swapping OSs. For some companies, changing the OS is a complete deal breaker. Other companies are pretty willing to assume the issue was indeed strictly hardware and had nothing to do with changing the OS, and thus will go ahead and do the repair.

If you find that company is more like the former, install Windows. If not, just start the warranty repair process.

Did Herbie get reincarnated as a cat?

American here. Clearly it’s not a “culturally expected” thing in my neighborhood.

Or is it purely just that I whispered the word ai

Speaking for myself: yup, that.

That and using the term “alignment” like some kind of longtermist weirdo.

Just my guess here, but…

The desktop/laptop sort of form factor is associated in people’s minds with unlocked bootloaders. People expect to be able to install Linux on them if they want to. Tablets, game systems, and other sorts of consumer electronics, not so much. I’m thinking Microsoft will do what it can to push hardware manufacturers and the software industry as a whole more in the direction of the kinds of devices that consumers already expect to be locked down like tablets or game systems that are “streaming” game systems. And that way, the bootloader will prevent folks from switching to Linux.

“Nee Jabba no badda.”

I just got this too. Using old Reddit (the realest Reddit (which still isn’t saying much)) got rid of the banner and allowed loading all the content.

Be careful with Fourier transforms, people.

I’m a big fan of jq. It’s a domain-specific language for manipulating JSON data.

ImageMagick is like ffmpeg but for images.

inotify-tools has command-line utilities that can be used in a Bash script or a Bash one-liner to make arbitrary things “happen” when something “happens” to a file or directory. (Then the file is opened or written to or renamed or whatever.)

I probably should mention rsync. It’s like a swiss army knife for copying files from one place to another. And it supports “keeping files syncronized” between two locations.

Of course, there’s tons of stuff that you pretty much can’t talk about Bash scripting without mentioning. Sed, awk, grep, find, etc.

Also, I totally relate about the terminal giving more dopamine. I kinda just hate going on a point-and-click adventure to do things like image editing or whatever. To the point that I’ve written a whole-ass domain-specific-language to do what I want rather than use Gimp. (And I’m working on another whole-ass domain-specific-language to do a traditionally-GUI-app sort of task.)