I used a flip phone and eink device (Sunbeam F1 Pro Maple paired with Boox Palma) for 1.5 years after realizing I was addicted to my smartphone. Last month I switched back to just a smartphone (Pixel 9a w/ graphene OS). I loved using the flip phone, and I attribute that period of my life to big changes in how I see technology in general. However, I realized I didn’t really need that setup anymore, plus I never liked having to carry two devices with me. During that time I found what I need/want in a phone and can comfortably determine what is helpful and unhelpful for my life. Essentially I broke my addiction and these days barely use my phone.

I use POP!_OS. Works pretty much perfectly for me, although they just came out with a new cosmic desktop which I am not using (but looking into), so you might have a different experience than me. I have some issues like FPS in deadlock slowly degrading (I think if I use steam overlay) or sometimes games with third party launchers (like Mass Effect) just wouldn’t work until I tinkered around. These aren’t dealbreakers for me though. Most games work out of the box for me. If you’re really worried, you can always dual boot it with windows just to be safe, that’s what I did. https://ostechnix.com/dual-boot-windows-and-pop-os/ here is the guide I followed. If you don’t want Pop OS, I’ve heard decent things of bazzite as well for gaming.

I barely knew what linux was before I watched pewdiepies video on it a long time ago. Just knew that some people on steam would complain about games not running on it, so I never bothered to look into it, since that is basically all I use my computer for. However, over the past 2 years I have been becoming more aware of my individual footprint. Something I noticed was that I will complain about things I think are “wrong” with the world, and then not do anything about them. One of those things was Microsoft (or big tech companies in general). I hate them, yet I would be using their product/service. Literally giving money to something I don’t like.

I honestly have never enjoyed learning about computers and coding, I’ve tried and it’s never felt fun to me. I’m definitely not the “target” of linux I guess. When I turn on my computer, I just want to play some games or do homework/work with no fuss.

However, Linux is at a point to where I, someone who has no want or need to learn computers, can switch and mostly use it out of the box. So I just switched, because if I’m gonna sit here and shit on Microsoft for not doing what I think is right, then I need to stop using their product. Capitalism means as long as they make money, they aren’t gonna change a damn thing.