I like my flint 2 router from GL.Inet. Uses openwrt on the back end but has a more normal interface in the frontend with the back end still accessible if you want it.

And you can install whatever firmware you want.

Haha hes a very happy kitty. He loves being touched in almost every way.

That gave me a good laugh. Gnome doesnt feel right to me at all man. To each his own.

But yea, sicko fr

I think you should first figure out why you aren’t sticking with Linux and go from there.

I just use kubuntu at this point. It works as well as works and feels how I want it to. I don’t need anything super fancy or customizable. Kubuntu hits that sweet spot for me.

I had issues with it back in 2022 when trying a few different distros. I had 3 monitors of all the same size and I had weird visual glitches when trying to use the ui to set refresh rate or resolution.

Now though? Haven’t had any issues since i switched to Linux as my daily driver in 2024.

I’d say 90% of usage can be done without the terminal especially if you just use Linux to browse the web or check email or other things that are mundane.

Anything past that, there is a good chance you’ll have to use the terminal. That said, I think its easier than ever with lots of people making the switch and asking questions on Lemmy or other forums.

I use cloudflare for both my domains. $17 or so each.

Honestly you can spend as little as a couple bucks if you dont care about a name. I like cloudflare but almost any registrar is fine as long as you pay for the domain.

I was also gonna say Okular. It does everything I need it to do and more. Digital signing when I used it recently was pretty simple.

Even if you dont like it, no harm in trying it. Worst case you find you dont wanna do it and move on to something else.

You can start with something like pico-8 or a free engine of which there are a ton: https://lexaloffle.itch.io/pico-8

Me personally, ive been trying Godot and its kinda hard to get into, but I may try something else like RPG maker or what not just to get my ideas on paper so to speak.

Fucking love KDE dude. Plasma6 is my jam.

Yup, they say its free and open source, and here is the link to their github:

https://github.com/RPTools

Me personally, I really liked using maptool. https://www.rptools.net/toolbox/maptool/

Its got a bit of a learning curve and doesnt look great, but it gets the job done and is Foss.

I like the elitedesk PC for smaller services. My main reason being the power draw and or heat output. The ones I have and plan to use 60w of power which is pretty damn good for a whole computer.

Noise is another factor. Space saving is a plus, helps prevent ewaste since these are almost always refurbished. Its a good deal IMO.

And you can always buy or build a big honking PC or server for something else later on.

Learning Linux can be difficult man. Even after using Linux as my daily driver for a couple years, I still feel like I know nothing man.

Real talk, start with dead simple stuff and go from there. Install a package from a package manager, update your system, make a file with terminal.

You dont have to be a wizzard man, docker shit is still over my head.

I don’t have many Linux friendly plugins that i can share unfortunately. When I tried running reaper on Linux, most things I tried either didn’t run at all or crashed.

Best I had working was decent sampler. And even that didn’t work great for me:

https://www.decentsamples.com/product/decent-sampler-plugin/

Really cool project though, and lots of fun instruments to try on pianobook.

Tldr, I recommend sticking with Windows or using two separate machines, one for music production running Windows, the other for running everything else with Linux.

Music production isnt great on Linux in my experience at least right now. If you use any paid plugins that are windows only, there’s a good chance they won’t run. I haven’t used ableton or cakewalk but I use reaper which has a native Linux version, and even that had a lot of issues. Anything with ilok is a no go, even plugins that dont, I had a hard time getting working or if they did work, they crashed A LOT.

Gaming and other general use has been fine for me, ive even done video and photo editing on Linux and been happy with it.

If you want the easiest experience, I typically recommend Fedora KDE spin or kubuntu. KDE is a desktop environment that is very similar to windows and highly customizable. You’d likely feel at home on it. Immutable distro might also be a good option if you really want the “IDC just do the update” path. Harder to break, easier to manage from what ive heard but I haven’t used them personally so maybe others that have can chime in.

I made a windows only box for music production and use Linux on my main PC. It runs windows 10 and is rarely connected to the internet except when I need it to be. If you wanna run Linux and make music, it can be done, but I had a terrible time with it and have given up for now.

So make a separate machine for music production and run Linux on your main pc or just run Windows is my advice. So far, this has been the best setup for me. I don’t worry about my privacy, I can make music when I want, and I don’t have to worry about incompatible plugins, crashes, stupid nonsense that gets in my way when i wanna make music.

Thats rad, thanks for the info. I may follow suit, been trying to degoogle myself lately.

Yea I’m aware but I appreciate the insight :) so far my local ai experience has been lack luster so I’m hoping that training and RAG will make up for the context size at least a little. Ifnit can answer accurately in the first place, it may not need as big of a context window.

If you haven’t tried using RAG in some form, I would recommend giving it a go. Its pretty cool stuff, helps make models answer more accurately based on the documentation you give them though in my case, ive had limited success. Tbh, chatgpt has become my last resort when I just wanna get something done but I don’t like using it due to the privacy concerns, not to mention the ethical issues I have with ai training in general from big tech.

How is searxng BTW? Would you say its good to host or do you use a normal search engine more often? Or do you just use it for the AI search plugin?

Ive actually been thinking about using it rather than duckduckgo but was also hopeful the search index they are working on would be enough to satisfy my needs, or that a self hosted AI enabled search engine would work well enough when I need it.

Thats why i was considering training my own model if possible. Ive been toying around with kobold.CPP and gpt4all which both have RAG implementations.

My idea is to essentially chat with documentation and as a separate use case, have it potentially be a AI search engine but locally hosted. I do still prefer to search myself, but fuck man, searches have gotten so bad, and the kobold.CPP web lookup feature was pretty neat IMO.

So yea you’re not wrong, I’m just hoping that if in train it and or give it documentation it can reference when answering, it will be suitable. Mostly AI has been good for me as kind of a rubber ducky when troubleshooting and helping me search for things when I have some specific question and in don’t want “top 5 things vaguely related to your question” results.