IT nerd

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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 22nd, 2023

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  • I loathe gnome, so whenever I recommend “Ubuntu” I always specify Kubuntu for that reason.

    The average joe has no idea what “desktop environment” means and will not understand how you can just swap DE’s even. So starting them off with Kubuntu specifically is ideal IMO.

    Ubuntu is fine for grandma, or even Mint, but someone born in the last 40 years will probably appreciate Plasma more.

    If you’re really wanting to use “Ubuntu” but don’t want any of the standard options then PopOS is fine from my experience.



  • I’m a Linux sysadmin, we use RHEL at work. So my experience is skewed.

    Been gaming on Windows since the 90s. But I’ve had a Linux homelab since the mid-2000s. To be honest, I’ve never had an issue with gaming on Windows. I switched from Windows 7 to 8.1 when it first released because Windows 8 had direct ISO mounting. I switched to Windows 10 right when it released and the odd hiccup has happened, I’ve never had files go missing, settings revert, or performance drops due to updates. I updated to Windows 11 right when it released and been having the same experience, zero issues. Idk, I always build my PCs myself and I put a fresh copy of Windows on it, never used anything pre-installed or pre-made.

    I’ve owned a Steam Deck since its launch and I think over time my experience with gaming on Linux has changed due to proton. I’ve tried switching in the past, but nothing ever *clicked and I just went back to Windows.

    However, since the rise of AI, Microsoft locking Windows down, and wanting to “own” my PC, I switched to Linux on my main laptop and also switched on a secondary gaming desktop I have, just to have a test bed environment. So far it’s been solid, but I currently utilize Moonlight and Apollo to stream from my windows gaming PC to my Beelink mini PC because I moved my gaming PC to the garage due to heat/noise.

    So I’m in-between deciding on switching my Beelink to Linux and still use moonlight or just switch my main gaming PC over to Linux as well. I need to test Apollo/Moonlight on the entirely Linux clients I have. I do heavy modding for some games like Fallout and the TaleofTwoWastelands mod, so I need to test this on my Linux gaming PC…

    As for a distro. I use RHEL at work, so I’m familiar with Fedora. I use Proxmox/Debian for my homelab(and Ubuntu containers). So I’m familiar with that side as well. I’ve tried Fedora, Kubuntu, Mint, Manjaro, Endeavor…but I always ran into a weird issue or something didn’t feel “right” with the PC after a while. And I always see a bunch of YouTubers and people saying “XYZ distro is the best” but then another “new” distro comes out, so just tons of “flavor of the month” happening.

    But recently I put CachyOS on my laptop and secondary PC and it’s been surprisingly solid. Everything just seems to “work”. I heard about Cachy over a year ago, but again, “flavor of the month” so I ignored it. But looking into it more and tried it out on my laptop, I was surprised with how much a Arch distro was “easy” to setup and use out of the box.

    So gaming on Linux has been pretty similar to Windows. There’s the odd issue with proton and CPU overhead I’ve experienced, but Cachy has helped a lot with Nvidia GPUs and I like that it isn’t a “gaming” distro but a distro that is flexible.

    I think the main “issue” with Windows to Linux is that people try to make Linux into Windows. Linux isn’t a direct replacement to Windows, but it’s a very solid operating system that is beyond flexible. I would say buy a second drive, install Linux on that and try it out, if you like it then take the plunge. If you don’t, well wipe it and go back to Windows.



  • Yeah and the stuff releasing right now will be “old hardware” in 5 years.

    I’m still gaming on a Ryzen 1700X. And my GPU is a used RTX 3080 I bought off eBay for $500 two years ago.

    That 3080 was over $1000 during the GPU craze last time. And what was I using before that 3080? A 1080ti I bought at MSRP, which I still have and is my backup because hey, it’s nearly 10 years old and still works.

    I’m not saying go buy a dual core Pentium, but “old hardware” isn’t some boogeyman and “we will eventually not have old computers” is like saying we’ll never have old cars.

    And guess what, if everyone stopped buying all this overpriced crap then prices would come down, but we all know that isn’t going to happen.








  • or should I consider other software?

    Unfortunately I had similar thoughts and plans that you outline here(receipt scanning into budgeting), but the amount of work involved was…too much for my liking.

    I instead opted for a paid solution, which is Monarch: https://www.monarch.com/

    It’s $100 a year, but they have a promotion(they always run promotions), where you can do your first year for 50% off with code: NEWYEAR2026

    So far my wife and I have been loving Monarch. We linked our bank accounts and other financial institutions(401k, brokerages, IRAs, etc.) and everything mostly “just works”. There is an odd time or two where a bank account needs to be re-signed into to re-auth because token/api expired/changed, but again, the app works and does things well.

    I’d suggest looking into it. I’m usually a huge proponent of self-hosting everything, but this is one of the few things I caved on…



  • The entire internet? Whatever problem you had on windows you can just Google it and there’s either a YouTube video, reddit thread, or some obscure forum post that fixes your exact issue by copy and pasting some Powershell commands or a random bat file or GitHub project.

    Linux? It’s gotten better, but the community side can get quite toxic or outright ignorant of how to troubleshoot any kind of issues tbh.


  • I would appreciate some type of custom attributes, but the notes section works fine as-is, so definitely not a huge “need” IMO.

    I have used Monica/other CRMs in the past, but they all felt a bit too corporate or “sales” driven like you said in your OP.

    I spun up a quick docker instance in my test environment and I’m using it right now, it’s been quite solid! I do have some confusion with how relationships get applied(from/to in regards to child/parent), but I believe I just need to use it a bit more to get used to the “flow” of how it is supposed to work.

    My biggest want/need is being able to select multiple people at once to add to another person, so I guess a “bulk” edit or multi-select. Like adding 10 “child” to one “parent” at once if all of the children have already been created. Or if some logic can be applied where if one parent(dad) has three children, then you add a spouse(mom) to dad, then nametag can auto-add or offer to bulk edit the three children to add the new spouse(mom) as a parent too? Just quicker/better/fluid workflow.

    Again, the site as-is is already solid. Just some fine-tuning IMO.


  • This looks great. I’m running a Teable instance, but sometimes it feels like it is “too much” sometimes.

    I think I’ll deploy this for fun to check out. I don’t see anything specific here for things like gift ideas or favorite flowers/colors? Like custom tags/categories/attributes.

    I’m using Teable to track things like that, but I love the visualization here, reminds me of my obsidian mind map lol.