I like that. Now I want an open air case.

Some stuff I didn’t see in reading responses.

• Learn some “handy” skills. Create, build, repair. Stuff breaks all the time (and is probably only going to get worse), and as an adult you may be the one responsible to resolve that. It’s satisfying to do, saves money, makes you more independent, and might even open additional employment avenues.
• Do travel. Pick places with cultures you aren’t familiar with. While some high costs may be unavoidable (plane tickets, for example) travel can generally be done fairly cheaply. It’s an amazing experience and I think can give you some valuable perspectives on life.
• Be reliable. Having a reputation of someone who does what they say they will may open doors.

Something I did see but wanted to say as well anyway:

Don’t try so hard figuring your life out that you forget to live your life. Find balance.

Link to an actively updated article from the same source: https://www.france24.com/en/asia-pacific/20260828-nepal-tibet-live-china-warns-lake-formed-by-mudslide-on-nepal-border-could-breach

LFS + twm FTW.

You seem to have a good sense of what disros are out there. I think any beginner friendly distro with wherever user friendly DE it comes with will probably be fine.

I’d say maybe stick with a deb or rpm one which most are anyway, for the compatibility point you already made. If you/they need something that’s otherwise not available in your distro’s repos, there’s probably already packages or third party repos available.

But the ask is a recommendation. I find myself generally recommending Fedora, despite not having used it myself for years. It’s easy to install, you can choose your DE, it’s stable, has a good release cadence, and is easy to upgrade and maintain.

I’ve been meaning to try out meshcore, but haven’t gotten around to it. It does sound promising.

In that it’s a mesh network deployed and controlled by individuals, and provides a level of encryption, yes.

But the limited range and low bandwidth makes it ineffective at a large scale. Also a nefarious party (the government presumably in this example) could determine the rough location of nodes, were they so inclined.

Easier said than done, especially as there are more models that don’t have any sort of support for those OSs than models that do.

This is a big hurdle. I had to buy a different phone to install a custom ROM. I bought it used, but even so still fairly expensive. And an extra cost can be a limiting factor too.

Not to mention the hassle to even enable the option to flash it and risk of bricking

GrapheneOS has a webUSB installer that is very easy to use. I would argue it eliminates the hassle. Bricking is still a risk.

Worse, banking apps may refuse to work.

I don’t use banking apps on my phone. I don’t like having anything installed that has access to money. I just access my financial institutions via their website. But I acknowledge they may fill some need others have that I do not. And that not everyone has access to a computer to access websites , and I can see banks trying to force app use when accessing from a mobile browser.

I met my soon to be wife on a dating app. You might think from that opening sentence that I’m about to extol the virtues of dating apps. I am not. They are garbage, so I agree the trash can is the best place.

This was during covid lockdowns, so no social opportunities, and I had recently moved to a new area and didn’t know anyone nearby. So seemed the only option, terrible as it is. And yeah it worked out for me, but that’s beating the odds. It was an unpleasant experience and was thrilled to be done with it. But, it might be a similar situation for others. No better option seemingly available.

That said, prior to that, I attended a lot of meetups via meetup.com and had a fair bit of luck dating through that. And regardless of if I met someone or not at any given thing, I had fun.

Had a similar comment in mind. The cost for a coach seat on a train to the nearest destination city that there’s actually a route to costs about 3x as much as a round trip flight (budget airline) and takes over 24 hours. I would prefer rail were it practical, but it’s not.

No secret that our rail systems suck though. I have taken trains in Europe and Japan, and those experiences were great!

Almost any distro will work for pretty much all of that. Only potentially limiting thing I see there I don’t think that the Mullvad VPN client is generally available within distro repositories. Their site says it has clients available for Ubuntu, Debian, and Fedora. So perhaps pick from one of those?

For the steam link question, I know if I have a game running on my desktop it presents me the option to stream to my desktop (both Linux machines). I assume this is the same functionality. I don’t use it so can’t speak to how well it works.

Edit: It occurs to me this comment lacks a recommendation. Within the three listed supported distros for Mullvad, I think I’d recommend Fedora for you. Been some years since I used it last but I remember the installer being fairly robust while still easy to use, and a pretty rock solid system once it’s up and running.

Seconding cowfodder’s comment, if you can manage to tolerate the Rose family at the beginning of Schitt’s Creek, seeing the character growth is so very worth it, in my opinion. YMMV of course, but I’d encourage giving it another shot.

Ted Lasso also has some great character redemption arcs. Though in this case the main character (Ted) is immediately likeable, which I think makes for an easier start in comparison. And in case “immediately likeable” infers thoughts of him being a simple or shallow charter, he is not.

https://github.com/woheller69/FreeDroidWarn#solutions

Here’s a copy/paste, sans hyperlinks:

Developer verification will be enforced on certified devices with Google Play Services installed, which is the majority of Android devices. There are options to bypass the restriction:

• Use a free, uncensored Android system like /e/os, LineageOS, or GrapheneOS that does not preinstall Google Play Services.
• “Degoogle” by removing Google Play Services. If it is a system app, you can uninstall it using ADB.
• Install apps via ADB. Google has already confirmed that ADB will continue to work in the future. You can either use ADB from a PC as described below or use a wireless ADB based installer like anyapk.

OpenBSD on an old office PC I picked up from University surplus.

TL;DR: I don’t daily drive (Free)BSD because it doesn’t work with some hardware and software that I use.

I’m not an expert in the BSD’s. But I’ve tried to daily drive FreeBSD a couple of times and can speak to it for myself from that viewpoint. Most recent attempt was about a year ago.

The issues I had:

Poor WiFi support. I understand that wireless driver support is iffy and even if it does work, it has poor speeds. I tried this on my laptop and could not get WiFi to work. There was a workaround in passing wireless card through to an alpine Linux guest VM and connecting there then creating a bridge. I did get this to work, but I found it impractical.

Games (via Wine/Proton) aren’t really an option. I understand you can install steam via a Linux compatibility layer and it’s somewhat functional with workarounds. I did not try this.

Those were dealbreakers for me. But the desktop experience itself was good. I ran KDE, and it felt the same to me. if I was running it on a wired machine that wasn’t used for gaming, I think I’d be happy to use it.

You don’t need an NVR. The camera supports a microSD card to store footage. It also supports FTP upload.

HomeAssistant isn’t required. It is supported and I do have it configured.

I have next to no recollection of how UniFi works so I can’t speak to that. Mine is connected to a 2.4GHz WiFi network. IIRC that’s all it supports. Might be different with newer models.

It also supports HTTP(S)/RTMP/RTSP/ONVIF streaming. Though I tend to just use the app (and I’m particular about installing apps) as I find it quite usable.

I bought a Ubiquity router once because a friend was raving about it. It crapped out on me after maybe 6 months? Will never buy their hardware again.

I’m using a Reolink doorbell camera and am happy with it so far. Had it for about two years.

That’s black licorice for me. The stuff with licorice and anise in it. Everyone else hates it, I love the stuff.

Neither of those companies produced consoles when I was 8. But of the those, I only ever owned PlayStations (PS2, PS4). So, Me_irl too I guess?

Edit: 3. Forgot I had a PS Vita too.

I’m accustomed to the imperial system. But agree that metric is better.

Some metric stuff I have no trouble with. I have a good spatial sense of the distance of a mm, m, and km. And can do a rough miles to km (and vice versa) conversion in my head. I have a good sense of how much a kg is and similarly can do a rough conversion to and from lbs in my head. But while I understand that a gram is 1/1000 of a kg, if handed a small object and asked to guess how many grams it is, I’d fail miserably.

Celsius I can’t ever remember the conversion, but I’ve had enough exposure to it that I understand if it means cold/cool/warm/hot weather.

Reporting in with a hassle free printer like some other commenters.

I have a Canon monotone LaserJet MFP I bought at a big box store with no prior research like four or five years ago. Been great. Always just works.