Dunno why I was being downvoted for self deprication.

If it helps, not saying anything about you in particular but:

I think because communities like this hear a lot of this kinda pre-emptive defeatism speak. Like “I’m tired and so I don’t wanna do something that might make me learn.”

It makes them/us sad because we’re like “Uh, we’d be happy to help, it’s not actually that scary?”

With Linux or PCs in general, people will often show up to the community just to say “Thinky thing is too hard”, and declare they’ve already opened their wallets and run to some highly exploitative and expensive corporate “turnkey product” instead.

It’s also “console propaganda” by corporations to spread FUD about PC and now Linux gaming being some alleged huge headache unless you’re a professional computer engineer…And that’s simply not true. They’d just rather you buy a new console every 3 years. :p

But also, downvotes don’t super matter here, so all I can say is carry on with an open mind and don’t be afraid to ask questions, and you never know what you might learn!

Don’t sell yourself short. Try things!

As Bruce Lee once said: “In great attempts, it is glorious even to fail.”

Cool! Yeah, they don’t seem to be referenced as much anymore, but they were seriously impressive and had their use cases. :D

that “long as you like” is still going (jeez 8y at this point lol).

Yeah, Mint is often referred to by folks as a “beginner distro” implying you’ll somehow inevitably skill up and distro hop, and sure, plenty do, but it really doesn’t have to be that way!

(Heck, Eliot the super hacker in Mr. Robot used it as his home distro! Lol 😉)

I mean, it’s stable, you can still get newer stuff and gaming via FlatPak, and it’s just overall friendlier. The community is super helpful and nice too!

I personally jumped to OpenSUSE Tumbleweed because I like having new features sooner. (I blame Blender haha!), and honestly, I didn’t expect to fall in love with KDE as much as I did. I really like KDE. :p

I’d always encourage people to try other distros just to see if they do something that fits them better or something, but yeah, you shouldn’t feel any pressure to “graduate” from Mint. It’s lovely. :D

I’ve been contemplating… trying to start some kind of “PC Computing Club” or something. With the goal being to outreach and educate people toward computer literacy.

It would have to be something that’s “cool” to be a part of, because nobody actually seems to show up to “computer classes” even though they all clamor for them. Especially old people. They think they want to “learn computers” and then just drop out if they show up at all.

There’s gotta be a way around that. 90’s computer users were passionate and would be staging riots at what’s been done to the Internet, privacy laws, and on and on…

This “deliteracy” campaign is entirely intentional. They want to create an idiot cow-sumer class, which only exists to labor and pay subscriptions, without understanding anything.

Favorite is OpenSuse Tumbleweed. It’s stable mostly, and quite fixable when it isn’t. Just a great overall balance.

My first was actually DSL: “Damn Small Linux”, contained entirely on a CD to remove a TERRIBLY resistant malware from my Windows XP machine. (It was awesome for that! Had no idea what I was doing lol.)

Tried Ubuntu, then Ubuntu Studio, but they didn’t like my Wi-Fi devices back in those days, so I didn’t get to do much with them!

Used Mint seriously on my aging laptop and loved it. It’s such an excellent on-ramp and you can hang out with it as long as you like.

Later tried Manjaro for a while but…it started having some controversial project decisions and just didn’t feel like home.

Using EndeavourOS on my gaming laptop and it works great! Considering migrating though: Arch is an excellent teacher, but I’ve had to spend unexpected weekends fixing weird hitches after updates.

Honorable Mention: Puppy Linux! I used to be able to boot it to any laptop from my Android phone, and that was a really neat trick for public computers and stuff.

I feel it. As a distro itself I’m not a huge fan of how it does things, but I really do like their theming, colors, font, aesthetic, logo, all that.

Thankfully easy enough to make any distro look like anything, with a little effort. :)

Yeah, it made me feel kinda sad. I’m trying so hard learning to code games and I’m a 3D artist still trying to learn to draw traditionally, only using “AI” for nothing more than “Hey can you explain the relationship between classes and objects” or something…

And if the constant slop-replacement of the Internet wasn’t bad enough, it’s a constant uphill battle of mockery and harassment from these chucklenuts.

It’s so discouraging. Like if we do succeed against the odds, jerks like these will be cheering on the robots ripping us off.

… I’m glad seeing this crap downvoted to oblivion though. :)