@Tomcat , my sympathy. I honestly have no idea about your situation. I am a German living in Spain (Canaries), and though I lost my home last year to a volcano I have the means of constucting a new one. Feels like leaving home at the age of 18, with a single suitcase, to move to a rented room somwehere else. Only this time with a well fed credit card.

Can only comment on the technical aspects you mentioned, if a feeling of success or achievemnt will help you, we can certainly walk you through installing a Linux, getting the right dependencies, cloning the godot engine from github, and compile it. If that helps you a bit against the drag. And then these things will never be a miracle again.

I'm personally more curious to simply test it before I buy, like a virtual machine, in case my current device decides to BSOD on me later. At least then I would know a little bit about what I'm dealing with before I actually need it.

Na. No VM. BSOD is a Windows specific thing. A kernel panic otoh is extremely rare, would say a normal user doesn't see it, even if from the immortal tribe :-). Get a Linux, install it dual boot or on an old machine, and get going. Or a life CD.

Do you have any special software, or a rare printer, a special scanner or a particularly sophisticated game input device ? They'll be cases for prior research.

    I can say that I've learned more using linux than I ever did using windows, and that's a plus for me. I've also never had to give up on a program that I liked. There were a few windows programs which I enjoyed that went out of business, and became unusable as the operating system continued to evolve. Since I've got copies of the source code to all of my programs, I can maintain them myself.

    I don't worry about linux tending to anarchy. I started using computers before the IBM PC was created. It was the wild west, and I enjoyed it. Then companies like microsoft and apple began to fence everything in, soon to be joined by google and others. There were advantages, but I don't think most people appreciate what we've lost.

    You should have heard me complain when everyone started using that new-fangled windoze 3. "What the heck do we need that for? I can multitask on dos. They're just making it more complicated."

    Nerdzmasterz Is any of this accurate? I keep seeing this video pop up when I'm looking at stuff.

    Mostly inane fearmongering for clicks, far as I can tell. I mean, this literally gets to the point where he says, "'They' are trying to take away your autonomy...". Does this guy work for Fox News?

    Simplifying the video, it seems to boil down to "I just noticed I'm only ever leasing the software and don't own it so clearly it's a conspiracy". Thing is, unless it's FOSS, that has almost always been true, as software, whether an OS or otherwise, is 'Licensed', not 'Sold'.
    The same is true for plenty of things, you think you 'own' music? Try playing it at a live music venue without paying an additional licence fee and see what happens, or copy and resell it. Physical assets are largely owned, IP is largely leased.

    All the cloud/TPM etc. did was provide new means for software houses to enforce their licensing, improve security etc. or enable subscription models, which while I personally dislike, it's their right to stipulate the terms of use, not mine.

    As for the fearmongering that hardware will be locked to Windows in future? I severely doubt it. Choice is almost always better for the supplier, so even if they made a 'Windows only' version of a mobo, there will almost certainly be 'Linux versions' too. I mean, what's the steam deck, what’s the Raspberry Pi... If every supplier suddenly locked it down, a new one would pop up offering it.

      Nerdzmasterz Is any of this accurate? I keep seeing this video pop up when I'm looking at stuff.

      Yes, technically it is true, but it's mostly doom prognostication. Secure Boot and TPM are actually good and are not Microsoft technologies, even though they are pushing them hard with Windows 11. They stop hackers from getting deep into your system, which means it is unlikely they can compromise the boot process. You can also store information, like encryption keys, on the hardware, making it much more difficult than storing the keys on a hard drive. Of course, nothing is hacker-proof, but it's a huge hurdle to the really bad malware (like rootkits).

      At least right now, on Linux you have access to do what you want with the keys. Including deleting the ones that come with the motherboard and adding/installing your own. I was able to enable Secure Boot on Ubuntu, but it was a little complex and required the command line. But it works, it's fine.

      Though I do agree with the author's comments on computers being locked down and gatekeeped. This is the reason I will never use a macOS or iOS device (outside of development testing) because you cannot run the software of your choice. Though, even with Linux, it is not an anarchy. You can download the source code for an app, but you still have to abide by the license. And there are many licenses that are restrictive, like GPL, so it's not that you can just do "whatever you want". But it's much better then macOS and Windows, and certainly a world of a difference from mobile.

        One bad thing about "trusted computing" is that it cannot be unbreakable. At some point, someone will hack it, and then your hardware may or may not be upgradable to the point where it's secure again. In the meantime, the move to uefi from bios has made things interesting for free software developers. And, unlike bios, uefi can, at this moment, be hacked to the point that your only option is to replace the chips, or more likely, the entire motherboard.

        Microsoft has already used its muscle to influence the design of touchpads in a way that I dislike. Touchpads on laptops used to be small enough that you could easily type around them. Microsoft changed that to support gestures. Of course, a lot of people like the newer format, but you don't really have much choice in size now because every laptop maker wants to support windows.

        I'm a bit worried about the new move to passwordless logins by microsoft and google. The primary means of authentication is basically the credit card you use to pay for your phone service -- tying your real name and address to every computer you own, on every service. You can get around that in several ways, but most people won't bother, and the means of avoiding it will likely shrink over time if everyone starts using this technique.

        I never use an alias on the Net, but I appreciate the possibility of having one, and I refuse to run non-free software on my cell phone, so google's services aren't an option for me*. That's why I'm not using github since they announced that they'd be using two-factor authentication. I could use other software to deal with it, but it would be less secure than not using two-factor at all, unless I spent more money on hardware or used google's software on my phone. It's not worth my time.

        *Most of google's software is technically free, but it's tied into their proprietary services.

          duane Microsoft has already used its muscle to influence the design of touchpads in a way that I dislike. Touchpads on laptops used to be small enough that you could easily type around them. Microsoft changed that to support gestures.

          Pretty sure apple did it first and MS(as always) just had to follow suite. Mind, any good touch-pad these days will also support palm rejection.

            9 months later

            I'm team penguin. Reasons include freedom, paranoia, and being disgustingly contrarian.
            The fact I really like how linux/gnu/Arch/whatever operates, is a very happy coincidence.
            I'm not smart enough to understand all the drama going on in the proprietary world. Put very simply, I don't like giving stuff to people with more money than me for software I don't even like.
            Also, by nature, FOSS is pretty punk. :-)

            ..ignore the millions big tech dudes have funneled into FOSS

            Pixophir I've poked and prodded Arch for almost 4 years now and did funny stuff with other distros for a while too. I still to this day on 5 different machines, have never seen a kernel panic.

            Friends BSOD like every day though. I like holding it over their heads along with the system update thing when I get bullied for not playing more PC games.

              a month later

              It's great to hear you've had a positive experience with Arch and other Linux distributions. It's always satisfying to have a stable and reliable system that doesn't give you any trouble. As for your friends who are experiencing BSODs, that can certainly be frustrating. While Windows is a popular operating system, it's not without its issues. If they want to upgrade to a newer version of Windows, you might suggest looking into cheap windows 10 keys.

                BSOD is the worst. I am very curious about Mac ATM, as you can imitate Linux with Windows, but it sounds incredibly difficult even using a VM for Mac. What makes it so different?

                SteveRamnan Oh yeah, since they're using Windows BECAUSE they need a stable operating system. I'm just using a Windows machine to play a couple games on and even that's a nightmare compared to the .2 seconds it takes to start developing on this laptop. It's not a fair comparison at all, though. I think I'm towards the bottom of Microsoft's target demographic, and I like system administration as a hobby.
                I'm the type of psycho who thinks bash is "quirky" and "fun" rather than, and I'm quoting a dude I know, "a four decade long disaster that just keeps on giving (me depression)".

                  I initially switched to Linux for privacy, but ended up liking it better. The UI just seems simpler (at least on Ubuntu GNOME) and not cluttered like Windows with unnecessary buttons.

                  Windows is constantly taking a big portion of my bandwidth with constant upgrades which keep making my computer slower and slower. At some point I'll have to do another reset. There was a time a few years ago when it was taking about 8 minutes to boot up. I know it's getting close now.

                    fire7side Windows is constantly taking a big portion of my bandwidth with constant upgrades which keep making my computer slower and slower.

                    Relocate to Russia — Win doesn't update here. At all.

                        I like Linux but I don't use it much for various reasons. I'm generally too weary to discuss finer points of OS strengths and weaknesses.
                        Let it just be known that I do have a dual boot on my home machine with Mint as an alternative. I rarely boot it but plan to make a permanent switch in the case of WW3 or Windows turning into a full blown nag-ware.

                        Tomcat I guess that's one way of doing it. Think I'll stay here, though. Doing a reset isn't too bad.

                          10 days later

                          Up to around Christmas 2014 I used Windows exclusively, and then I went onto a Chrome OS Desktop both here and at the Flat.

                          Chrome OS does have its uses, but last year I started using Linux Penguin which is considerably more user friendly and a LOT more stuff works, such as Godot and Steam for gaming.

                          I also use Ubuntu 22.04 here, and that's even better than Linux Penguin, especially since I can now use Steam with NO problems.