First, gaming distros are vanilla distros with opinionated tweaks and additions to support the hobby of gaming. It might be as simple as having Steam pre-installed to as complex as having unique kernels or custom package repos maintained by the distro maintainers.

But that doesn’t mean vanilla is always the best choice, because not everybody wants to spend time optimizing everything. Some distros even have easy setup scripts for otherwise complex installations (like for Davinci Resolve). Don’t feel like you need to pick vanilla to be a “true user.”

Some easy to set up Distros for gaming that are ready ootb:

• Bazzite: Fedora Atomic, practically bulletproof, just works. Downsides are that adding new packages is not the same as other distros, and there’s a learning curve to it beyond flatpaks. Some software can’t be installed at all if it doesn’t come as an RPM or AppImage (Private Internet Access’s VPN client, for example).

• CachyOS: Arch with an optimized kernel and optimized packages. Comes with some easy-install scripts. Tool to easily select different kernels and schedulers. Currently another very popular choice. Like the above, this just works. There’s some debate about how significant the optimizations really are, but they’re there nonetheless.

• Nobara: Traditional Fedora. Like Bazzite, just works. Has a custom update manager that acts as a GUI wrapper for your usual cli tools. Maintained by GloriousEggroll, a widely respected user that maintains the GE versions of Proton.

• PikaOS: Debian (not Ubuntu). Combines the philosophies of Nobara and CachyOS and puts them atop Debian. Better setup scripts than even CachyOS, a more user friendly update tool than Nobara’s, and has the same kernel selection and scheduler tools as CachyOS, plus the same package optimizations. Don’t let the fact that it’s Debian underneath fool you. This has the latest kernel and drivers.

I would try all of those in a VM and see what you like about them. They’re all unique and worth a look.

ETA: all of these have Nvidia versions, so all of them should work with your card.

That’s fine. Do what you want. I’m not here to judge your choices, just point out that Mozilla only fucked up the communication, not the policy itself.

Right? I just do my best to ignore the bot and only enter queries any first year CS student would know. The rest comes from my memory and a few bookmarks I have saved.

Thus far, the local models I’ve worked with have gotten a C- on coding, but an A+ on bullshit.

I work at a company that won’t allow us to use a search engine but has a local model we’re allowed to use, and this is a pretty apt summary.

If you’re referring to that fuckup with the ToS or whatever, that’s not what they’ve started doing. You can verify this by their Privacy Policy, which hasn’t changed in almost a year.

But if you are pointing to other examples, I’m open to learning.

I wish we could make fines a percentage of unrealized gains that are over a certain amount. That would make some of them care.

You cannot “get addicted to almost anything.” That’s nonsense. The DSM-V does not recognize masturbation, porn use, or sex as causes of addiction. There’s no such thing as “porn addiction,” for example. On top of that, it’s not as if masturbation addiction is a new idea that science has yet to accept—it’s the opposite, with psychology recognizing that the concept doesn’t hold up to scientific inquiry.

People who compulsively or excessively masturbate almost always have an underlying cause. Masturbating is the symptom of that cause, and addressing the root should bring any excessive behavior into balance.

The issue arises, though, that the internet often thinks that being horny more than their peers means there is something wrong with them. People tell them they’re “addicted” to sex, and purity culture spreads in earnest. There’s now entire industries that have sprung up based on this pseudoscience, and often because of cultural or religious upbringing, people do not question it.

There’s plenty of good resources covering sexual behavior and addiction. As much as I dislike Google, Google Scholar is a good way to find papers and studies on the subject(s).

I know you haven’t read anything on the subject by your comment. You might want to start with the DSM-V.

As will I, but those look like legit release notes and not a joke. Nothing jumps out as too good to be true or just bizarre.

First of all, that’s almost exactly how that conversation would probably go. Librarians are amazing.

Second, contrary to popular belief, masturbation is not recognized as a pathway to addiction by Psychology (neither are porn use and sex).

I know you were just doing the funny, but the internet should stop repeating this baseless idea invented by purity culture fanatics, even in jest.

I use Bazzite on a laptop that’s shared by family, and it’s great. I never have to worry about downtime, and I know they’ll always have a computer should something happen to me.

I once had a bad update, and I just used rpm-ostree rollback, and I was up and running again. Really great for anyone that wants to set it and forget it.

I always liked KeeWeb as an alternative front end for KeePass.

Close the open port(s) for a while and take a break? It’s bots, and maybe enough rejections will make the botnet move on.

Linux Mint or Nobara would be great beginner distros and would each be great for gaming. If gaming is more important, I would lean towards Nobara. If general use is more important, Mint.

Keep in mind that you can try most of these out in a Virtual Machine. Some others to consider are PikaOS and CachyOS. I’m also working on my migration, and I install and set up everything with each ISO as if I was doing it for real, to see what hiccups I might run into. It will be slower, but it’s just a trial run, so just expect things to be faster when you do it for real!

Drop Norton, full stop.

Take a look at https://www.privacyguides.org/en/basics/vpn-overview/ to get a better overview of what you need to look for in a VPN.

This is the way. I sincerely wish you luck! That’s how good stuff gets started.

Alright, go out and make it, then. Nobody is stopping you.

I don’t know the reasoning, but since the uBlue main image is meant to be a sort of base template (iirc), my guess is there was a decision to downstream all of those additions, to allow child distributions to improve the build process and make their own opinionated changes.

You might try asking on the uBlue discord.

Generally true when we’re talking about capitalism.

That’s not necessarily true for FOSS projects, however, since money making isn’t necessarily their goal. Linus Torvalds doesn’t force you to watch an ad or sell off contributors’ data to get the privilege of using the Linux kernel, for example. Bazzite doesn’t sell IP addresses of people who download their distro to data aggregators.

However, you should do your homework and check who is in charge of projects like these and note what changes they’re bringing.

You can write to any folder in /var and /etc (/home is actually a symlink to /var/home).

Bazzite is atomic, and you can’t just install whatever you want wherever you want like a traditional distro. It sounds like you’re making directories in your home folder, so you should be fine to set everything up there, as long as Lutris knows that’s where the wine prefix is and your game knows where to find the mods.