Hoopla seems okay for people who listen to a lot of mainstream stuff. I’ve never actually heard about it before now or used it so everything I say is just coming straight out my ass, but, it seems their library is very limited. Orpheus has a very extensive library with almost everything on there having a lossless flac version. It’s still nothing compared to Soulseek, but as long as you’re into bands/artists with more than 5 listeners in their lifetime, you’ll be able to find everything. It all just comes down to what you’re looking for though.

For a lot of people, it’s a community thing. I’m a member on Orpheus and they have a lot of great community stuff like Album of the Month, user made scripts, tutorials, forums, etc. They can also have a lot higher quality content and moderation because they’re so “exclusive”. And, for music, a private tracker is gonna be 100x better than a public one or Soulseek.

Yeah, just make sure you read up on the study material and understand it all well enough. I believe they hold interviews during the weekends and the wait times vary throughout the weekend but for me I had to wait about 3 or 4 hours before getting an interview.

OPS is pretty easy to get into. The wait times for interviews can be long, but much much better than RED. The actual interview is pretty easy too imo. Just make sure to read through the interview prep.

This would depend on the distro you use. Most distros will require you to enable a non-free repository before you can install anything that isn’t Foss or open source from the official repos. You could also use an FSF approved distro. Keep in mind, the FSF will only approve distros that don’t include any non-free anything in the official repos. Besides that, you just have to know the licensing before you install it.

Dude! I just got an email that my OneDrive is being deleted! I didn’t know I even had one…

Soulseek and Torrent sites would be my suggestion. I’m able to seed 24/7 and would be willing to help if you want it.