I use Mint because I use lots of small project software that tends to only have packages for Debian/Ubuntu. Mint also works very well with an NVIDIA card. I’ve tried other distros but they fail to work well with nvidia.

When I get a new AMD laptop I want to try Vanilla OS as apparently it can use any package format but is also immutable which I like. I just hope they have the KDE Plasma edition out by then because I really don’t enjoy Gnome

Batocera is nice too. It’s half an emulation console and half Kodi. You can tell it to launch Kodi as default too. Whereas LibreElec is only Kodi with a limited gaming ability

Be prepared for your router to not work until you figure out how to set stuff up. So hopefully this isn’t your only router. I converted a router to OpenWRT and my knowledge of networking was super basic. It was very confusing but I did get it working in a few days. However, I couldn’t get some things working like a VPN or updating without wiping all my settings. OpenWRT is router firmware, not NAS software. You’ll need to run something like CasaOS, OpenMediaVault, TrueNAS, etc for that.

This website is a great starting point for router configurations: https://routersecurity.org/#StartHere

I like Bleachbit but I’ll check this out

I find Polychromatic to be a great UI for OpenRazer

Why would someone pick PiHole over say a customized NextDNS on your router?

This is really neat. I’ll be trying it out for sure

Glad to hear you’re on Linux, living a more sovereign life and having an easy time with it. Mint does indeed work very well for me too. I put Mint XFCE on a ~2015 laptop that Windows was bloating down to dysfunctional. Now it works reasonably well.

You’ll hear other people say Linux works well until it doesn’t. Well so does Windows. It has many issues too that people tend to not mention. Don’t get discouraged by those people. Most of the time Linux is totally fine for normal users, it’s people trying to do abnormal things that then causes issues.

Use a fork of Firefox that doesn’t do that. For example, Ironfox

That’s exactly right

Don’t forget UBlock Origin and being smart on the web and install programs through the software center

Maybe Mint XFCE. It should be really nice after 22.1 releases. I always suggest the Crucial BX500 as a cheap SSD upgrade. It’s fantastic for the price.

Well said

I did. Not nearly enough to manage my own router unfortunately

Trying to create a router yourself is complicated. I knew nothing about it and installed OpenWRT onto a Netgear router and was unprepared. I ended up effectively taking a YouTube crash course trying to understand so many new networking terms and more. I got it working but any small tweaks could cause issues as I didn’t fully understand what I was doing. I bought a GL.iNet Flint 2 and have been super happy with it. Save yourself a headache, get a good router like that and start having fun running things on a RPi.