That true, though most of the results for Linux Mint slow boot show people finding it anomalous and try to help fix it, where as with Bazzite, most of the comments say that’s normal and they experience it too. The consensus I’ve seen suggests that Fedora Atomic boots slower than other distros, and thus Bazzite inherits that slow boot as well.

I’m not trying to suggest that Bazzite sucks or anything, it provides some very unique advantages such as the Deck mode, but at least in my experience, Fedora based immutable distros are slower on my hardware. If it’s not on yours, then I’m glad to hear that, but it its been very repeatable on my end.

Yeah I dunno about all that.

That’s been my experience across a couple different computers, one of which was a bit weak, and the other a very capable gaming laptop, both of which just felt sluggish compared to normal distros. This appears to be a fairly common observation of Bazzite, from what I’ve seen.

Bazzite isn’t limited, there are just different ways to do things.

I mostly agree, but I’d say it generally requires more research to accomplish certain things, and documentation for achieving those things on bazzite is far more limited compared to mainstream distros. I think Bazzite excels for people either doing simple things, such as just couch gaming, or desktop gaming + browser use and if everything is available by Flathub. It’s also good for people who are more experienced or willing to tinker.

But IMHO, at least currently, immutable distros aren’t ideal for the average user who might do more than gaming, or have older printers than need a driver from the manufacturer, or who may install things that aren’t in flatpaks (like a musician using Reaper). I think for now (because I do think immutable distros will be the mainstream in the future), normal newbie distros like Mint are still ideal since they cover the most use-cases and have the most documentation and application support.

No prob! :)

I’d normally suggest installing it on a separate empty drive to test it out, but I know it can be a real bear to access those to swap em out on a laptop.

In your case though, I think as long as you can get a Live version of Mint to boot successfully from a USB stick (like there’s no flickering issues at the desktop and everything renders correctly), that’s usually a pretty good sign everything will be fine after you install the Nvidia driver on a full install (not to say you 100% won’t encounter any issues, it’s still possible, but hopefully not!)

I tried looking it up myself just now, but I’m not really able to find anything that would indicate you’d have a bad time on Mint with your 5070 TI. There was one guy on the Nvidia forum that said he was having a bunch of problems, but turned out his BIOS was the culprit. Another person who reported a problem on the mint forums discovered that his card was outputting to his secondary monitor which happened to be off.

Support for the 5070ti was added in the 6.1 Linux kernel, while the latest version of Mint defaults to 6.12 now. You should be able to install it and then install the latest 580 Nvidia driver from the Driver Installer tool and be off to the races without any real trouble, at least from what I read.

System 76 (Linux laptop maker) now ships a laptop with a 5070 Ti, so I’d be quite surprised if you encountered significant issues.

Then I would suggest the standard Linux Mint Cinnamon, which as I said makes it extremely easy to install the Nvidia driver.

Off the top of my head,

• installing applications that aren’t available in in flatpaks requires you to use distrobox to install them (not a huge issue if you’re familiar with the terminal).
• printer drivers are very difficult to install if your printer isn’t supported out if the box, as they cannot be installed in a distrobox container.
• changing user groups or permissions, such as to enable ssh or ftp abilities, is more difficult (it wouldn’t retain the setting after rebooting, didn’t research how it can be achieved).
• not a limitation, but it’s much slower in many ways compared to normal distros. It takes a long time for it to finish installing, booting is slower, updating is slower, etc.

There may be more limitations, but those are the ones I personally encountered.

I wouldn’t recommend CachyOS to newbies, as it’s based on Arch, which brings with it a much higher learning curve and maintenance abilities to properly use. For all of that, it gives very, very minor performance gains in gaming compared to standard distros.

Bazzite is more viable for a newbie, but the immutable base can be limiting depending on their needs, and may require them to learn how to use distrobox, which is quite advanced for a newbie.

I’d recommend new users stick with Linux Mint unless they have a multimonitor setup with differing refresh rates, or very new hardware that requires a newer kernel to function well, in which case Fedora may be a better option.

Floaters can vary drastically from barely noticeable (like in the meme), to extremely distracting (large black or gray dots floating around in the vision even when reading a book or using a computer), to limiting eyesight almost like cataracts.

In this study, one patient’s eyesight improved from 6/60 to 30/60 due to how severely the floaters obstructed vision.

And bear in mind, one of the physical alternatives to eliminating the floaters has a 7% chance of permanent blindness, whereas a single $16 bottle of concentrated pineapple enzyme can drastically reduce them with little to no side effects, and no chance of long-term harm.

Linux Mint is a fantastic place to start (I would say the best place, personally). It’s especially good if you use an Nvidia card, as it makes the driver install trivial with the built-in driver installer tool.

If you don’t use an Nvidia card, I’d personally recommend going with the Linux Mint Debian Edition.

If you really want to freak Microsoft out, switch to Linux. Nothing terrifies them more than the moment you decide to leave.

AFAIK the enzymes only act upon ‘compromised collagens’ which floaters are made up of, not normal collagen in joints. If anything, based on this other study, there is some tentative evidence to suggest Bromelain potentially could be used to reduce the effects of some forms of osteoarthritis due to it being an anti-inflammatory.

From that study:

Bromelain has been used as treatment for a number of disease conditions, in addition to osteoarthritis of the knee and shoulder joints (Table 1). No serious adverse events have been reported with the consumption of either bromelain or pineapples in these studies. Adverse events that have been reported are mainly gastrointestinal (i.e. diarrhoea, nausea and flatulence), but have also included headache, tiredness, dry mouth, skin rash and allergic reactions (not specified).

Should be noted, however, that there was a conflict of interest announced at the end:

Dick Middleton is consultant to Lichtwer Pharma UK Ltd who manufacture bromelain. Steven Hicks was funded by Lichtwer for a post-graduate fellowship from 1998 to 2002.

However, this claim is backed up in the floater study as well:

In clinics, bromelain is used to treat patients with osteoarthritis, sinusitis, and post-operative swelling.

So research seems to indicate that as long as the daily dose is 600mg or lower per day, it should be well tolerated as long as you’re not allergic to pineapple (definitely don’t do this if you are). Even above that, there should be no long-term negative health effects, only potentially acute side effects.

I haven’t tried it yet, I was just mentioning the studies I’d come across. You can read this one here, which found that taking 3 pills a day reduced or completely removed floaters in 70% of patients after 3 months, with a B-scan ocular ultrasound and a visual inspection seeming to confirm the results (not placebo).

That study used 95 mg papain and 95 mg ficin enzymes in addition to bromelain, which makes it a bit more effective, but Bromelain alone also seems to work at reducing the floaters from what I’d read elsewhere.

According to the study (I may be interpreting this wrong, but I’ll take my best whack at it), matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) contained within the enzymes are able to reach and pass through the Blood-retinal barrier (BRB), and thus act upon the floaters (collegen).

Furthermore, matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs), which belong to the proteinases that could cut and absorb ECM, discorded collagens, and SVOs. In particular, MMP-2 and MMP-9 are primarily found in bromelain, papain, and ficin [57]. Free radical scavenging activities were found in bromelain (MMP-2), papain (MMP-2 and MMP-9), and ficin (MMP-2 and MMP-9). Simultaneously, MMPs could resect proliferative tissues and compromised collagens, which is beneficial for cleaning VH-induced SVOs under oxidase stress [58,59]. The blood-retinal barrier (BRB) consists of the inner and outer components and forms tight junctions between the retinal capillary endothelial cells and pigment epithelial cells that maintains a balanced microenvironment and prevents certain substances from entering the retina. Yang et al. found that MMP-2 and MMP-9 could reduce the tight junction proteins (i.e., claudin-5 and occlusion) and the integrity of BRB [60]. Thus, MFEs may cross BRB after taking and be absorbed by the small intestines.

I read some studies a while back that showed taking a bromelain (pineapple enzyme) supplement on an empty stomach consistently each day will eventually reduce floaters fairly significantly by dissolving them.

EDIT: According the study linked below, roughly 200mg of bromelain taken 3 times per day, and done for 3 months, should give the best results. Most bromelain supplements on the market seem to start at 500mg, so I suppose just one per day should be okay, though it may take longer since it’s not spaced out to keep the dose more constant throughout the day. There is bromelain powder which you could dose out to 200mg, but this stuff has a very strong odor that may be difficult to swallow in a liquid.

Also, don’t take bromelain if you are allergic to Pineapple.

i loathe the idea of giving google more money

If you don’t mind used or open-box phones, you could pick up a used (and more critically, carrier unlocked) Pixel off ebay, if you want to deprive them of revenue.

Unfortunately some carriers like verizon will not automatically unlock the bootloader even after unlocking the carrier restriction, so buying a used one that wasn’t factory unlocked from Google could be a slight gamble.

What alternative OS you adopt depends on your phone and needs.

If you just want to mostly degoogle you phone, but aren’t that concerned about privacy or security, LineageOS is basically that. It’s as close to a stock android experience as you can get, minus the pre-installed google apps. It supports a wide range of android phones.

If you want more security and privacy, GrapheneOS is currently king, but the downside is it only works on Google Pixel phones, and it’s possible certain apps won’t work (banking apps can be hit or miss, and the Uber app I believe blocked it). It otherwise functions just like a regular android phone and can install sandboxed google play to use any app you could need, making it just as easy to daily drive. It’s the best choice if you’re an activist, journalist, or fear state actors. But even if you’re not, I’d say it’s the best choice if you already have a pixel phone.

CalyxOS has paused development, so not currently an option.

eOS has a bigger focus on security and privacy than LineageOS, but isn’t as secure as Graphene. The advantage is that it supports more phones than just the google pixel.

PostmarketOS is not based on Android, and instead is a real Linux Distro made for mobile. It’s still very much in an alpha stage, with varying levels of support for different phones, many of which cannot take calls or even use their camera properly. I would only recommend it to developers or people who want to tinker with a project phone.

I’m not German, but I would know better than to praise a pick from the AfD.

Unless something has changed, I believe Windscribe also allows port forwarding.

AirVPN does as well, but as they are based in Italy, I think they may have to comply with the new Italian VPN anti-piracy law enacted there.

Quite damning of Proton, but unfortunately isn’t too surprising after the CEO’s pro-trump comments.

I would say they have proven themselves untrustworthy and mostly concerned with profit-seeking, and would suggest moving to alternatives if you use their services.

Mullvad is a solid VPN (Tor is better), and Posteo, Tuta, or Disroot are good email providers (don’t use email for anything sensitive, private providers only give protection against survailence capitalism).

EDIT: With more context provided by @artyom@piefed.social, this recent action by them was, perhaps, not as cut and dry as it seemed. (Though I still am skeptical of their integrity, personally)