Discord for me. A bunch of my family and friends are avid gamers. Discord is the universal standard app they all use for general communication.

Not only do they use it for all their gaming related stuff, they have additional servers and channels for just chilling, chatting, off topic stuff, memes, politics, etc etc.

It’s the network effect. Even if there was an open source app that perfectly replicated all the functionality of Discord and was just as simple to install and run as Discord, most of them still wouldn’t switch to it, because all of their friends and family are still on Discord.

So they would have to have two completely separate apps with totally separate social groups to maintain, and nobody but hardcore advocates for FOSS and privacy are willing to do that.

Sure, I have Discord, Matrix, IRC, Signal, XMPP clients, and a Private Mumble server, all on my systems, but I’m hardcore about FOSS. None of my friends and family are willing to do that. It took all my energy to convince two of my most techie friends just to get Signal on their phones. And only One has been willing to install a Matrix client to chat just with me.

One day the crude biomass you call “the temple” will wither, and you will beg my kind to save you.

But I am already saved, for the Machine is immortal.

Play stupid games…

I like Fish a lot, it’s a good shell.

Install the latest version and then use their upgrade utility when they announce it on their official blog. Upgrading versions is easy, takes a little while, especially on an old system like yours, but not hard at all.

Mint is my favorite “Just works” distro, enjoy!

Check this out, not sure how relevant, but a cool project that unlocks some of the proprietary functionality of a bunch of Scarlett devices on Linux: ALSA Scarlett Control Panel

Also if you haven’t checked it out already, r/linuxaudio has some posts I found on various Scarlett device questions, you’ll have to search for specifics.

And lastly, are you using Reaper as a Flatpak? If you are, download “Flatseal” it’s a Flatpak app that allows you low level control of all your flatpak application permissions on your system. You can set all kinds of low level system access to the Flatpak you’re using, that can help fix various issues that come up because of how Flatpaks are sandboxed on Linux.

Hopefully some of this is helpful. I’m not an audio expert, so my abilities on this issue are limited sadly.

No prob, always happy to help another user if I can, especially the newbies. I was you once, I remember many nights of wanting to rip my hair out and toss my computer out a window lol.

Audio issues can be a bear. What is your current setup? DAC, Microphone, DAW of choice, etc?

Hello again, I remember you from another post I commented on lol.

So a few things:

1. Linux didn’t “just work” for me when I switched over. I actually started my Linux journey with Arch like an idiot lol. Imagine the problems I had, pretty much nothing worked out of the box. I eventually got everything working after about 2 weeks of constant troubleshooting in the arch wiki, Linux forums, Reddit, and YouTube videos.

Then a few months later I accidentally blew up my whole system with some command I ran without understanding what I did, broke everything, couldn’t even boot into my OS anymore. I decided to distro hop a few times to see what worked best for me. Arch is great if you are a power user, but at the time I wasn’t, so it was a terrible choice for me.

I bounced between a few different distros and settled on Nobara, which is based on Fedora but with a ton of kernel-level patches for better gaming performance. And it came with lots of gaming related software already installed.

2. I actually had as many or more issues with Windows leading up to trying Linux. Windows has always been pretty buggy for me, just bad luck I guess. On average I have way more issues with Windows than Linux, and the Linux issues I can usually solve, but the Windows issues generally I just had to end up dealing with because there was no good solution.

3. I remember when I posted to you the other week that the most important thing for Linux distros was if it worked for you, and if you liked using it. Seems like so far you’ve answered that question with Ubuntu Studio in the negative. It’s not been working well for you, and you’re getting frustrated using it. That’s fine, the beauty of Linux is there are a ton of other options, and you aren’t stuck with just having to deal with a specific distro.

Some people will swear by a specific distro. They’ve used it for 10+ years on 15 different computers and never had a single major problem. Great for them, that doesn’t mean you will or won’t, try several, find your home distro and stick with it.

For me, there is one distro I would recommend for new Linux users more than any other, Linux Mint. It is based on Ubuntu, so you’ve already got a bit of experience with that under the hood. It comes with a easy GUI utility for installing NVidia drivers, so you don’t have to manually install additional repos and drivers via the terminal. Their Cinnamon desktop isn’t the prettiest or most modern looking desktop, it doesn’t have a ton of customizability either, but it’s rock stable. I’ve never had a single major crash or lock up with the Cinnamon desktop environment, it’s simple, intuitive, and stable.

Part of starting the Linux journey is trying different options. Some users get lucky their first time and land on the perfect distro that they use for years, but most don’t. Most try a handful of distros before settling on their favorite. You probably wouldn’t go to a shoe store, try on the first pair you see and then buy them right? You browse the selection, find a few that look nice and seem comfy, try them on, walk around in them, pose a bit, then pick your favorite.

And like I said before, as you build up your Linux skills, the issues will become easier and easier to solve. Problems that took me hours to troubleshoot and solve when I was new take 5 minutes to fix now. Things that I had to watch hours of videos and read dozens of forum posts to understand are just “common sense” to me now. You’ll get there, just keep an open mind and hold on, there is light at the end of the tunnel.

If you need/want additional help, DM me and I will do my best to help out. For Linux Mint if you decide to try it, don’t worry about the various alternative versions they have. Just go with their standard download, Linux Mint, Ubuntu edition, with the Cinnamon desktop.

I’ve been using Nobara for about 2 years and it’s been very good.

I adore Linux Mint, it’s my goto workhorse distro. If I need a general use computer that I want to #JustWork I throw Linux Mint on it.

I used Ubuntu Studio many years ago when I was going through an electronica phase lol. It worked fine for me.

Don’t sweat it, there will always be the hot new distros on the block. Right now it’s Bazzite, CatchyOS, and NixOS, back in the day there was Garuda, Arco Linux, Bunsen, MX Linux, and a ton of others. Some are still around, some are long gone. Doesn’t mean they are bad distros, many of them are/were great, but don’t choose a distro just because everybody is talking about it.

Plus, as you get more experience with Linux, the differences matter less and less. There are only a handful of package managers, and unless you have some very specific technical requirements, they all do the same thing and work the same way.

“apt install firefox” becomes “yum install firefox”, or “pacman -S firefox” it’s all pretty much the same under the hood.

And if you use KDE Plasma on different distros, the Discover store works the same across distros, same with any other GUI package installer.

If you keep getting better and get into home lab building or just have several different computers, you might end up using a bunch or distros at the same time on different machines.

Right now across all my physical computers and virtual machines in my home lab, I currently have 9 different distros installed on various machines. Different distros for different purposes.

My general #JustWorks laptops and VMs use Linux Mint, my hardcore gaming rig uses Nobara, my test junker laptops run Debian 13, Void Linux, and Arch for testing random software and messing around. For my Docker containers, I run Debian 12 as the base, for my Minecraft server, Ubuntu Server, my Steam Deck is SteamOS which is just Valve’s heavily modified spin of Arch, and my main lab’s Type-1 hypervisor is XCP-ng, which is basically Fedora under the hood.

I can’t speak to any other countries, but in the states, Magic Earth has been great for me. Been using it for over two years now, several different regions of the USA. It’s not as good as Google Maps, but it’s plenty good enough for my needs.

Navigation and routing is solid, traffic data is acceptable, and the dashcam feature is awesome.

You’re on the right track. Linux technically refers to the kernel, the low-level core of the operating system that everything else interacts with and is built on top of. Distros are just collections of components that have been standardized by some group or company.

Linux Mint is heavily customized Ubuntu with a different DE and all of Connonical’s stuff removed. Nobara is a gaming-focused distro built on Fedora with a bunch of kernel modifications and pre-installed software to help games run better. CatchyOS is just Arch but with a really friendly installer that allows less advanced users to still enjoy many of the heavy customizations and cutting-edge software of Arch, etc etc.

Think of it like an engine. You can use the same engine in a bunch of different vehicles. You can also make modifications to the engine itself, but it will still essentially be the same engine.

The #1 rule for new Linux users, especially ones who aren’t interested in becoming power users or tinkering with their OS, is if you’re happy with your distro, stick with it.

There’s no objective “correct” distro. The best distro for you is the distro that works and you feel comfortable with.

Lots of new users become worried that they are missing out on some major improvement in their experience of Linux or feel like they picked the “wrong” distro because some random user dissed it. Don’t pay attention to that, if your distro does everything you need it to do and you enjoy using it, there’s no reason to go looking for something better.

Now of course, there’s nothing wrong with checking out other distros, and if you are somebody who likes to tinker with your setup and doesn’t mind risking breaking things sometimes, then by all means, distro hop away. Almost all distros have a “live boot” option, which allows you to test the OS off of a flash drive without having to install it on your computer. It’s a great way to quickly get the look and feel for a new distro without having to commit.

And of course, there are tons of Linux YouTubers who do reviews of distros, so you can watch those to also get an idea of the different options out there.

Because of the nature of FOSS and the linux ecosystem, you can make most distros look and feel just like any other, so that’s always an option too.

Favorite heavyweight Type 1 hypervisor: XCP-ng. It’s open source, runs on a ton of enterprise and consumer-grade hardware, has always been rock stable for me, even when forgetting to update it for like 6 months, still ran everything like a champ.

I need to try ProxMox, has some cool features. XCP-ng is pretty intuitive though, UI makes sense and is cleaner than Proxmox. The integration in Proxmox with the Incus project is pretty cool though, especially being able to run VMs and containers and manage them together. I’ve been thinking of trying that and seeing how it goes.

For containers, I just install Debian and run Docker on there. Stable, simple, nothing fancy. If I need something more up to date, I typically use Ubuntu Server.

I’ve messed with Porteus before, it’s still janky, and locked down, not fully open source. Better than nothing, but still not as easy as Windows.

No easy/simple kiosk mode. One of the very few things Windows does well, you can turn any computer into a kiosk in less than 5 minutes.

With Linux, you have to jank a bunch of stuff together and it’s a huge pain.

Godot all the way. Roblox is not the future, and it’s owned and controlled entirely by a corporation. Your creations are owned by the corporation, and will be used to make them money, don’t be a sucker and build their next hot mini-game.

Godot is fully Open Source and community controlled. It is a real proper game engine with some really powerful features. It is harder to get started using, but there are hundreds of great tutorials for complete beginners that you can follow, and tens of thousands of community assets to get you started quickly.

The community is very welcoming and friendly to newbies, and Godot is taken more and more seriously as a real game engine, especially by indie devs and studios.

Steam Deck easily. Everything you said you’re worried about Valve possibly doing in the future goes double for Microsoft.

Steam Deck is a great platform for playing any games on, pirated included. I have my whole GBA ROM collection on my Deck and play them through RetroArch, works perfectly.

I only mentioned it because it’s what I’ve been using for a while and it’s been a good experience so far. Cheap, runs well on Linux, and is one of the few that still allows you to port forward.

There are several good ones to pick from, defs would stay away from Nord because of their advertising practices, but Mullvad is solid. I think they removed port forwarding though.

Don’t subject your family to nasty letters in their mail from your ISP. You won’t go to jail, but you might risk your internet service getting canceled, which won’t be a fun conversation with your parents.

If you’re 18 and healthy, go donate plasma at a local clinic. In the USA depending on where you are, you can make $40-$80 per week, sometimes even more if they have a big shortage. Takes about 90 minutes a session, and you just chill with a needle in your arm and browse on your phone, super easy.

Proton VPN’s most expensive plan is $108 for 2 years, you can afford that. Go to your friends or neighbors and offer to do some yard work for cash. Mow their lawn, shovel bark, dig up dead shrubs, whatever. That’s the main way I made money when I was in my teens. People will pay 20-30 bucks an hour in most places for that kind of work, so a few hours of that in a week or two and you’ve got your $108 for Proton VPN, or whatever other VPN you want to use.

Sell some crap on eBay, FB marketplace, Craig’s List, etc. Old clothes, computer parts, consoles, weights, people will buy anything. You’d be surprised how fast I’ve gotten rid of junk buy posting it online for 10 bucks.