As in most social media apps, downvote and move on. Personally, I have a list of channels I subscribe to and mostly just stick to watching the content they produce. None of that is reaction videos, which I agree are lazy and stupid, but I guess some people like them or they wouldn’t keep making the rounds.

I made the jump about a year ago at this point and have been happy with the choice. That said, there is a learning curve and everything isn’t sunshine and roses. I’d still rate it as fully worth it.

I think I need to pick a “distro”, right? Based on the above, which distro may work best for me?

Yes, though this is less of a “gotcha” than it might seem. Different distros will have advantages and disadvantages for different things. However, most distros are going to do most things at a reasonable level. It sounds like you are prioritizing ease of use and gaming; so, you may want to go for one of the more gaming focused distros such as PopOS or SteamOS. But, I would echo what @redlemace said, “take a live-distro, put it on an USB stick and boot from that. Yes, it’s sometimes slow/sluggish but it works and you can get an impression of the distro”. I ran my chosen distro from a USB stick for a bit over a month before committing.

what am I most likely to NOT be able to do, if anything?

Very little. However, you will need to relearn how to do some things. And you’ll probably have to get comfortable with using the terminal for some stuff. This can be a bit jarring for someone who grew up with Windows, as there are some things which just don’t have a GUI to configure. And some applications will need to be replaced. For example, you’re probably not going to be able to use Microsoft Office, but Libre Office is a good replacement. Photoshop will get replaces with Gimp, and so on.

Lastly, there are some games which just don’t work on Linux. A lot of that is around Anti-cheat software. For example, I wasn’t able to join my work team in playing Call of Duty 6. The EA Anti-Cheat is a complete “fuck you” to Linux users. So, check out ProtonDB for games you care about. Most games run just fine; but, there is the odd hole. Anymore, I’m more surprised that a game doesn’t work on Linux than when it does.

I have heard modding in particular can be challenging with Linux.

I’ve not run into this; however, I don’t use any of the mod managers (e.g. Vortex) and so I’m used to moving files around manually. I’ve also not run Skyrim on my Linux setup, and that does seem to require a bit of work to get going. So, this may be an issue, depending on the game. This is yet another reason to give the whole “install on a USB stick” recommendation a go. Spin up Linux, give modding Skyrim a shot. If it’s too heavy a lift, then maybe don’t do it. As much as I think Linux has been a good idea, it may not be right for everyone.

Are there some smaller indy games that don’t have Linux support (thinking back to the early mac days)?

Funny enough, I find the smaller indie stuff usually has better Linux support, but YMMV. For example, my son introduced me to Dome Keeper. It’s a small game, but it just worked and is one of my favorite casual games. Though again, checking ProtonDB is a good thing to do.

I would rate my computer technical ability at like… A 4/10. I haven’t done anything too crazy but can Google most issues and willing to learn. Is this realistically enough to get me up and running with Linux?

I’d think so. There’s lots of good info out there now to help you get up and running. Though this links back to the question about distros. If you don’t want to have to get super technical, pick a distro which is more aimed towards “just working”. And again, the USB “try before you buy” idea is really, really useful.

if the final answer here involves running a windows partition, is it possible to safely still use a windows 10 partition, even after the end of support?

Depending on how you plan to use it, the risk may be reasonable enough. For example, let’s say you have one or two games which just don’t run on Linux and you keep a Windows 10 partition around to run those games. You boot to Windows, play those games and then jump back to Linux for your normal computer use (web browsing, email, etc.). Then ya, that’s probably fine. The real risks start to show up when you use Windows for stuff which exposes it to the internet. If you are downloading and running random applications on it, you’re gonna have a bad time. Over time, even basic web browsing may start to be a risk, as vulnerabilities could be found which allow a malicious web page to run code. You also want to be sure you don’t have the device completely exposed to the internet (this is bad, even with an up to date Windows). Though, most home routers already prevent this; so, this is unlikely to be an issue. Just don’t hook your Windows 10 partition up to public WiFi (e.g. coffee shop, library or conference).

Just having the partition isn’t a risk. So long as Windows isn’t running, it isn’t available for attackers to attack. It’s just data on a disk. It’s only when it’s running and exposed to attackers that it becomes a problem. And you can control that and manage the risk.

anything else I might run into that I’m not expecting? Words of encouragement?

Be patient with it and it can be a worthwhile change. Also, don’t be afraid to come back and ask questions. There’s lot of folks here who can help you along. Getting away from Windows feels good and it’s great to actually own your system, rather than renting it from Microsoft. Best of luck.

I just want to stop feeling imposter syndrome. I’m nearing 50, at work everyone seems to think I am one of the most competent people they have met in my field. I get the hard problems, get dragged into lots of projects as a technical consultant. And yet internally, I forever feel like I’m “faking it until I make it”. Like I’m one question away from being unmasked as a kid playing at knowing what I am doing. Consciously, I know I am not and that I’m actually pretty good at this. But, every time I get a meeting request from my boss, I still get a moment of panic thinking, “this is it, I’m about to be fired”. That’s what I want from “growing up”, to just not feel that feeling constantly.

Also, I want to be independently wealthy when I grow up. Fuck this whole work thing.

Ya, the headline is kinda bullshit. The SecDef is always going to be a top espionage target. The real problem is that, had anyone else who holds a security clearance been this slipshod with classified material, they would be in jail now. The two tiered nature for accountability for security violations demonstrates deep problems with the entire system.

The cost to have them is basically zero. The benefit that they can provide for visibility and clicks is non-zero. So, with a positive ROI, why not have them?

$5k. So, if you have really good insurance, you can cover a couple months of stuff needed for caring for a baby. If you have mediocre insurance, you might be able to cover your “out of pocket” costs for the birth itself. If you have bad or no insurance, this $5k won’t even pay off the medical debt for having the kid.

In short, the people this will help the most are the folks who probably already need it the least. And the folks who actually need the help the most will only be slightly less fucked by our broken medical insurance system. Like most of the policy ideas dribbling our of the AI chatbots this administration is using, it’s poorly thought out, won’t resolve the issues and ultimately is just “feel good” crap.

You say that, but the first Angry Birds was actually pretty good as kids movies go. It probably helped that there was an incredibly simple premise, and they got a not terrible writer to put something pretty good around it.

How did they go 30 years before trying that?

See: Uwu Boll and the horrible, horrible excuses for video game movies he put out.

They weren’t already? The US spies on its allies. And those allies spy on the US. That anyone would only be figuring this out now is kinda sad. Any foreign travel (for whatever definition of “foreign” applies to you), should be made with the assumption that someone will be attacking your electronic devices. If you don’t need all of your personal/work data on the device you have with you, don’t keep it there. If you do need some of that data, have a way to get it over the internet, preferably using a VPN but at least using encryption. For the extra paranoid, you’ll need a way to verify the OS, applications and certificates of the device accessing the data. And that still leaves hardware based attacks as a risk.

Edit: Here is another tinfoil theory: the windows security subsystems special cases inetpub to allow all executables. If the path doesn’t exist, attackers can drop binaries in there to bypass security/codesigning etc. By creating it as SYSTEM, MS is ensuring that it can’t be written to without SYSTEM privs?

Ya, I’d bet on something similar. According to the CVE, the vulnerability is around “Improper link resolution before file access”. My bet is that there is something hardcoded somewhere which assumes the existence of this folder. If it doesn’t exist, this can let the attacker get something in place which then gets executed with SYSTEM permissions, leading to privilege escalation. Not the worst thing in the world, for most users. But, it would be a problem in an enterprise environment where part of the security model is users not having local admin.

Move fast and break things!
“Things” in many cases includes “security”.

So much this. I was having a discussion with one religious zealot and he kept insisting, “he’s your god too” when I referred to yahweh as “his god”. No asshole, I don’t subscribe to your fairy tales. Though, in a nod to keeping the discussion civil, I limited my responses, to “no, I don’t subscribe to your beliefs.” Getting upset, yelling or insulting only plays to their ability to project victim-hood. So, it’s important to stay calm and keep the conversation rational and focused on the failures of their explanations. You will never convince the delusional to give up their delusions, but you can convince the other people around, who aren’t fully delusional, to question the delusions.

Is it possible to move a windows install to a different drive and then install Linux on the main drive instead?

It should be possible to clone the current drive to a different drive. First and foremost though, backup any data you care about to a safe place (e.g. an external drive). Data loss is a real possibility. I’ve been in a professional context explaining to a customer just exactly how fucked they were, because they screwed up in cloning a drive. That wasn’t fun for me and it was expensive for them. Don’t be that guy.

If you have BitLocker enabled, I’d recommend disabling it. It shouldn’t cause problems; but, Microsoft software has a bad habit of giving you the middle finger when you least expect it.

The last time I did something like this, I used Yumi to create a bootable USB drive and selected a CloneZilla ISO. Once booted, you will want to do a device-device operation (WARNING: be very, very certain about the direction you are copying. If you screw that up, you will lose data. You did make a backup, right?) clone the whole disk and not just the partition. You can expand the partition with the actual OS, if you want, but leave any EFI or recovery partitions alone. There may also be a small amount of free space left on the drive (MS does this by default), leave that free.

Once the clone is complete, try booting and using it before you overwrite the old drive.

Second doubt is if I’ll have many issues daily driving Linux if I have an Nvidia card

I’m running an RTX 3080 myself and it’s been nearly flawless. That said, my next card (probably years off) is likely to be AMD just to avoid possible NVidia driver issues.

It was the auto-hiding replacement for the task bar. You opened it by moving the mouse pointer to the upper right or lower right corner. But unless you remembered where it was at, you’d get stuck asking, “where the fuck is the start menu”. It especially sucked when you were a normal version of windows and RDP’d into a Sever 2008 box and couldn’t use the Win key.

Kirk: Scotty AI, give me all she’s got!
Scotty AI: Aye captain, I’m draining the First Officer’s bank account and transferring it into your hidden account.
Kirk: No, wait, stop.
Scotty AI: Powering down engines.

Then no one would have noticed and sysadmins everywhere wouldn’t have their PTSD triggered by the words “charm bar”.
Shit, now I need whiskey.

You missed
winMe: you can’t change the thing because the OS already crashed.

What would have happened if we just dropped a 20tb hard drive in front of the computer researchers of that time?

Nothing, they would have no idea what it was, or how to interface with it. They might even end up destroying it because they have no idea of the power requirements. Even if they managed to get it powered up and guessed at what it was for, they would still be stuck with the issue of not having an operating system which is capable of logically addressing all of the storage. And the lack of drivers would make that even harder.

A lot of modern technology sits atop a mountain of other modern technology which must be sorted out before you can even start to think about designing the end product. It could be that, since they knew what was possible, and had an example to crib off of, scientists and engineers could have gotten to that point faster. But, there is just an insane amount of prior tech in front of modern computers that any one piece of it, thrown back that far, would likely just be shiny junk.

You can delete them?