Thanks, I’ll dig into that one sometime!

In my experience, not much, but I’m a marginally functional newbie. Mint manages things for you fairly nicely and has been the best, it just works with out messing with much/anything. (At least for my hardware)

I managed to get gnome working smoothly on mint and have been happy with it. I started and returned here since I last ditched windows as a native OS.

The only thing that has made me consider distro hopping from mint is AUR on arch and gnome, though I’ve been successful so far.

Part of trying the distros that are more advanced and give you more explicit control and configuration is the sense of accomplishment and it makes you figure out how and why things work the way they do. It holistically builds your velocity in your understanding of Linux. (Or gnu whatever that nuance is).

If your machine has enough resources it is super easy to host VMs of anything you want to try. You can try them all, and it won’t cost you anything but time!

Kagi has been the closest thing to the google from 2003 that I’ve encountered in a long time. I’ve not tried their assistant that’s only available on the ultimate plan as it’s too expensive for me. FWIW, I have the duo plan, soon to move to the family plan.

The quick answer usually works pretty well and you have access to fastgpt if you want more of the LLM effect.

You nailed it. It’s a part of the solution and shouldn’t be a weapon. Trust, guide….verify. You’re raising a “being” hopefully with the intention of being a self sufficient adult, not an over grown child. We have to help prepare them for this world.

I log DNS on all devices. This helps me see if stupid stuff is happening, or if somehow the refrigerator managed to obtain an internet connection.

Print your business cards on them.