From my (small) friends circle, I haven’t heard any of them talk about getting one. However, it’s worth noting that these friends of mine are also not the ones who would buy new smartphones every year. They typically hold onto their phones for a few years and only switch when it seems like the phone isn’t performing as expected (e.g. battery draining too quickly; slowness in software actions; to name a few).

One question I do have is, what happens if you clean install an AOSP like GrapheneOS onto these newer Pixels phones? Does that remove the AI features completely?

I’m not familiar with OpenSUSE or Manjaro, but if you are familiar with Ubuntu, then I would recommend either Linux Mint or Pop OS. Both are Ubuntu-based, and Pop OS has a Desktop Environment that is very similar to macOS. Pop OS is also suited for gaming with Steam, but then again, I think Steam works well on any Linux distro. The team behind Pop OS is currently doing some major revamps to the OS, but these changes are not yet released for stable use.

If you are building a new machine, I highly recommend you check to see if your HW will be compatible with Linux. You might want to pay close attention to the GPU and Wifi card. NVIDIA requires special drivers to work with Linux, while AMD works out of the box. As for the Wifi cards, depending on the wifi drivers that are installed in the distro, you may have to tinker a bit to get that to work. I recommend having the option to use Ethernet at the time you are setting up the distro, just so you have internet access to download what you need.

Based on my experience, I think you can. Many distros nowadays offer ways to do things without the use of the terminal. In Linux Mint, for example, you can rely solely on the Update Manager to update all installed applications and modules rather than using the terminal. You can also uninstall apps by right-clicking on them in the Menu and selecting the uninstall option. And finally, if you want to move files around, even to some locations that require root, you can do that using the File Explorer app (e.g. Nemo).

That being said, when I started on my Linux journey, I made it a point to actually learn some terminal commands, because I saw it as an important feature in Linux and a good skill to possess.

Steam is probably the best platform for gaming on Linux right now. Here are some games I recommend that run well on Linux:

• Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (the spiritual successor of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night)
• Romancing SaGa 3 (retro JRPG that involves non-linear, open-world exploration)
• Octopath Traveler 2 (another JRPG; you don’t need to play the first game in the series to enjoy this game)
• Yu-Gi-Oh! Legacy of the Duelist Link Evolution (not a freemium game!)

An excellent choice to use Linux Mint! If my parents allowed me to switch their computers to Linux, I would’ve chosen Linux Mint as well for them. But, I probably wouldn’t give them the Windows 10 look.

Don’t forget about the Firefox forks like LibreWolf!

This is awesome! I recently switched over to Kagi because of several Lemmy posts mentioning it as an alternative. However, I really appreciate you sharing your preferred SearXNG instance. I have it added to my browser’s list of search engines and may switch to it from time-to-time to see how different it is from Kagi. If there really isn’t much of a difference, then I may switch to it after my Kagi membership ends.

I was asking a similar question a few months ago, and my search turned up Joplin. It’s a free, open source app that works across multiple platforms and can sync data through a cloud service, either through Joplin’s own cloud storage or through a third-party cloud storage like Dropbox.

https://joplinapp.org/