Check out Pipewire, which is the modern standard of linux audio

I do not have the same requirements than you, but in audio production I can route anything in any which way I need (useful for switching monitoring or sources), and I did once plug an eq to my movie player because some ripped movie was really sounding bad

There are tons of VSTs available, too

There’ll be research to do, and a learning curve, but today is not the days of Jack anymore, it has become really easy if you go for a modern distro (arch, tumbleweed, fedora,…)

Have fun running your sound your way!

Just follow Improbable Research and their famous ignobel prizes ceremony for more.

Any modern gnome works great… until you have to type a lot. Also, typing on a wall-mounted screen is usually uncomfortable, not angled right.

So depending on your “obedience”, debian 12, Fedora 40, OpenSuse Tumbleweed or plain old Arch will do it.

Maybe there are.different style/type/propositions of on-screen keyboards out there.

Apple supposedly makes good hardware, and my ‘23 mbp in 14’ has excellent battery, great trackpad, very good sound and a beast of a screen. Now I don’t like whatever material these machines are made of, they are downright unpleasant to grab or touch, and the keyboard is abismal shit. I hate it, I am seriously not using it as much as I could not because Asahi, or Fedora, or bugs, or the availability of certain software for Arm64, but because of that shit keyboard. Asahi runs great, the full Pipewire sound stack developed for it is a pleasure to work on. Switch monitoring every which way, plug Firefox into Ardour and rip youtube, it all works, period.

To me M2 with 16g of ram is about on par with an intel i12 in everyday life. Sure it will win on rendering movies or some specific stuff, but day-to-day it’s like my friend’ Carbon X1 on Mint really.

Depends on the machine… Arch, Debian and …Asahi! (Actually Fedora)

Not a boat owner, but trained on sailboats: if you feel like it, take sailing lessons and get a feel for it, it’s fun and relaxing. I hate motorboats for the noise, the environmental impact. And it’s kinda dull.

In any case, navigation and boating in general has rules, depending on where you are you may have to get a license.

Got to your local sail club, take lessons. When you’re trained you will be able to rent boats from time to time. Almost nobody sails enough that buying is reasonable. And anchoring in a proper port means an annual fee to pay.

I have a 2-year old android 11 oppo A53, my colleague some small samsung on A10. Installs fine, sync a first time somewhat, then just don’t sync a thing.

Never could get it to work with phones, and that from Arch, Mint, Asahi, Macos all sharing flawlessly between thembut no phone would reliably stay sync’ed.

" KdeConnect": Notifications, messages, clioboard sharing, link sharing, remote control of your pointing.device, keyboard, command inputs on computer… When it works it’s great, but it is hit-and-miss between distros and updates catching up.

I’m using Asahi daily these days; it is dual-boot by nature so you can rock your Linux OS everyday but still have “a macbook” (and be working on a work machine paid by your company, as should be).

I’d be using it more if the keyboard wasn’t so shit. Battery is good, screen too, processing power… really just the keyboard is wrong, wrong and wrong. Oh, and I love the touchscreen on my other laptop.

Did you guess my other machine is a Thinkpad? Yes it is. With a touchscreen!

What would be a configuration to maximize battery life?

Theatre tech. Show up on time. Sometimes shows don’t take late comers even with a bought ticket. And it’s bothering everyone else, artists included.

If the venue has a bar, stay for a drink. Like everyone else, artists (and techs) love to have a drink after a hard day at the office.

They are both on Mastodon. Lina just posted an updated list of games, there’s a ton of them

Linux Audio

I’d argue that it may come to that, given the poor availability of (steam) games for the macos platform. And when it is available, you may end up with a disclaimer that it may not run anyway.

An AUR package has been done for Arch by (supposedly) someone who knows what they are doing and needs it on their Arch Machine

A Flatpak is something done by someone, to (supposedly) work everywhere, untested on Arch, that may or may not work. And crash (Ardour on Asahi). Or waste hours or you life to render files incorrectly (kdenlive on arch and asahi).

Native versions work perfectly.

I thought I was clever in using arch/aur for everything, but pull KDE or QT apps from Flatpak to keep my gnome install a bit more tidy… For this, you’d have to have those Flataks to work, and sometimes they don’t.

I assumed OP plugged himself in some hidden serial port (like cars’ obd2) and the washing machine had indeed a tpm to prevent bootleg/non original spare parts.

The human mind can be the deepest well of imagination sometimes. I’m a bit too good at that o.Ô

T410? Woah! I still mourn the death of my 420 with it’s Dome Light and rugged looks

I hope yours stay on, and on, and on!

My wife has a T480s on standard 2022 LTS Ubuntu, it is a machine old enough to not need the latest edgy mint ; a friend of mine has had to install it on his 2023 X1 tho.

Standard Mint will do fine. Default DE is boring as hell, be sure to look at others like Gnome. I love Gnome.

Also, using “live” USB keys OP can try several distros and check what they find more attractive in the default state of a distro.

PopOS, Elementary, Fedora, Tumbleweed… So many of them.

I say Tumbleweed is best because of the perfect, seamless integration of BTRFS / Snapshotting / Rollback system. It is truly the best way to dip your feet into Linux and get it back working in a single click when you (inevitably) fuck up.

I see I sideload of Gentleman Agreement with the hardware vendors here:

• Hardware Vendors : “Oh No, The Market is Slowing Down!”
• Microsoft: “Hold My Beer, it’s Payback Time”

Everyone wins. Well, the usual suspects win as usual. The environment and the customer can go kiss Mr Gates and Mr Dell’s asses.