Auster

I’d suggest Linux Mint.

• Simple UI
• (Xfce version specifically) is very fast (within reason; it’s still a modern OS)
• It’s already pretty keyboard-centric and it can be improved further if you like tinkering (my reason for dropping Windows was precisely lack of keyboard-centric controls, so if I stick to Mint, I guess it’s good on that front)
• Keys can be custom mapped, although I guess most bigger Linux systems allow that either out of the box, or through 3rd party software
• Unsure what a “dotfile” is, so can’t comment on that
• And Mint is still slowly adding animations to its functions (to some people’s dismay), and I don’t feel lag when alt-tabbing around, so I guess it is snappy too

Never understood why repeating the last word from the top text at the bottom is done in some memes.

Besides, Windows can be very laggy even on supported hardware.

Looking for a more stable distro could be a good idea. Some distros are pretty much only PoC, or too niche to have a good support, or the beta channel of another, better supported distro.

Brazil does, but while such a set laws exist, seeing those laws being enforced is a distant dream.

Perhaps the reasoning changes from person to person, but for me, it goes along the lines of this image posted, oddly enough, on a memes page:
https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/cbae2e12-4fe0-45c4-8657-f033da6eab20.png

One problem is that you don’t know who’s actually hoarding your data and for what purpose.

Looks like it was around the end of March when Valve announced the date they’d end support for Win7 and Win8. So perhaps a part of the Windows userbase went to Linux. If for fear, as a final push to drop Windows, etc., I don’t know, but perhaps they may have influenced.

Previous 12 months:

June 2023: -0.03%
May 2023: +0.15%
April 2023: +0.48%
March 2023: -0.43%
February 2023: -0.11%
January 2023: no difference
December 2023: -0.06%
November 2022: +0.16%
October 2022: +0.05%
September 2022: -0.04%
August 2022: +0.04%
July 2022: +0.05%

It would seem Linux among Steam users shows a growth tendency.
Hopefully this tendency keeps going strong!

The majority of posts on Reddit are also like that. Perhaps a curse of a feed-oriented forum (or whatever this type of social media is called)

While the most recent piece of Apple technology I’ve used was a Macintosh 7, I’ve gone through similar issues with Android phones and desktop devices.

For Windows, the reliance came from the tendency of people (myself included) to avoid change, and Microsoft exploiting that, and with Android, because rare are the cases of commercial phones that don’t come with Google’s bloat.

But, upon switching to Linux and vanilla Android, as Nobuo Uematsu once said, “(…) the more limited people are, the more ingenious they begin to get (…)”. So while I had lost most tools I had in my comfort zone, it was a good opportunity for renewal, of which I took advantage.

In lights of that, my recommendation is to “take the leap” and try technologies you’re not used with, and see what you can learn from them.

This is just a hypothesis, since I never dug on the subject, but considering sparkling beverages overall, at least in my side of the globe (Brazil), use carbon dioxide, which, when mixed with water, becomes carbonic acid, which, when mixed with basic compounds, becomes salt, I’d imagine sparkling water would be a good way to increase salt levels in the body, which could perhaps be bad in your case, since you need water for medical reasons.

I agree it is an uphill battle, but it must start somewhere. Else, it only gets worse, and then movements against such abuses will get easily crushed. As I like to say, “the hardest part of a journey is the first step”, but also “the future belongs to those who prepare now”.

De-google, anyone?

I’d recommend Mint, because, from my experience, it’s pretty stable, UX is designed so terminal usage can be kept to a minimum (but you can still prioritize it if you want), support from programs is overall good, and it ditches snap. But worth noting that, if you need cutting edge features, Mint is not for you, as it seems to be the new Debian, where updates are traded off for stability.

The only one I knew (before checking the other comments lol) is WinLaunch:

https://github.com/MrC0rrupted/WinLaunch

https://winlaunch.org/