Agreed, it’s not easy, and I don’t suggest it is.

I’m in a similar boat, living in a suburb in county land where the closest grocery store is 15 minutes away. There’s no chance in hell Phoenix will move away from cars in my lifetime.

My only option is to move to a city with infrastructure already built. Housing will be more, but not having the costs associated with car ownership vastly outweighs the cost of housing increases. But again, it’s not that easy.

The truth is, there is no easy answer to the rising costs. Public companies must make a profit. If there are more frequent losses and those losses are more expensive, the only thing to do is raise premiums.

Making the companies “public” like Citizens doesn’t fix things either, it just makes them susceptible to politics, which will always come back to bite.

Technically you are not required to have auto insurance. The law (most states if not all?) requires “financial responsibility”. This can be achieved by filing a bond with the state instead of paying for insurance.

However, insurance is far and away the most cost effective way to meet financial responsibility requirements. The coverage is greater and the costs are much cheaper.

Or, don’t drive. Spend the money on investing in mass transit and walkable cities and then you don’t have the cost of insurance, a vehicle, maintenance, or fuel. If only it were that easy…

I actually switched to openSUSE Tumbleweed from Ubuntu and love it. I know it’s not as popular, but I can’t see why. Rolling release, compatibility, support, it’s awesome!

I’ll try Teams for Linux. Teams for Firefox does give notifications, but doesn’t support background pictures or screen sharing. Well, last I checked.

The only thing that drives me nuts on a regular basis is the lack of fully functional Microsoft apps. Specifically Teams and Outlook. Unfortunately I work with Microsoft shops constantly and need those two apps. Outlook PWA has issues and freezes constantly. Teams PWA just doesn’t do notifications.

That’s it.

But Windows blows and Macs are just too damned expensive.

I thought this looked like Bristol in Wisconsin. I can say it’s definitely NOT Phoenix…there’s actual trees in this pic. 🤣

I didn’t know that was an option! I’ve been running the Chrome extension to disable automatic gain. I have had better luck using Edge than Chrome for the PWA, and they have a flatpak to make it easier. The only thing I miss now is the multiple windows like you get on a Mac/Windows where the call doesn’t take over the chat window.

I use both. For most of the time I use AdGuard, with the same block lists I use in Pi-Hole. The reason for this is I can set it up on devices and use it everywhere, not just at home. This is very easy on both iOS and Android. I also have my home router setup to use AdGuard. My electricity provider has more small outages than I would like which caused issues when things tried to come back online.

I use my Pi-Hole for my VPN which has a dedicated IP address. So when I’m out of the house working I can use the VPN and still take advantage of the Pi-Hole.

I’ve run a Pi-Hole for years, and AdGuard for the past year or so. Honestly, I’ve had zero issues with AdGuard and it requires zero maintenance. The Pi-Hole I still have to update and apply patches, to Pi-Hole and the OS. It’s not a big deal, but AdGuard is set it and forget it.

Just my experience.

I picked up a 2022 G14 RX6700s about a week ago from Beat Buy for $750. I added a 32GB memory stick to bring it up to 40GB. I also replaced the SSD with a 2TB 980 Pro. Since it’s all AMD it works without any futzing. I’m running openSUSE Tumbleweed and so far it all just works. Sleep, dual GPU’s, everything. I did add the AMD P-State flag which helped battery life tremendously. Even sleep just worked out of the box which is the first time I’ve ever had that experience.

My normal workload runs MS SQL Server in a docker container, two distroboxes for specific software, Outlook and Teams PWA apps, VSCode, Azure Data Studio, Firefox, and a couple of terminals windows, and it sits at about 8.5GB of memory idle. With Bluetooth connected and streaming YouTube Music and doing development I’m able to get about 7-8 hours of battery life.

I only play D3, D4, World of Warships, and Guild Wars 2. It plays those games without any issue even at 4K. I do recognize those games aren’t Starfield, so keep that in mind. For me, it works great and it been the easiest experience with Linux I’ve had.

At least with Tumbleweed. I tried Pop_OS! first and it worked great, until launching games on Steam froze X11 and required me jumping to a TTY screen to kill everything. So far Tumbleweed with Distrobox is giving me the best of everything and I’m loving it.

As an Apple fan who’s used Macintosh’s since the Mac Plus, no. Apple’s software choices have gone downhill over the years and they’re now firmly entrenched in their “Our way or the highway” mentality. Remember when Apple’s marketing was “Think Different?”.

Even today, opening a Finder window (which infuriatingly still doesn’t have a shortcut) using the shortcut for search (Option-Command-Space) brought up the window BENEATH other apps ON A DIFFERENT MONITOR. I mean, what the actual F?

And I don’t want to get started on their impossible window management without Rectangle or the hideous text unless you’re using a HiDPI monitor the way Apple wants you too. Why would I pay for a 4K monitor to get 1080P resolution?

You’re right about the software downloads though. You did forget to mention the ages it takes to install. Somehow Apple makes Windows updates looking speedy in comparison.

Rant over.

I want the hardware, not the software. At least Apple isn’t locking that.