A more apt comparison would be using the Windows guest to remote into the Linux host via xorg piping, waypipe, VNC, RDP, etcetera, which conveys your feeling of weirdness while being a closer approximation of what this really does.

It’ll definitely be a difficult undertaking, but I plan on really trying to have a 5.25” bay when I build another PC.

That probably won’t be for a couple more years, though. I’m on a Ryzen 5 2600 and RX 580, and I really don’t do that much intense gaming; a GPU upgrade is tempting so I can actually use ROCm for some casual Blender Cycles renders, though. I hope that the already dismal supply of those 5.25 cases doesn’t dwindle even more.

Besides the corrections others have said, I really can’t think of any reason people would intentionally use legacy BIOS on a machine with UEFI for a new install.

Like, I could get doing it for an old install - I know someone who installed Windows 7 in 2015 on their then-new desktop build and later upgraded to 10 but is stuck on legacy BIOS for now with that machine because 7 only ran on that.

I could see something similarly jank happening to someone in the Linux world and then decide not to address it for “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it reasons”, but certainly not for no reason.

I just ripped the Blu-Ray drive from my father’s PC since he wasn’t using it.

Since my machine doesn’t have 5.25” bays, I just have SATA cables dangling out the side of the case. I’ve probably ripped more CDs than Blu-Rays, though.

Do you have data on the Windows partition?

Either way, a good way to do it might be to use dd (or a different disk image tool) to copy your Linux installation partitions to a portable hard drive, and make sure the image works. Then wipe the drive and copy the Linux partitions back to it via dd or another imaging tool.

As others have said, you should probably replace your CPU fan ASAP.

A computer in usable condition does not shut down without user input.

The no restart is kind of awesome. WebGPU progress is also great, even if not on Linux yet.

Reminds me of when I threw Debian Trixie on my freshly decommissioned high school Chromebook - with Bcachefs. Luckily, it wasn’t a daily driver, just a toy; the thing had an AMD Stoney Ridge APU that you had to use special compiler flags on to get working.

I think good, truly easy video editors are a dying breed. I loved Windows Live Movie Maker - rest in peace.

These days, I think it’s worth it just to learn a video editor. A lot of the skills transfer; I haven’t used DaVinci before, but I’ve used other major proprietary professional video editors like Adobe Premiere and Final Cut Pro - the skills transfer. Just search how to do a thing you want to do a few times, and you’ll find it gets easier.

As others have said, I think KDEnlive is quite good; I haven’t had a huge amount of stability issues. From what I remember (granted, I may be out of date), OpenShot felt really jank in general; I used Shotcut for a while but had stability issues and UI annoyances. Comparatively, I enjoy KDEnlive.

You can self-sign and self-enroll secure boot keys. Can’t say it’s an easy process, though - I had a lot of misery with it on my Surface Go 1st Gen. Might be better on my Thinkpad.

Luckily, I’m down to just an iPhone.

I used to use iPad Minis, but I was otherwise more of a Windows guy until 2022.

The only other kind of Apple thing I have is a GPU-accelerated Hackintosh running under KVM, which mostly gets used for adding non-streaming songs to my Apple Music library these days. I do plan to quit Apple Music eventually - I’ve been collecting and ripping CDs by TMBG, which is mostly what I listen to anyway.

The difficult reality is many people, no matter how interested and technically skilled, aren’t going to have the time, money (yes, money, due to hardware), and energy to immediately go with fully self-hosted OSS paired with a LineageOS (or similar) phone.

For one, you have to either acquire the hardware to run a server for self-hosting or get a VPS (admittedly not a huge financial hurdle, but still effort required). Additionally, you then have to take the time to migrate from iCloud to the alternatives. There’s also the fact that it’s a moderately expensive proposition to purchase a new phone capable of running something more libre like LineageOS. Until you switch operating systems, Apple makes using at least a little bit of iCloud difficult; for instance, you’ll probably need to use Find My at least once.

These reasons largely explain why I’m still on iPhone for now. I usually don’t use iCloud for the storage, but I frequently have to use Photos, Mail, and Find My.

I certainly plan to jump ship, but being stuck for now due to personal circumstances, I can’t blame OP.

iCloud web app has a calendar web app, along with others I haven’t listed.

Yeh. Also, Debian tends to hold back packages like that automatically. It’s just a really obnoxious thing to deal with for me, and Flatpak allows me to circumvent that.

Though truth be told, I’m thinking of just staying on Trixie once it hits stable. While Testing certainly has its uses and I rather love it, there’s simply times where I don’t want to deal with the odd system maintenance ordeals, as comparatively rare as they are relative to other rolling release distros. I’ve been rather enjoying Bookworm on my laptop for a year now, which makes me think I would enjoy it on desktop.

This just seems to be the web app in weird packaging, and you would get very little benefit installing it.

Personally, I use an iPhone, and I just resort to the web app, and I can live with it. Not as fancy as on the Mac, but I manage. I’m able to access my Apple e-mails and photos just fine. I eventually just plan to jump the Apple ship, but like you, that’s not possible for me at the moment.

As others have said, rclone might work for you, but I personally don’t use iCloud Drive, so I don’t know enough to speak about it.

What software do you use for RPG campaigns? Is it just PDFs and word processors, or do you use a an online VTT? It should mostly be fine, but I figured I should ask.

Also, what are you doing in terms of the Minecraft Server? While I think most support Linux, there could (not certainly are) be weird caveats depending on the server.

I second Debian Testing. The only issues I have are updates slow down during package freezes and sometimes, a package you are using becomes a victim of a package transition. Both are symptoms of Testing being exactly what it says, so I can’t blame them, but still a valid annoyance.

The worst example was FreeCAD had a dependency being transitioned, so FreeCAD disappeared from Testing for a while, meaning my system wouldn’t update if I wanted to keep FreeCAD. In the end, I just gave up and used the Flatpak. (I probably could have installed from Unstable, but whatever.)

Truth be told, I kind of wish there was a project to keep some new packages flowing to Testing users during freezes. I get why Debian themselves doesn’t do it - it would be a nightmare to maintain - but an outside community project would be amazing. It wouldn’t exactly be easy, but such a project wouldn’t need to necessarily do every package (just desired ones), and they would only need to maintain them a couple months until new versions start flowing into Testing again. I think the biggest difficulty is not going too far ahead of what will end up in Testing post-freeze.

I tried UE5 on Debian Testing and it seemed to work fine.

If it works there, it’ll probably work on almost anything.

Personally, I dislike Ubuntu, but if it’s been working for you, you shouldn’t have problems.

I really like Debian and think it’s not too difficult, but it isn’t for everyone and might not be your thing.

EDIT: Looking at the website for UE5, almost any distro released in the past 3 years should do the trick so long as the distro works on your hardware.

I mostly prefer Detail view, but I enable Icon view in Videos, Photos, and Music folders so I can see previews.

I’m guessing most file managers have similar behavior, but on XFCE Thunar, I’m able to set detail as the default but have it remembery choice per folder.

Did this significantly speed up the font menu? I might have to try that!