This is a bit out there, but for the “feel”, I’d recommend Hyperion by Dan Simmons. It takes a bit to get going, but wow it’s a great book. The rest of the series is satisfying as well, but you don’t have to go past book one.

Thank you, that was very nice! But I do love my car, too.

Prisencolinensinainciusol! That song rocks.

VROOOoooOOOMMM! Hee hee! I got a hybrid standard, and I will drive it until it literally falls apart (or I do.)

Yes!

This is what the community will likely tell you: Gnome is more for “I just want it to work and stay out of my way” and KDE is for “I want it to behave in some crazy fashion, and I CAN MAKE IT HAPPEN!”

I find the opposite.

I get Gnome, and I add tweaks, extensions, desktop wallpaper thingies, task bar nonsense, etc. I get KDE, and I just use it as is.

So clearly, the correct answer is: XFCE! Mwah hah hah!

I once got my hands on. Ryzen that version that kept shutting down in Fedora if you put it under any load, and sometimes just shut down for no reason… I did some googling but couldn’t figure out how to keep it from happening. I tried some power state stuff, but never found the right combo.

(I love it. There’s something special about an old ThinkPad.)

Dang, I just got a ThinkPad T490, 16GB and 256GB for that price! Trade you?

I tried Bazzite on an old mid-tier gaming laptop, was Mondo impressed. I basically agree with all the things you said. Amusingly, I find that just general purpose computing is snappier and smoother too, so I wound up using it mostly as my surfing/Plex/shopping machine more than anything else.

“The Lobsters are coming!” I once yelled that into the PA system at a grocery store. People were asking them when the Lobsters were going to arrive for weeks after. (Landlocked province, lobster is a treat.)

The Tofudebeest. Look it up.

I feel like I should throw in a good word for Fedora. I run a combination of dnf and flatpak, and have a grand time, and am doing an IT diploma program aimed very solidly at Windows under Fedora. I’ve used Ubuntu, Mint, and Manjaro, and landed on Fedora for my desktop experience.