I’m not too good with IT kinda stuff, so I’m not sure if I can figure out how to do a partition. Unless it’s easier than I’ve been led to believe.

It’s easier than you’ve been led to believe and you totes can figure it out. The installer on the Virtual Desktop will pretty much automatically set up your partitioning for you. If you are using Mint it has a nice GUI partition wizard (with sliders) in the installer that is very specific about what will go where. Mint’s installer usually recognises if you are dual booting with Windows on the same drive (although its been a minute since I dual booted). The rest depends on how much space you have free on your drive.

You want to give your Linux desktop partition upwards of 60gb, depending on what you will be doing. 300gb at least if you plan on using steam + games. But only you can truly know! ;) If you back everything up then obs you won’t lose anything. Have fun and just go one step at a time and move as fast as your comfortable with. Hopefully you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how easy it is.

I feel like it’s not “my computer,” it feels like the most “Big Brother” operating system ever; it always feels like “something” is watching me or lurking in the background reporting back to some giant Microsoft data center on what I’m doing, what my files are, etc. It’s just this really creepy feeling. I feel “gross” when I use it.

You know what feels great? Not having that feeling. Not having the whispering chorus of surveillance like a fat fucking argus of paranoia weighing on your psyche while you attempt to use YOUR computer. Quite frankly how dare they fucking do that to you. MS wastes your time and agitates your conscience. Nowadays you really don’t need to know much about many Linux Distros before you use them, and the best way to know a bit more is to simply try.

I’m not techy enough and worried I’ll fail at switching over.

Considering how much technical workaround you have to do just to make 11 bearable, I strongly doubt this statement. Think of it in small steps: Download the version of WhateverOS you want (Mint is great). Put it on a USB. Try out the virtual Desktop without installing anything. See if you like it. Maybe a day later back up your files. I mean everyone should do that every now and again regardless of what OS you use, right?

Then try the Virtual Desktop again. Click the button that says install and just run through the process without intending to complete it. You can always back out. Have a look at how it partitions your drive. Consider how much space you might be willing to give it. You might not need much! Are you aware that you can read and access all your files on the Windows NTFS partition from your Linux partition? For myself way back when, this was a light bulb moment. Note some things you might wish to check out online, what certain terms and acronyms mean. When that is done run the installer again. Why not. Just for fun.

Massive Attack = Banksy. You heard it from me first. Or maybe you didn’t and you knew it already all along.

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Charlie Don’t Surf.

Thank youI haven’t come across that podcast before. I will definitely check that out. It is a wonderfully silly film.

Oh you mean these fucking guys? They went out of their way to make them especially scary. The whole film is infamous for being basically a kids horror film. Like the bit with the corridor with the disemmbodied heads of the witch all screaming as Fairuza Balk runs through it? Yea…

There seemed to be an era where traumatising children was part of the draw for the audience and I wonder if it has kind of died out. The Wolves of Willoughby Chase was another one that my parents had to switch off.

I’m not the film police and your argument for its inclusion as ‘post-apocalyptic but fantasy’ is all cool. So yes I will take it and roll, awkwardly across sand and gravel, mud and debris, into tomorrow’s ongoing dystopia.

Thank you for that recommendation. I do remember watching it on video, probably about the time it came out. Then absolutely wrecking myself on a hill after I took the brake off my own skates. Fun times indeed. Did not remember Jack Black or Seth Green being in it though. Also you are totes not gay for 90s Shane McDermott. Understood.

Great! :D Good to hear that this weird niche from the trash-heap of cinematic history may yet claim another victim.

Any film where people ride around on rollerskates in a post-apocalyptic society.

I’m especially partial to SolarBabies (1986), but I’ll also accept ‘Roller Blade’ and ‘Prayer of the Rollerboys’, where young Patricia Arquette and downsloping Corey Haim don the skates. Rollerball from 1974 is the Citizen Kane of this genre. The 2002 remake with LL Cool J is its red headed step-child.

Left screen is me bullying an AI in a themed terminal. Just for fun. Virtual midi keyboard (glad you asked) is yoshimi, which assigns the keys automatically to your keyboard. I was actually playing along to some music [playing in cmus] using a 25 key midi sampler. The virtual keyboard shows me which key is being pressed [a blue dot appears on the relevant key]
https://yoshimi.github.io/docs/user-guide/starting/starting.html You know what, install yoshimi and use it. It’s great fun.

Yes and no. Use case is the great definer here. This machine has been, and still is, many things; NAS, router, media server, server server, karaoke machine. Hell I even fell for that Chia Coin bingo card bullshit for about a month years back, and pressed it into service to ‘farm’ that with a big old ugly Noctua cooler sticking out of the open case.
Actually that’s a good example bc doing that shit fried the RAM and if I had been using a laptop with so-dimm and soldered it would have likely grilled the whole board.
At the moment it’s set up on a work bench desk in a corner of the drawing room where everyone in the household can finger fuck the screens if they wish and I don’t have to worry about it . When kids ask if they can play games on it they either get gzdoom or mame or sent away disappointed.
Also it is silent. I love silent computers.

I know plenty of people who don’t even use their laptop much because they’re doing everything on their phones or game consoles.

Thank you but no.

Well, I do have other computers that are much better suited for it. One of them even has its own room, laid out specifically for that purpose ;). But that’s a different post for a different sub, maybe.

Thank you. I like CRT (even if it has its quirks) but always struggled to find a use for it. Then I realised its great with an older monitor and a dumb-as-a-box-of-rocks LLM. It’s like arguing with the bomb from the film Darkstar.

Since no one had actually answered you: In roughly 30 minutes increments.

Do you wear a watch? I find it helps massively. Make a point of looking at it. I don’t know what your work situation is, or living situation, but if you feel the wire trip, time it. Go and take a thirty minute break elsewhere. Toilet, conference room, cupboard, who cares just as long as you can be by yourself, and not be bothered. Write a journal, note why you got pissed off. Simmering anger can sabotage easily because it is basically you against you. Like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies. It can also be addictive. Note that too.

Thirty minutes I guarantee it the anger will have gone.
Plan your day so when you deal with them, you get it out of the way nice and early. You don’ t need them dropping a load of shit in your lap at 4pm on a friday. Know when to be gone, if you know what I mean.