I have Joplin with Nextcloud sync. It works fine for me! It’s got a desktop app and a mobile app with, in my opinion, pretty good UI. Markdown support, syncing between devices, etc. are all there. You don’t need to connect to the network to view notes, a local copy is saved.

for me Fedora Workstation installed fine, even when dual-booting (you have to “shrink” the Windows partition first) and it works great for me. The only slightly annoying thing is that many guides and how-tos use a debian based distro vs red hat/fedora based one (apt vs dnf, .deb vs .rpm)

Woah Ctrl R looks super cool, never knew that I could do that before…

If you do want to install Linux, #1 thing you must do is BACKUP YOUR DATA. On the cloud, in a USB drive, an external SSD, etc. backup your data!

Linux will definitely be a breath of fresh air. I recently switched and I enjoy not being begged to use a Microsoft account, Office, Bing, CoPilot, and especially OneDrive. Linux is also super customisable, you can easily get icon packs and themes without faffing about with sketchy programs. Also, depending on the hardware, you might also get some performance improvements.

99% of things, for me, work on Linux. If your games run with the Steam Deck they should run fine with most distributions. The 1% of the time when something does not work includes OBS being stuttery due to driver issues (I had to go hunting for that, but it works fine now), but other than that Linux has been pretty smooth sailing.

I did not know that, interesting. Modern Edge is based on Chromium too, so there’s two I guess.

Would it not be Edge, MIcrosoft’s own browser? You have their Bing search results too…

But when you grow a new potato, it won’t be the same potato…right?

Really? Damn, I did not that. English is a weird language.

I don’t want to be that guy, but ‘s is for possession, or when it is short for “is”, like what’s or how’s being what is and how is. Just a plain s for plural, never ‘s. I don’t get how so many people get this wrong, it’s not that hard.

You could always group your feeds. I have mine grouped based on topic (news, science, technology, etc.) but I guess you could always group them based on political spectrum.

sure, why not? This is a theoretical after all

1. ALWAYS backup your data

If you want to have a distro tailored for gaming, Bazzite is a popular choice. I would recommend that if you want better driver compatibility. Another good all-round pption is Fedora. I personally use Workstation as I prefer GNOME more, but if you don’t like GNOME, the KDE version is also there.

One thing is that I’m pretty sure OpenOffice isn’t maintained anymore, so you might want to switch to LibreOffice, a fork of OpenOffice. I also like OnlyOffice as it has better compatibility with MS office files and has all three apps bundled into one. LibreOffice is still good though, and is community-maintained as well. A nice alternative for Photoshop would be GIMP. If you use Illustrator, I personally use Inkscape and it’s been great.

What? Broccoli tastes good though…

ok

You could catch so many top secret agents discussing their top secret plans!

There’s also superpain, but I don’t think many would want that…

o ok. I made an edit

oh god, win12 is going to be even worse

oops, one more thing, an easier way to get to bios without figuring out your bios key is, from windows, find “restart with advanced options” (it’s in the “restore and backup” section) which will restart directly into the bios.

1. choose your distribution. If you want something similar to Windows 10, go for Mint Cinnamon as it’s user-friendly and easy to set up. If you like gaming (considering it’s an Asus ROG you have there) go for Bazzite. You can either go with KDE Plasma (which is more customisable and, out of the box, looks similar to Win10) or GNOME (which looks clean and more like MacOS with a new coat of libadwaita paint). If you want something that looks really clean but don’t really game go for Fedora Workstation (that’s what I use), which has a nice implementation of GNOME. There’s a bunch of others like Pop! OS (also popular with gamers) and, of course, Ubuntu (which uses its own customised version of GNOME). Kubuntu is a KDE version of Ubuntu.

TLDR: Mint Cinnamon if you want something familiar and Win10-like, Bazzite if you want to game (given it’s an ROG), Fedora Workstation if you like GNOME but don’t really game. Pop! OS, Ubuntu, and Kubuntu are also both good options too depending on your preferences.

edit: I guess not Mint? Go for either Fedora (KDE or Workstation is fine) or Bazzite (if you focus on gaming)

2. If you would like to try out a few different distros before picking one, I would highly recommend “VenToy”. Just install it in a USB drive (making sure the USB drive doesn’t have any important data and/or it has been backed up as it will be erased on installation) and put all the downloaded ISOs (which can be found on the websites of each distribution, if you find two options select x86 or amd64 (the two are the same), that will be compatible with your ROG. Bazzite also gives you options depending on what GPU you have to install the correct drivers!) on the Ventoy drive.

Then, restart your computer with the drive plugged in and press your bios key (usually f2, f10, or f12, sometime it’s escape. I usually just press all if them and hope for the best lol). Go to the section where you can choose where to boot into, and boot into the ventoy drive (usually labelled as the model of usb drive you have) Then you will get the Ventoy menu and you can select a distribution to try out. Play around in it, but remember nothing is save as it is running off of the Usb drive!

If you already know what distribution and desktop you want to use, you don’t need to bother with ventoy and can just use either rufus or balenaetcher to write your chosen ISO which can be found on the websites of each distribution, if you find two options select x86 or amd64 (the two are the same), that will be compatible with your ROG. Bazzite also gives you options depending on what GPU you have to install the correct drivers!)

As with Ventoy, make sure your drive doesn’t contain any important data as it will be overwritten. After you set up your drive, you can boot into it with your bios key and select the USB drive at the boot device. That, like VenToy, will allow you to play around in a demo version of the distribution.

3. Once you find a distribution you like, double click “install” and go through the installation steps. MAKE SURE YOUR DATA FROM WINDOWS IS BACKED UP (either on the cloud or a separate USB drive/an external ssd) AS IT WILL BE LOST AFTER INSTALLATION.

The installation steps are pretty intuitive, just select your region, keyboard layout, language, wifi network (if you have that), etc. If you come across any prompt relating to disk management and partitions, click the option that lets the distribution handle where everything goes and select overwrite everything given you don’t want to leave any Windows behind. MAKE SURE YOUR DATA FROM WINDOWS IS BACKED UP IT IS REALLY IMPORTANT

Continue with the installation, and once you’re finished, it will notify you to remove the USB drive and the device will restart. Boom, you now have linux installed.

4. Some distros have post-install steps you have to do as well, so you might have to do that.

For apps, you can either install using the terminal (it’s less scary and more magical the more I use it) using “sudo apt install (program name)” or “sudo dnf install (program name)” for Fedora.

Some apps are available as flatpak (using “flatpak install” - see that sudo is not required!), which in a nutshell, is a form of package that is universally compatible with any distro, all dependencies are bundled in with each package, and the apps are sandboxed. General rule of thumb is CLI apps, drivers, etc. using apt or dnf while desktop apps are fine to use flatpak. I like to use apt or dnf wherever I can as sometimes flatpaks have issues with communicating with each other due to the sandboxing, but that’s because I use a lot of programming and development specific apps. This probably won’t be much of an issue for you.

Many distros like Mint and Fedora offer a software installers that are GUI based, but I would reckon use the command line as the GUI software maangers are slow and is the same thing under the hood anyways.