I like the way Pop!_OS looks. Not gonna pretend it’s the best. But as far as default UIs, it clicked with the most. Default gnome seemed too spartan and all of the Windows-like DEs remind me too much of Windows. Which I don’t like. If that makes sense.

That’s a great idea. Do you have it persist between sessions? Like one server #1 it’s always green?

Hey that’s super helpful, thank you. Definitely going to try this out.

I’m still a beginner myself, but from my experience I’d say skip Nextcloud at least to start with. I found even the AIO version confusing to set up. Hell, I still do. I have the NextcloudPi image running on a Pi4 but am actively looking for a replacement because it runs like crap on that hardware and I don’t need all of the features it offers/tries to cram into one service.

I’m leaning towards FileRun. Yeah, you have to pay for it once. But so far it seems to be the best alternative that doesn’t try to do too much. And yes, I tried Owncloud Infinite Scale, before everyone jumps on me :)

Oh nice! I’ll check it out.

Thanks for the suggestions. I’ll try them out. One thing that I hate is critical for me is integration with Android auto. It’s the last Google service I can’t seem to quit. Might have to give up and just roll with Bluetooth instead.

I want to leave too, but I really like PlexAmp for my music streaming. And no, Finamp doesn’t work nearly as well or look as nice.

Wai Wai World 2 on Famicom emulator. Don’t need to know any Japanese to play and it has great cartoony sprites.

Bubble Bobble (NES) is great two player, though you’re competing

Buster Bros (PsOne, and probably others) probably one of my top 5 co-op games of all time

Micro Mages (retro despite being released in 2019 because it plays on original NES hardware) probably top co-op of all time for me

There’s quite a bit more but have various degrees of violence so won’t recommend those (Contra, Heavy Barrel, Silk Worm, Jackal, Life Force, etc)

Same. I love that mail, calendar, contacts, notes, and files are all in one snappy app. I left proton because their android app was soooooo slow on android.

I do love me some gruvbox. First thing I switch with a new install of Obsidian, or anything else that has it…

Notesnook might work for you.

I have spent so much time professionally in Windows over the years that when I decided to switch it had to look nothing like it. So Mint is out. Kde as a whole really. Vanilla gnome looks kinda sterile to me. So I ended up with Pop!_OS and have been happy so far.

Fastmail is my favorite. I tried Proton but the android app is awful. Tuta seems decent, if a bit messy. But Fastmail got my money for 2 reasons:

1. Not Google or Microsoft
2. Email, contacts, calendar, notes, and files are all in a single app. Didn’t realize I’d care about that until I tried it.

Do you have a Gigabyte motherboard in your PC? I’m battling the same with Pop!_OS that is related to Gigabyte mobos of a certain model. There is a fix, but I havent been able to get it to work and haven’t had time to find out why.

Specifically the B550 model(s).

I dumped Proton because the apps are awful on Android. Particularly the Mail app (even the new one. Prepaid for 3 years, didn’t cancel fast enough, now I have store credit for a company I don’t want to support. Neat!

Awful app

That’s where I went. Happy with my choice. Almost 2 years now.

I was poking around the Raspberry imager utility and they had RISC OS, which is and old operating system that was apparently fairly popular in the UK, but I’d never heard of it in the US. I loaded it up on my Pi 1 and had fun exploring it. Not exactly useful, but cool to mess with: RISC OS

Seafile. It’s super fast and lightweight. There are some caveats though:

• Data is stored in git-like chunks on the server side. There is Seafuse and Sea drive functions that you can leverage to “assemble” the data on server side for backups. I personally use rclone mount, then backup.

• Paywall hiding some features. The community edition is free but is missing some features that pro has. Pro edition is free for 3 or less users.

• Documentation isn’t great. The forum is active so that’s helpful, but some of the docs take some time to understand

• Chinese owned. As far as I can tell, there is no call home for a self hosted server, so I don’t think it’s a worry in that case.

All that said, I like it much better than Syncthing for it’s selective sync. All files on each client are synced to the server. But unlike Syncthing, it doesn’t sync all data with each client. This is vital for me with some devices with small storage drives, so I would t want all files to sync. Yet I can still reach to the server from any client and pull data from any other client. Syncthing has an ignore flag, but that seemed way more trouble to setup than just sticking with Seafile.

I work from home, so the last thing I want to do on my leisure time is sit at the same desk I’ve sat at for the last 8 hrs. So I lounge on the couch and play through my huge steam deck library. It is not a cheap device, to be sure. But I felt it was absolutely worth it for me.