I went with Nvidia and I never really had any issues on Linux with it (I only use Linux).

AMD might be better on Linux out of the box in the sense that you can just install whatever distro and it’s going to work and with Nvidia some distros will require to install the drivers yourself or tinker one time in the terminal but it’s really not that big of a deal

But go with whatever you think is best for you.

I have graphene OS on my pixel 8. RCS works flawlessly with the Google messages app. No issues…

Personally I’d be way more concerned with using OEM Android in the West than using wechat anywhere but if it’s really an issue for you then I’d say insist on trying session or signal… One of those are probably your best options if you’re worried about being spied on…

If she’s unwilling to try them or doesn’t like them then I guess you have to settle for wechat or traditional SMS (although without RCS I find SMS to be a trip to a previous decade lol)

I have play services on one profile on mine. It’s working fine for me too. Must not apply to everyone. Not sure why but I’m not complaining lol

This only applies to people on the stock rom? Or?

I’m using graphene and not having any problems with my device.

How the hell can you be a chain smoker and run a marathon?!

I think the US would be better off to finally have a president who is one of them. Meaning not rich or famous. Just a regular working class person who isn’t well connected.

Seems like every president is rich, well connected, famous or totally bought off and they all end up running the country basically the same way. The only thing that ever changes is the surface level Idpol/who they pander to.

Btw I’d still use mint…I only switched away because I wasn’t a big fan of how much it looked like windows and how green everything was. Lol. But I was still a noob at the time and hadn’t fully comprehended how customizable Linux distros are. I could’ve changed a lot with the appearance if I knew what I was doing

Honestly. I don’t think you’re missing much. It’s not like if you go to a different distro suddenly you’re going to have all these new applications you can’t get on mint or anything.

I started with mint and played around with other distros (mostly Debian/Ubuntu & Arch based ones) and I ended up settling on an Ubuntu based distro with kde desktop.

Using something like Arch might make sense if your PC is super new as they tend to have support for the newest hardware.

At most you might want to try a different desktop environment but if you have no reason to hop I would say don’t waste your time unless you’re bored and want to experiment just for the hell of it.

there’s a site that will let you play around with different distros/desktop environments over the Web (it’s going to be slow and you can’t use a VPN when connecting) but that might be a good choice before going through the trouble of downloading a distro, flashing to USB and possibly installing it on your PC/laptop just to find out you hate it.

For your phone use “newpipe”.

For privacy on your computer use YouTube in a different browser than your main browser without logging in. For example I use brave with an ad blocker just to watch YouTube on my computer and then I go back to my main browser for my daily usage for anything that’s not a Google service/website

In my experience I’ve noticed Linux tends to (disproportionately) attract both libertarians and socialists/communists. I feel like I run into more of both within the Linux community than I do in other communities.

I started using Linux because I couldn’t force myself to use Windows 8. Up to that point I used whatever version of Windows came right before the graphical interface but 8 was too awful so I started playing with mint and never went back…

I got off the capitalism train in the middle of that but that was only because I decided to major in business and when I saw how the sausage was made I jumped ship but I didn’t know anything about socialism or communism or marxism or whatever you want to call it. I was so not into politics or economics that I literally had to search the Internet and ask people on social media what was an alternative to the crap I was reading for my classes… And then I went down that rabbit hole. If was enlightening. I learned a lot.

Also… for people who think college is Marxist indoctrination…Marx was brought up for one paragraph in one book at the very very end of my 4 years. But by that point I already knew who he was just from the rabbit hole I went down when I was curious for some alternative to what I was being taught.

I looked into this for myself but I was told a lot of what has already been said here and decided to go with a pixel + graphene OS .

I’m probably sticking with this type of setup until there’s a proper Linux phone that can be easily used as a daily driver.

I think the key is patience. One day I think we’ll have something that will be able to daily drive Linux that won’t feel like you’re using the alpha release of android.