Envious, that sounds like a great experience. Trial by doing is probably the best way for most people to learn. I’m very verbal, but even for me, reading things doesn’t necessarily make it stick any easier.

Thanks for reminding me to set up Timeshift on my EndeavourOS install, salute to you.

I mean, I’m just one reference point, but here we go. I started with Kubuntu – I liked KDE, and Ubuntu is a stable, LTS distro. What could go wrong?

But my PC is Intel/Nvidia, so I’m constantly facing driver issues, and not to mention, snap is completely fucked. Ubuntu is supposed to be LTS but I’ve somehow still got 2-4 GB of updates every day or two. I’ve also got random bugs here and there and no real idea of how to troubleshoot them because the support is disparate or doesn’t address my specific issue.

Meanwhile, on my Chrultrabook, I decided to go with Arch, which of course presented its own set of issues. The archinstall script was straightforward, and debugging it was also fairly easy since the Arch wiki and forums were a trove of information. But debugging and tinkering, even when I accidentally bricked my laptop and had to do a clean slate (don’t ever interrupt pacman, I’ve learned!), has been a great learning experience. It’s made me feel like I actually understand a little more of what goes on under the hood. Ubuntu could do that as well, but it isn’t meant to be design.

Neither is good nor bad on its own, but different people enjoy different things. I didn’t think I would be the type to enjoy Arch, but it gave me valuable experience and a fun project (even if I did end up staying up until 3 or 4 AM on work nights). I’ve got EndeavourOS on my laptop now and still Kubuntu on my PC, but I’m wondering if I shouldn’t just switch over. Arch/eOS being a rolling release feels nice too, as I’m doing all these updates on Ubuntu anyway, but I’m slightly more worried about fucking something up.

That is pretty much how I feel - like I’m putting out the fires every day, but not actually progressing on what I want or plan to do. It’s a tough balancing act that I’m still trying to figure out… time management is a tough skill to learn when it doesn’t come easily or naturally.

Unfortunately, a lot of official government services and representatives are still using it. I saw someone reference a Twitter post about that Canadian plane crash, for instance.

Thanks for bringing up the quadrants. I’ve been aware of them but feel like I haven’t been using them optimally to figure out how to best focus my time and energy. Somehow I didn’t realize important/non-urgent was the primary one to focus on…

I disable notifications for most of my apps anyway, but the neural connections are still there and hard to undo. Breaking them is a long process in my experience… or maybe I reinforce them too much still.

That and the upgradeable storage… as soon as I can figure out how to solve my partition issues.

I got a secondhand Kobo on eBay for less than $100, almost in new condition (the seller just forgot to include the charging cable, but luckily I had plenty of spare micro-USB cables). It’s a 2018 model, but it has 8 GB of storage, plenty for most people, and a nice 6" 300 PPI screen with warm light and dark mode. It’s more than sufficient.

Point being, alternatives are out there. reMarkable and Boox aren’t exactly equivalent devices, since those are meant as more e-ink note-taking tablets, not dedicated e-readers. You could probably find a 2018 Kobo Clara HD for around $40-50 used nowadays as well… and it has more features than the equivalent 2018 Kindle.