I have a feeling most people click the maximum privacy “hide from contacts” option at the start, probably not thinking it through. And that means you wouldn’t be able to see them. You can try searching manually as that sometimes seems to find them.

That said, when I asked people who texted me “do you have Signal?” I think about 50% said yes and the other 50% were able to download it without issue.

I waited years for it, but now that everyone is on Signal it doesn’t excite me.

Nothing wrong with Ubuntu, but it’s interface is definitely geared more towards Mac folks.

My recommendation for someone making the jump to full time Linux is Fedora Kinoite. It’s “immutable” meaning impossible to break, and uses KDE Plasma, which is like the modern Windows you’ve always wanted.

Again nothing wrong with Ubuntu, it’s great and will run on the hardware you mentioned, but if you are someone who wants to tweak settings without fear of breaking something somewhere else, I really recommend Kinoite.

Privacy.com is easy, too.

Weird, I don’t have a new AI sidebar and I’m running the latest version.

Well you’re in luck because the translation feature is local https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/website-translation

Don’t get me wrong I hate LLMs being shoved down our throats, but I think the “Mozilla using AI” stuff is overblown. The few LLM features they’ve implemented are useful and non-intrusive. I actually think it’s a rare example of the tech being used intelligently (no pun intended).

A nas or home server with one of them is a great idea

It’s the “just works” distro for people who want to play games.

It’s been flawless for me with similar performance (slightly better in some areas) than Windows.

Very cool thanks for pointing them out, I will look into them.

Can you explain more? What are ublue scripts and what makes them so handy? I’m still new to this space.

To my knowledge Bazzite is basically SteamOS with more flexibility under the hood if you’re looking for it. By default it boots right into big picture mode. I imagine if you get an HDMI-CEC dongle it would work great as an HTPC once you get Big Picture set up with the streaming apps.

Kinoite is also great and usually what I recommend someone coming from Windows who wants a distro that “Just works”.

Bazzite is great. I wish I’d tried it sooner. It is great for a “steam machine” or just as a very stable regular desktop.

Wow he actually went with Mint and not some niche distro!

It’s theoretically possible but difficult to actually do. China has a large central government and surveillance state, VPNs are essentially banned there, and yet a large percentage of the population uses them daily to the point where it’s commonplace.

Well, it is rebellious.

Linux holds a 63% share of global server infrastructure.

How is that not 95%?

As others have suggested it is probably smarter to just backup windows onto a portable hard drive, or you could do Windows2Go which is finicky but do-able.

Also you didn’t ask what distro, but I have been enjoying Fedora Kinoite it’s a very smooth transition (and improvement) from Windows.