1. Does the distro I pick matter?
   Packages
   When you install a distro it will have repositories of apps that you can easily install and easily keep updated using either the GUI (GNOME Software for GNOME, Discover for KDE) or the package manager in terminal (dnf in Fedora, apt in kubuntu and mint). It’s similar to how you install apps on a smartphone.
   The good thing about the apps from the default repository is that they’re (in theory) tested to work well with the distro.
   You can also install applications from other sources when necessary.
   Update Frequency and new tech
   Another difference is how new kernel and software you get from the repos.
   The latest Debian Stable runs kernel 6.1 while Fedora just updated to 6.12 and arch has been running 6.12 since december.
   If you’re running the newest hardware then the chance of having drivers available automatically increases with a newer kernel.

2. Company-run distros and alternatives:
   In my opinion Ubuntu is the ones doing the most forcing as of now, and even they are angels compared to Microsoft.
   Fedora had discussions about including opt-out Telemetry to aid them getting data to improve the distro. They listened to community feedback and backpedaled that into opt-in metrics:
   https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/Telemetry
   https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/Metrics
   Debian and Arch are both examples of distros without enterprise involvement and that have no upstream distro that can affect their releases.
   Map of distros here: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Linux_Distribution_Timeline.svg

3. Stability of the distro:
   Of your frontrunners I’ve only run Fedora but that has been stable and been working well for me for my primary PC. So has Debian which I run on my servers (I have a Debian VM running Portainer for dockers, one for running Jellyfin and a third for Forgejo).

4. Monitor support
   Multi monitor support
   I don’t have the desktop space for double monitors personally, but I’ve heard that KDE 6 (Plasma) handles multi monitor support well.
   HDR
   Should be working since November

• https://9to5linux.com/kde-plasma-6-2-4-re-enables-hdr-mode-for-users-on-nvidia-565-and-linux-6-11

5. Both KDE and GNOME are customizable. KDE is more similar to Windows and I realized that most of my GNOME customizations was to make it more similar to Windows and KDE. I’ve since switched to KDE and must say I really enjoy having a proper file browser as default. Nautilus (default GNOME file browser) has been simplified to death and caused me to create a script to replace it with nemo.

Nvidia is a whole lot simpler to use than people make it sound like, though I’ll stay team red:
https://rpmfusion.org/Howto/NVIDIA#Current_GeForce.2FQuadro.2FTesla
Fedora guide for Nvidia drivers unless you’re running a really old card:

sudo dnf update -y # Update your machine and reboot
sudo dnf install akmod-nvidia # Installs the driver
sudo dnf install xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-cuda #optional for cuda/nvdec/nvenc support (required for Davinci Resolve)  

• Gaming including emulation
  First person shooters with kernel intrusive Anticheat won’t work in Linux as they expect to spy on a Windows OS.
  Other than that gaming on Linux is really getting there as I’m sure you’ve realized when using a Steamdeck.
  Outside of Steam you have Heroic Games Launcher, Lutris and Bottles for running windows games on Linux.
  I’m mostly using Lutris but I think Heroic Games launcher is the more popular one.
• Firefox
  Default browser in most distros
• VLC
  Available in most default distro repositories.
• Spotify
  Available as a Flatpak on Flathub, haven’t used it myself.
• Discord
  I know people has had some trouble with screen sharing but that the DiscordCanary (think Beta version) solves it.
  https://github.com/flathub/com.discordapp.Discord/issues/380
• Godot
  Can be downloaded as a simple bin file from their own site: https://godotengine.org/download/linux/
  Also available as a Flatpak on Flathub
• Visual Studio
  The closest you get is VSCode.
• Git
  Not a problem.
• Photoshop cs6, audacity, davinci resolve
  Photoshop might be trouble, Audacity and Davinci Resolve should work.
• Misc “Tinkering” (Handbrake, dvd burners/rippers, Really any weird thing I come across that I want to tinker with)
  Handbrake is available as a Flatpak on Flathub, there’s dvd burner applications available too.

Regarding HoudiniFX it seems they have Linux installs, and a free (with watermark) version for hobbyists - https://www.sidefx.com/products/houdini-apprentice/
Other than that I’d say Blender is the goto app, showing up as one of the most popular apps in the Discover app.

My recommendation would be to use clonezilla or a similar tool to make an image of your windows install and save that on the external ssd.
Then I would install Fedora KDE or whatever’s your poison on the internal drive.
If you wanna switch back to windows then you can always use clonezilla, or your tool of choice, to restore the image.
You could also use KVM/Qemu in your linux distro to restore the image into a windows vm.
virt-manager gives you a desktop gui while cockpit + cockpit-machines gives you a nice webui for handling virtual machines in linux.

Clonezilla guide, for both linux and windows
https://www.linuxbabe.com/backup/how-to-use-clonezilla-live

Both Cockpit and Virt-Manager are available in Fedora KDE’s Discover app if you prefer GUI installs:
Cockpit

Virt-Manager

Linux Routing Fundamentals

Linux has been a first class networking citizen for quite a long time now. Every system running a Linux kernel out of the box has at least three routing tables and is supporting multiple mechanisms for advanced routing features from policy based routing (PBR), to VRFs(-lite), and network namespaces (NetNS). Each of these provide different levels or separation and features, with PBR being the oldest one and VRFs the most recent addition (starting with kernel 4.3).

This article is the first part of the Linux Routing series and will provide an overview of the basics and plumbings of Linux routing tables, what happens when an IP packet is sent from or through a Linux box, and how to figure out why. It’s the baseline for future articles on PBR, VRFs, and NetNSes, their differences as well and applications.

Shooter had a hunting license and used his own hunting weapon for the attack. He had no known affiliations with criminals and had no criminal records of his own. He had no income during 2023 according to his tax statements.

Source https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/det-har-vet-vi-om-misstankte-garningsmannen-i-orebro

Note that the Qur’an burnings is not what they were on trial for, but for what was said during the events.
Also, Tingsrätten is filled with laymen and almost always appealed in these kind of cases.

Criticism: Bundling together

Freedom of expression expert Nils Funcke believes that there are still question marks about how far freedom of expression extends.

– If you look at what Momika and Najem say in the transcription found in the preliminary investigation, I would say that Najem speaks about the Koran, about Muhammad and about the religion of Islam, and I think that falls within a broad freedom of expression.
I think that Najem and Momika’s statements are lumped together and thus Najem is blamed for what Momika said.

According to Mark Safaryan, Salwan Najem’s lawyer, the verdict will be appealed.

https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/stockholm/nu-faller-domen-efter-koranbranningar-i-stockholm

Uconsole bigger one - https://www.clockworkpi.com/home-devterm

Beepberry - https://beepy.sqfmi.com/
https://liliputing.com/beepberry-is-a-79-hackable-pocket-computer-kit-with-a-blackberry-keyboard/

Colorberry - https://www.elecrow.com/colorberry.html
https://github.com/hyphenlee/colorberry

PC Pilet old but cool looking one - https://soulscircuit.com/pilet
https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/pilet-mini-pi-5-modular-computer/

ESP32 - ESP32 is a SoC, example of handheld using it is the LILYGO T-Deck Plus - https://lilygo.cc/products/t-deck-plus-1
https://linuxgizmos.com/updated-t-deck-plus-an-esp32-handheld-device-with-gps-and-lora-support/

Mecha Comet with the switchable keyboards - https://mecha.so/comet
https://www.geeky-gadgets.com/modular-linux-handheld-mecha-comet/

Some links to help checking out the handhelds mentioned.

And here’s some more info about the disgusting law that came into force this friday:
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/12/iran-new-compulsory-veiling-law-intensifies-oppression-of-women-and-girls/

It has more functionality
https://obsproject.com/kb/obs-studio-overview

As long as you make yourself some aliases for your common ffmpeg commands including flags I’m sure it’s gonna work out fine. Using something like OBS is gonna make it a lot easier of course.

The report in question:
https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/sites/default/files/documents/antimicrobial-consumption-ESAC-Net-annual-epidemiological-report-2023_0.pdf

And the data on usage:

They say nothing about their distro having no upstream. If they make a distro based of Debian/Arch/Fedora I don’t see that as dismissing their efforts anymore than Nobara/SteamOS/Ubuntu/Mint does.

I rather they enforce their requirements on their own spin then try to force existing distros to implement said reqs. They should obviously donate to the foss community when using the technology the community maintain though!

All those wives and girlfriends in denial even though the rape is documented with photos and video. Kudos to Gisèle for making the trial public.

In some cases they look for generic virtual hw devices, in other cases things like available cpu flags or BIOS version.
There are ways to hide it though:
https://github.com/zhaodice/qemu-anti-detection
https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/how-do-i-hide-the-fact-to-windows-that-it-runs-in-a-vm.115627/

No idea to be honest, been a long time since I ran Windows at home.

Can always use the Windows 10 LTSC 2021 iso to create the Windows To Go. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/download-windows-10-enterprise
Getting a proper license is gonna be impossible as a private consumer though, or well you can probably find someone selling the product keys online for cheap but that isn’t a real sales channel and it could suddenly become deactivated by Microsoft. I can find sites illegally selling them for as low as $14 when doing a quick search.

The real way to get the license is to sign up for their Volume Licensing Program.
Windows Enterprise LTSC is available in the per-user and per-device model, depending on the Volume Licensing program through which it’s acquired.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/whats-new/windows-licensing#windows-desktop-offerings-available-through-commercial-licensing
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/licensing/vlsc-faqs-home-page

Using Rufus (https://rufus.ie/en/) and a fast USB thumbdrive, such as Kingston DataTraveler Max - https://www.storagereview.com/review/kingston-datatraveler-max-review, you can make a “Windows To Go” installation.

Now you have a Windows install that you can boot directly from the thumbdrive when the need arise.
Perfect for booting up if your bios can’t updated directly from the usb drive and forces you into Windows, or to run that one software you can’t replace just yet and that refuses your attempts to run with wine.

Just make sure that it’s an ssd usb thumbdrive or it’s gonna be too slow to be any use.

Personally I’ve upvoted the replies as they keep a relevant and interesting discussion going.

I believe that both proprietary non-free systems and fully free systems can exist and that having licensing alternatives like GPL, LGPL and MIT gives the developer options for specifying how their software is to be used.

The movement towards using MIT or LGPL instead of the full GPL for libraries thus allowing the developers using the libraries the freedom to choose what license their software should use is one I can stand behind.

If someone builds a FLOSS turbotax competitor and don’t want anyone to use their hard work and fork it into a commercial and proprietary product then I believe there should be a license for that.
If they rather earn money from it and copyrights their code instead that is also their prerogative.
The middle-ground where they create a free turbotax competitor with a license that allows others to fork it into a proprietary software should also be possible - although I personally don’t see the allure.

That question is kind a rabbit hole and not one I feel confident in going down.

Free as in freedom, not as in free beer.
The real world implications of non-free software is that other’s can’t run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software.

I like having computing alternatives that are free from corporate control and believe that the hardliners like FSF helps us keep those alternatives alive. I realise that those alternatives are in many ways worse and that a lot of hardware today requires the vendor blobs to work. When/If corporations push their control even further I want those alternatives to be around.

And you really should pay for winrar. ;-)