neo [he/him]

You’ve got a back room and you’re not using it as a cool-ass hackerspace?

I have NOT tried this but according to https://massgrave.dev/change_windows_edition you can change the windows edition. I would not try it without backing up my most important files, regardless. I don’t use Windows so the opportunity for me to try it doesn’t exist, but the option is good to keep in mind.

Bazzite works pretty well and the ublue ecosystem is pretty cool, but there are unfortunately sometimes “decision-making strategies” you must employ. As an example, say you want to install yt-dlp. What’s the best path?

• rpm-ostree is not advised, such that you don’t want to modify the core system, even though Fedora keeps yt-dlp up-to-date. So this would technically work fine.
• brew installs yt-dlp but also a bunch of other stuff. Notably, you get an entirely second copy of Python.
• Distrobox/toolbox works well, but now you have a whole OS container. Just for one command?
• PIP is yet another way to install it, but using a lot of pip can lead to an insane python dependency hell (and it seems that if you want a self-deployed application pipx is the play, but you’ll have to set that up yourself)
• Manually downloading yt-dlp to avoid the drawbacks of the above, with the drawback of have to remember to update it yourself.

That said, I’m using Bazzite on my Steam Deck in particular because it allows me to have full disk encryption, which is mandatory for me because I use it as a generic computer and not just as a steam appliance. And also because with Bazzite the maintenance I personally have to do for it is about as minimal as SteamOS.

Proprietary software is a complete infringement of human dignity and freedom. Desktop Linux is also better now than it has ever been. In fact, given the direction of the latest versions of Windows and macOS, it is in many ways a better experience than those. I won’t lie and say Linux is unequivocally better in every way, though.