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Joined 1 month ago
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Cake day: June 5th, 2025

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  • This brings up an excellent point about addiction. A quick longer than I’d planned anecdote: over the last few years I’ve nearly completely dumped all social media (and big tech in general). Facebook, Insta, Twitter, all gone. The only social for the last few years I’ve had left was Reddit, and I dumped that a couple months ago (all social media is toxic, I learned).

    I swapped Reddit for Lemmy a few months ago and noticed a huge difference, not just the fewer toxic people, but in the lack of posts overall by comparison. I found myself scrolling through the same Lemmy posts throughout the day, my brain trying to repeat the cycle from Reddit, but stayed strong and didn’t go back to Reddit haha.

    Anyway, there’s still toxicity on Lemmy, and I realized how much it affects me without the cloud of all the other socials bogging it down. Not a lot, but enough. So I made a decision and went back to my old nerd days. I didn’t want to miss out on legit articles I was interested in from social media so I set up an rss reader. I started checking out Lemmy in the morning, and my rss throughout the day, which doesn’t update often.

    What I found at first was I was re-checking lemmy, re-loading rss, and thinking about what else I can put on my phone to scratch that itch. I was (am) still addicted to the dopamine hit of forever-feeds of useless garbage. So instead, I picked up a book. It’s been a long time, and it’s a slow adjustment, but wow is it ever so much better. Aside from some small interaction on Lemmy in the morning like this, I don’t see comments anymore, I read the info I’m interested in reading and make my own judgments without comments trying to sway me, and use my former doom-scrolling time to read a book.

    To sum up, you’re absolutely right. Addiction is a bitch and the average person doesn’t even realize they’re addicted.












  • Appreciate the advice, I’ll look into it more. I didn’t even think about an external cam haha. I use the laptop cam daily to video call family, I used to use Google home hubs for that but since I’ve deleted my Google account and stopped using the hubs I switched to Signal on the laptop. I’ll consider an external cam, though it’s not ideal. I’ll start digging again for options with Samsung chips.



  • As far as my main PC, I’m a freelance voice actor, artist, and musician. My main concern is recording software and to a lesser extent, art software (I’ve tried Inkscape, but it’s a hard transition from photoshop). For recording I really don’t like Reaper, and I use Audition (I know, Adobe, haha) and Cubase for music which unfortunately doesn’t have a Linux option.

    As per the laptop, it had some standard driver issues which were no big deal but apparently Mint doesn’t play well with Nvidia graphics cards. The webcam didn’t work but that’s a semingly standard issue. The biggest thing was Samsung chips and such from what I read really don’t play well with Linux, or at least Mint.


  • This is my plan going forward. Linux wasn’t on my radar when I bought my laptop (and my PC but that’s a different story about just being scared to try since I use it for work and I’m not convinced Linux has comparable software I need).

    I got a wicked sale on a Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Ultra, and of course a few months after I started cutting BIg Tech out of my life (I was an idiot for buying Samsung to begin with but too late now haha). No more Meta, Amazon, or Google accounts or devices for me, and all I have left of Big Tech is Microsoft on my laptop and PC. I tried Mint as my first Linux attempt, and put it on my Samsung laptop. It…didn’t play well unfortunately. I’ve read Bazzite may work better but haven’t tried it yet.

    Moral of the story, you nailed it. Going forward every bit of tech I buy will be vetted for FOSS support first.