Imagine if OP asked: “I want to repair/maintain my own car, but I don’t want to open the hood or get under the car. What are my options?”

Obviously there would be some options, but those options would be very limited and not ideal. This is very similar. Self-hosting, like self-repair of a vehicle, requires some foundational knowledge and understanding of your specific hardware, usecase, and needs, as well as the knowledge and ability to bring those things to fruition. There is no single universal answer that applies to everyone, but those skills can be acquired by anyone.

I don’t think self-hosting is any more doomed than self-repair of a vehicle. It’s certainly not for everyone, but it can be satisfying, rewarding, enjoyable, and generally optimized for those who choose to participate.

For those, like me, who wondered how much data was written in 400 picoseconds, the answer is a single bit.

If I’m doing the math correctly, that’s write speeds in the 10s-100s GBps range.

The article highlights on device AI processing. Could be game changing in a lot of ways.

Interesting and good to know, thank you for the info! I haven’t run into that issue with synapse yet, but I’m also running it in a docker container on an enterprise server. I also don’t currently have any chat rooms with more than 5 or so users, and I imagine that is also a factor.

How does this differ from something like synapse?

The simplest answer is no. Making fun of someone because of neurodivergence is the action of a bully, not someone who is nervous and unsure of how to express their attraction.

I’m not in your shoes, and I only have a limited view into the situation. As an outside observer, I would recommend at the very least establishing boundaries against screaming and belittling your neurodivergence (i.e. Saying plainly that behavior is not OK), or cutting off all contact entirely if possible.

Things will likely only further degrade otherwise, and his behavior will only continue to be hurtful and manipulative.

It sounds like Karl still has a lot of internal struggles and identity issues. I would recommend not getting too close to him until he can work through those things, especially in light of what it sounds like is rather poor treatment towards you.

You deserve someone who unambiguously cares for you and treats you well. He likely doesn’t even know how he feels about you, but because he is comfortable with you, feels like he can safely use you as his punching bag while he works through his internal emotions.

If he’s able to put in the work and overcome his struggles, he won’t make you feel like garbage and it will be infinitely easier to ask if he has romantic feelings towards you. If he continues to act like a jerk, or flip flop between friendly and hostile, there are far too many people in this world that are more worthy of your time and energy.

I also don’t use Mint personally, but based on their releases page, it looks like they follow the Ubuntu LTS releases. The latest LTS version of Ubuntu is already being used for Mint 22.1, so I wouldn’t expect to see Gimp 3 until the next LTS release in April of 2026.

Debian based distros are notorious for using old, but known stable packages. That’s kind of their whole thing. If you want the latest and greatest, look for a rolling release based distro.

Sorry for the late reply. The optiplex is absolutely sold as a desktop, but I’ve been using it as a server for a couple of years. Very small, quiet, and it sips power, but it only has support for 2 2.5" SATA drives (though it does have plenty of USB 3 ports if you don’t mind using external storage). TrueNAS installed on it would be similar to your Synology setup (without the vendor lock in), though not nearly as convenient as the front bays you’re used to.

It’s yours if you want it, but no worries otherwise.

That would be awesome. I have a Dell Optiplex 7040 Micro that might be better suited for your needs after you play around with the big server. Maybe we could trade?

Depending on where you’re located I would happily pay for shipping.

If you don’t want it, I’ll take it off your hands. I have a rack designed for that kind of hardware and all of the infrastructure to fully support it.

I would recommend editing your fstab and use the USB drive’s UUID to mount it to a consistent location. That way, even if you reboot or disconnect the drive and the reconnect it to, say, a different USB port, it will always mount to the same mountpoint.

See this page from the arch wiki for more info.

is there a Linux… idk what to call it, type? OS? Thing??? that runs out of the box without me having to install additional software manually or at least automatic setup wizards

The word you are looking for is called a distribution, or distro for short.

I’m surprised no one else has mentioned Bazzite, which should be exactly what you’re looking for.

is there any specific hardware that works easier with Linux

An AMD GPU for sure. Nvidia drivers have come a long way, but they don’t generally behave as well out of the box like AMD.

Not from the US but currently living here. I would say the Disability Act is the gold standard worldwide. The amount of consideration for people with a variety of disabilities that almost universally applies is exceptionally amazing. It’s kind of shocking to see the dedication to adhering to that law while otherwise abandoning that portion of the population (e.g. Healthcare, SSDI, etc.).

That really depends on your use case and how valuable web search is for your daily life.

I’ve personally tried Google, Bing, DDG, Brave search, and ChatGPT. Kagi is consistently able to find what I’m searching for more quickly and accurately than anything else, which has been very valuable for me in my personal and professional life.

It’s easily worth the cost in result quality and time saving for me personally, but that doesn’t mean the same will apply to you or anyone else.

As far as stand out features, there aren’t really any that I can think of. It just gives me the results I’m looking for without any bullshit to wade through.

It’s a very minor annoyance and well worth it in my opinion.

I was searching for a book quote for over a year. I tried every search engine, tried changing the terms, checking back several times every few weeks or so, but couldn’t find anything even close. I tried kagi and it was literally the very first result on my very first search.

I haven’t looked back and have never had an issue finding what I’m searching for since.

I use playlet on roku which uses invidious, but I recommend setting up your own invidious instance since YouTube has been cracking down on the public instances.

After reading the article I’m pretty sure it’s the former. It’s an inkjet printer with “advanced print head technology,” whatever that’s supposed to mean.

I’m sick with my laser printer for documents and dye-sub for photos.