Not so much help but hope: I got rid of Windows 11 and switched fully to Linux Mint a few weeks ago. I had no idea what I was doing but I tested things on USB and also on a very old laptop I had laying around before I made it my daily driver.

I’m not particularly a tech person. I own a small creative business and have a toddler, but I figured out what I needed to quickly. I don’t game and didnt use Winsows exclusive software so have no opinions about that.

What I didn’t expect: to actually be genuinely interested in my computer again for the first time since I was a teenager (which was not recent…). I love customizing my desktop. I love discovering new open source software. I’m learning more than I expected and it’s just a totally different relationship with the tech I use every day, in a nice way. And no more BS ads / bloat when I’m just trying to exist on my computer.

I’ll check it out, thx!

This. I had to do my attempted Linux install while my kid was napping in like my 30 mins of free time I get a day if I’m lucky

I had a bad feeling that dual booting wouldn’t be the seamless thing I hoped for. I have an old Mac laptop I might try installing on to see how I like it and decide if I’m just gonna wipe Windows entirely.

It’s incredible how shit Windows is and everyone just accepts it. It shows me ads on my lock screen FFS (and I know how to disable that cuz I’ve done it three times now and they keep coming back like a horror movie monster you didn’t behead).

We were told it was not optional coming home from an international flight last month. However, our toddler was with us and nervous and they said we could opt out for him. I said great, thanks. Picked him up while we were talking and I wasn’t really thinking about where I was holding him. The agent looked over, smiled and said hi to get their attention, and I saw him take the image, seconds after we verbally opted out. Sigh.

Oh! I just realized we have a Yolink hub connected to Ethernet, and it’s online. So yes, Ethernet is working and WiFi came back online after a router reset. Now I just need to figure out how to make sure this doesn’t happen again…

Thanks, we’re in the US and use a small local ISP that just serves our general area. I keep this account anonymous so wouldn’t give specifics.

hAP ac² router, belongs to the ISP. Unfortunately I don’t have an Ethernet cable handy to test with at the moment.

Our WiFi hasn’t come back yet so I’m probably an hour away from a really awkward phone call 😮‍💨

Pink cupcakes with green frosting. The color scheme began when we made strawberry cupcakes and our toddler asked to make the frosting green “like a leaf” so the whole cupcake looked like a strawberry. Now regardless of the flavors, he always wants those colors. I think it’s great 🤣

I’ve seen them recommended before and had been wondering about finding a trusted server to have it hosted. I’ll check out Hetzner, thx!

Link looks awesome, thanks! Do you also keep a separate cloud backup of your photos in case your server is damaged (like in a disaster or something)?

Is raspberry pi pretty easy to set up? Or if you were starting over would you go with something else? I have a windows laptop and an android phone, so that’s the extent of what I’m familiar with so far. But Immich does look so promising!

One of these days I’ll have the bandwidth to learn about self-hosting. It seems like there’s some real benefits and cool stuff out there. For now, I have a toddler taking up most of said bandwidth as well as copious amounts of photo space 😅

These things have been on my mind recently too, about public photos in general. I recently learned that you can scrub metadata from photos by messaging them to yourself on Signal first, so I’ve started doing that for photos I share online. Otherwise I just try to avoid identifying information and ask myself if I really want this to be public for eternity.

Also make sure if you don’t want to be identified, you’re posting through an account that you use to remain anonymous. So don’t reuse your username, have your personal email connected to the account, etc. Or post things that could be tied to you / your location using the same account.