I"m with you on copyleft, but if I had any connection to the project and felt the need to add a reaction emoji, it’d probably be a “thumbs-down” as well.

It’s not because I’m against the GPL, but because of the way the GitHub comment is written.

It doesn’t even say “you should use the GPL”, it says “you MUST say GNU doesn’t agree with you”. I’m perplexed.

Now, I respect the idea of GNU, but the way GNUers in general go about behaving themselves is perfect to alienate people, and this GitHub issue is a prime example. I don’t get it.

If people don’t know about GNU, tell them. Nicely.

If people have misconceptions about GNU, there’s nothing wrong with fixing them. Again, nicely.

The problem is, whenever I encounter GNU and however much I agree with them on key issues (which is at about 90%, my main gripe with them being Freedom 0), they just have a knack to get me, someone who is with them on most issues, annoyed at them. I can clearly see how someone who isn’t as alligned with them as I am gets equally annoyed and avoids GPL and GNU like the plague just to fuck with 'em (while fucking over everyone, including themselves). Not to mention ones into the libertarian stream, since you yourself covered that pretty well.

What the GitHub issue you linked that I keep coming back to shows is this GNU herd mentality of fucking over others unintentionally and in turn fucking over everyone. While they’re clearly better than the “libtards”, they still end up doing the same mistake.

They’re not that few and far between, as declining must be as easy as declining per the GDPR. Just report the transgressors to the national watchdog.

Yup. For me it renders fine (Thunder)

Linux Mint is the obvious “newbie” choice, and not just because everyone says so.

Now, I’m no Linux expert, but Mint is great for the huge amount of tutorials availiable. The catch is: most of them aren’t aimed at Mint itself, but Ubuntu or Debian, from which it “inherits” a lot. So, if you have a problem and can’t find a fix for Mint specifically, chances are one aimed at Ubuntu (or even Debian) will work flawlessly.

Additionally, GenAI chatbots impress me with how helpful thay are. Just by asking them how to do stuff will teach you a lot.

I highly recommend you save the info which seemed most useful somewhere for future reference. In my experience I had to do a few dozen things repeatedly and ended up remembering them. They’re mostly simple commands like apt install, apt update, apt upgrade, cd and my favourite <app_name &> which opens the app invoked without “hijacking” the terminal.

As most in the Linux community say, some things are lightning-fast to do in the terminal once you know the proper incantation.

As others said, the Mint install is incredibly simple, and much faster than the Windows one. You don’t need a guide, just reading the on-screen prompts and instructions will guide you through it. During the install I highly recommend checking the “Install proprietary drivers” box because depending on your exact hardware, some things (especially Nvidia) may not play well without it.

You will be able to do almost everything without the terminal, although many tutorials do utilize it, so using it is pretty much inevitable at some point of your Linux journey.

Now, some hearsay: I’ve heard that Windows doesn’t play nice with dual boot (although I’ve never experienced it fist hand), so you should back up your files just in case.

But, before you do that: For starting, if you’ve got the time, I’d recommend getting an old machine to dip your toes into Linux on it first without fully committing. I’d recommend you do this even though you have the Steam Deck since there are some differences between SteamOS and Mint, so it wouldn’t hurt to try.