So I bought my SP3 in '17 as an old-ass student attempting to graduate. It was amazing as I was able to disable most cloudy things (nothing like today with 365 and the general cloud storage), but still use it as a laptop, and finish up my degree. Since then, I've swapped to Linux and wanted to do it too (did it briefly with Ubuntu, but it was still pretty rudimentary back around '19... no touch screen, not even bloaty, was a bit too small of a UI -- can't remember which DM I used, though I know it wasn't xfce which I prefer when I use a DM, though I use i3 on my desktop).
That being said, it seems like there are great options for the Surfaces now, but for newer options. So I wanted to ping y'all and see... have you used Linux on any Surface, and preferably, would like to know for the older version.

I hear Manjaro has gotten a decent option, as I know they have the PinePhone (which I own one but... I haven't had time to mess around with, sadly). I'm not really looking for the touch screen but as it seems the blutooth is dying on the Surface (possibly unrelated or due to the latest Windows update that has borked so much - I have a firewall that prevents/shuts down a lot of Windows "protections" so I may be the culprit but I prefer to think that if I can't do what I want with what I own, the software is the problem), whatever will make it rejuvenate would be appreciated.

Honestly, it's had an awesome battery life (it can be in standby for a week and lose about 1/3 of the battery), and overall, I feel it's the last best thing Windows ever did. That being said... does anyone have a Surface and would you have recommendations (for any Surface)? If so, why, what distro, and what might you want to share?

Thanks in advance!

The other day, I happened to stumble on a YouTube video where the creator explored the problem of “discoverability” of video games on platforms like app stores, Steam, and Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo’s shops. That’s something that has been bothering me for a long time about the Apple App Store.

By pure coincidence though, this morning, as I was browsing through the “You Might Also Like” section at the bottom of a game that I am interested in, I began to go down a rabbit hole where I ended up finding a good handful of games I had played on Steam that I wasn’t aware were available on iOS/iPadOS as well. It’s quite sad, because these are games that I really enjoyed, and I paid for them on Steam, a platform that Valve (understandingly) neglects on macOS, whereas I could have played them optimized for iOS/iPadOS.

The creator in the YouTube video didn’t really have a solution for this problem, and it seems to me that as the industry grows, and more and more “slop” begins to flood these platforms, it will only become harder and harder to discover the good indie games buried underneath it all.

I feel this intense urge inside me to start some kind of blog or website to provide short reviews so that at least some people will discover these games. We definitely need more human curation.

I’m also appalled that so many of these games on the Apple App Store have little to no ratings. No one makes an effort to leave behind a few words so that other people can get an idea of whether it’s worth to invest their money in a game.

I guess that there isn’t really anything that can be done about the issue of discoverability. As an indie developer and publisher, you just have to do the that best you can to market your game, and hope to redirect potential customers to your website or socials, where you should clearly list all the platforms that your game is available on (surprisingly, a lot of developers don’t do this). But that’s about all that you can do. The rest is luck.

Im just kind of done with Windows and 10 has been stable, but 11 seems to be even more intrusive and I find all the AI 'assistance' to be incredibly annoying. Im just kind of done with MS and Office and I want to try something else.

I dont have many needs. I run LibreOffice spreadsheet and word processor and the only other software I need to work is CORELdraw and CORELpaint as I still do a fair bit of design work on them and Ive been using them for 30 years so I dont want to switch. Other than that its just browsing (Firefox), email (Thunderbird) and TurboTax.

My question is how do I know whats going to work until I try it? And which version of Linux is easiest and most stable? I dont want to have to keep upgrading, I just want a stable usable fairly easy to learn OS that works with what Ive got as Im unlikely to be changing much. Suggestions?

Okay, I’ve been grinding through the process of replacing Windows 10 in my Twitch streaming setup with Pop!_OS. I’ve got OBS dialed in, my old NVIDIA card is holding it together surprisingly well, and video performance is right where I need it.

But the audio. Is. Destroying. Me.

It’s this horrible crunchy, crushed mess when I stream from Linux. Same exact hardware, same OBS scene setup. On Windows 10 it’s crystal clear. I’m pulling audio from my mixer and theres no “Line In” I can see. Something in the Linux chain is mangling it.

Here’s a side-by-side if you want to hear the pain:

Pop!_OS (crushed audio): https://youtu.be/wQUVlufAQs8?si=RlGH8Z90dK0X9KhA

Windows 10 (clean audio): https://youtu.be/hbJzIHzg_ek?si=ThiZpbBgTk89qL2p

Sample rates seem to match, nothing obvious is clipping. I’m out of ideas and running on pure stubbornness at this point.

Would love to hear from anyone who’s made Linux work in a similar setup. Tips, gotchas, weird fixes. Whatever you've got. I'm so close to fully escaping Windows here. Grrr.

For reference, here’s how I got my Pop!_OS setup working so far (OBS + NVIDIA NVENC + GTX 960):
https://doubledropdown.com/abdoanmes/2025/ditching-windows-setting-up-obs-with-nvidia-nvenc-on-linux-pop_os-gtx-960/