Yeah, I’m not a huge fan of the AI approach, I would love to build it without, but I simply am not a good enough programmer to do it without (I have tried in the past, but eventually give up).

AI has allowed me to actually get the digital version farther than I have ever gotten it before - and on one hand it’s nice that I can actually create something, but on the other hand I am afraid it will turn off people who would have otherwise possibly been interestes in contributing. . . But without anything created at all, I would have probably a harder time getting contributors - so a catch 22 in a small way.

But yeah, my current plan is to try and get the project as far as I can using AI, in the hopes that an experienced programmer will eventually be interested in contributing and cleaning up the mess I’ve made. Probably not the smartest strategy, lol, but it’s the only one I’ve got. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Just a couple if days ago I converted my Chromebook (~4gb ram) to Linux with coreboot and installed antiX, then changed over to MX Linux, and I think MX is a great for what it is. I’m using the fluxbox window manager (provided as one of the options on MX) because it’s lightweight enough for the Chromebook, and my Chromebook runs far faster on Linux than it ever did with chromeOS.

If nothing else, I suggest looking into MX - I’m a happy customer. I think antiX was actually great too, and a bit more minimal - but the graphical interface of MX out of the box felt a bit more polished and was worth while for me.

Thanks for the thorough response :)

While I get what you mean about things being pre-installed for super new people to Linux/terminal. . . If it has a apt package, it’s as easy as “sudo apt install xyz”. Also, I thi k Debian comes with the synaptic package manager which makes it fairly easy to install as well. With that said though, I do see your point, as it’s one more hurdle.

Thanks for the info, I was not entirely aware about the fact that they recently changes their proprietary software approach.

Thanks for the detailed reply - great points!

Mostly, this makes sense to me - but at the end you stated that people who want to settle down and have a reliable computer for non gaming stuff - and I would think that this would be a parallel userbase for non gamers coming from windows. Granted you did say “experienced” Linux users, but I honestly find Debian to be extremely noob friendly after the initial Linux familiarization of how installing apps and such works. And with LLMs these days, troubleshooting any issues is pretty easy, especially on .deb . Idk, maybe I’ve just become a fanboy or something, but I just feel that the distro gets overlooked as an overly stable/outdated option for servers when I’ve had an absolute great experience so far as a daily driver (of course, not playing games)

I guess it makes sense that I’m comfortable with using Debian then, lol, because I don’t know what most of those things you mentioned are - haha.

Thanks for the explanation though :)

Ok, so it seems that gaming is a recurring theme from the few comments so far.

My curiosity then would lead me to wonder opinions from a non-gaming standpoint.

Do you think you would mind as much if you didn’t use your machine for gaming? Would the slightly older packages still affect you?

Ah, ok - yeah I can definitely see how for gaming it might not be ideal. I’ve never thought Linux was all that smooth of a transition for gamers though, no matter what OS you’re using - but I guess that heavily depends on the games you’re playing.

What would be considered “bare” about it? Granted, I’m not gaming on it or anything, but I’ve found it to work pretty well out of the box, just downloading software as I need - but nothing that has caused any sort of headache due to missing drivers or anything like that.

To me it seems like it would be pretty simple for most people to switch over from windows - albiet maybe not for the super beginners that have never seen a command line - but for most semi-tech literate, I would think it would be a decent entry into Linux.

Genuinely curious what is actually stripped down or missing, because maybe it’s just something that I’m not even aware that I’m missing out on, lol

Second discord alternative I’ve seen posted, there was also peersuite, which I think is a different niche, but similar.(https://github.com/openconstruct/Peersuite)

Either way, I’m all for a discord alternative - we need something that is easily accessible for new onboarding users.