I believe LMDE includes the proprietary stuff you might need and, as others have said, Debian 12 is starting to as well.

For a new user who just wants a good OS to start with, Pop_OS is a fine choice. A little surprised you had trouble with Mint identifying your WiFi card but, I see others have posted on it. Mint is typically my go-to recommendation for new Linux users.

…although, to be fair, a lot of distro’s just kinda sort it out for you.

The thing is, there’s “iwd” and “wpa_supplicant”. You use either one or the other, but not both. Sources like the Gentoo handbook will tell you that but, not all Wiki’s do as good a job of pointing that out <…looking directly at you Arch…>.

Can we compromise and sacrifice Nazis?

No…find your tribe…be you

Palia is brand new (still in open Beta) It’s more focused on low-key crafting/farming and community, but opportunities to socialize are there.
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Guild Wars 2 is my favorite “no subscription required” MMORPG that could work for you (but you have that one).
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ESO Online is my favorite “subscription” MMO and I’ve met people there.
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FFXIV is decent for socializing but, the hard-core gamers can stress you out. Works best if you join a low key guild that doesn’t want to speed-run all the duties and crap on you for not being as good as they are.
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General rule for MMORPGs in general is, find a guild you like and hang with them.

“Plutocracy” is the term for “Financial Oligarchy” BTW. Worth knowing the term if you live in the U.S. since that’s kinda what we have here these days :/

Have to agree. They had a great start by enhancing Debian and being user friendly but, then they just kind of lost their way.

Although, speaking as a fan of Mint who used it as my “daily driver” for years, I think the time has come for them to switch from Ubuntu to Debian and embrace Wayland. I know that, if I’d stayed with Mint, I’ve have gone to LMDE by now.

I’ve been trying running a VPN on my phone as a matter of course lately (Proton). I’m assuming it not only keeps your ISP from knowing where you’re going but, more importantly, advertisers and trackers as well.
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…or do I have that last bit wrong?

I generally tell people on Manjaro to stay off the AUR. If it’s not in their “curated” repository, then just go with the flatpak.

I’ve used both. Manjaro, in their attempt to be “user friendly”, winds up disconnecting you from what makes Arch good. EndeavorOS, on the other hand, is basically Arch nicely set up for a “daily driver” PC along with some nice tools of their own you can use or not at your discretion. I’ve also used just plain Arch and I actually prefer EndeavourOS of the three.

You have no idea how apropos this is to an argument I’m current embroiled in.

Dad?

;)

Wound up creating a Lemmy account as well as this one. Still getting accustomed to it but it appears that, instead of relying solely on the mods to manage content, more control is given to the end user. As long as I can easily block trolls and other content I don’t care for, I’m good.
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On the other hand, where FB is concerned, you just can’t make it go away. I’m stuck with that account because of events and messages but looking for work-arounds for both.

On FB, I generally only post to “Friends” or “Close Friends”. Yet, I keep getting these “Suggested for You” posts in my feed. Some are advertisers, many are clearly from bot-farms trying to start arguments. I mean, the Fediverse may have it’s bad actors, but not on the coordinated scale that Facebook has.

Firefox is my go to but I keep a chromium based browser for when I really need it. Currently running with Vivaldi for that. As for other browsers, I’d love to see Gnome Web (formerly Epiphany) start allowing extensions like Bitwarden, etc.