If you plan on using something like Gentoo, building Gentoo and running it in a VM a couple times tends to be a smart play.
I've been using Gentoo for ages, as I'm a stickler for stripping down everything to its bare minimum and even I tend to first have a couple runs at building and running it on new hardware, from within a VM.
Going in knowing the intimate details of the hardware you use is always going to be a big plus.
I was at my parents this week and my dad said his tablet got slow.
I checked the running apps and open tabs and the phone couldn't even express it in a number (normally it does up to 999).
Then I hit the clear background apps button and the thing just straight up spazed straight to a full cold boot.
An hour later, dad said it was much much faster now, but that I "removed his apps". (I didn't and they were still there, just not running all the time!)
Yeah, since you can also use a different Kernel and end up with something that looks like a Linux distribution, anyone who has ever used common Linux distributions is instantly familiar with, while definitely not being Linux.
There was an absolute fuckton of marketing for it at the start of the year, like every other Twitch and YouTube ad I got was about that movie.
Then, nothing, so I thought it had been released and people weren't talking about it because it's just a massive snooze (Like with the Eternals movie).
I had little affinity for the movie to begin with, so seeing there was little public response after all the marketing just had me go "seems this is one to skip"
And now it suddenly comes out with barely any marketing going on in the past few weeks?
Which still makes me feel it must be a snooze, both because it wasn't marketed for release and because of the residual feeling the initial marketing caused.
Besides that, even before the pandemic neither me or my wife were big fans of going to the cinema, the noise, the seating and the gauging with drinks and food is just meh.
During the pandemic, we invested in an 75" TV, 200" projector screen and 8K projector and setup 7.1 audio in the living room.
We got as much popcorn as we want, can drink whatever we want, including alcohol and the only person that can annoy us is us.
And with most movies being available from a streaming service within a few months of cinema release, there's not much of any FOMO either.
Because pirated versions will be running a VLK license while there is no VLK subscription on file or run a KMS software to fake the authentication of licenses.
Or in some cases, just run pure unlicensed and Windows will tell you on the desktop itself that the copy is unlicensed.
If inspected, you have to prove you have the correct licenses.
In some cases you'll be allowed to just buy the licenses there and then, but if you've been running dozens of unlicensed copies or dozens of straight up illegal copies (with faked/cracked/stolen licenses), they'll put the hammer down and you'll be audited in detail to the point they'll end up billing AND fining you for every piece of software you've used in your entire history.
I was once hired at a company to get them ISO compliant (8001, 27001 and various other certifications specific for data storage and handling for banks and healthcare).
First thing I did was run inventory on all hard and software and it was quickly clear they ran 50 something unlicensed Windows and Office copies, 3 unlicensed Windows Server copies, 2 unlicensed Exchange copies, a whole bunch of unlicensed Winzip copies and on and on and on.
The typical with small to mid sized businesses.
You absolutely need to get your licensing in order if you want to get those certifications, especially the banking and healthcare data ones.
I made them a list of everything we'd have to acquire to be in order with that part.
They refused. They refused to the point of telling me "it's not working out and we're letting you go".
So, yeah, that's how you get Microsoft to hear about a company running a couple hundred unlicensed products :)
They never got their ISO certs and downsized considerably a year or two later.
Depending on the OPs circumstances, that realization may actually be what is causing them their bad times.
Friend of mine has had ideation for a long ass time and the frequency of them trying to step out of life increased considerably when that realization hit them.
When you're already feeling worthless and without purpose, realizing nothing has purpose and this whole concept of life and living we have is utterly meaningless in the grand scale of the universe, it's not ideal.
If you look at the history of the Goa'uld coming to earth 12000 years ago and ruling most of the Galaxy for nearly as long, Jack ended all that within the confines of a single decade.
Their initial sale isn't to the middle east or in any way driven by the middle eastern market and tends to be completely done on the merit of the vehicle.
The trucks in the middle east are almost all second hand to the level some people were horrified and surprised when the vehicle they sold in the US, still bearing their logos and name, showed up in videos of insurgents and straight up terrorists in the Middle East.