failed to install Debian Woody and SUSE in early naughts – finally succeeded with a Stage 1 Gentoo install (yay for me?) – a long sabbatical from Linux, back into the groove with Pop!_OS for a while, and recently replaced with Debian stable (successfully this time ;p ) – getting old enough that “bleeding edge” doesn’t hold any appeal any more, “boring” is far more interesting
one of the most unappreciated aspects of any package manager is how they handle dependency resolution – the modern formats (Flatpak, Snap, AppImage) “solve” the problem by completely ignoring it altogether and just shoving everything-and-the-kitchen-sink into one blob – which works great as long as storage remains cheap or you’re not trying to develop for embedded systems
it’s a real thing called “decision fatigue” – you can only make so many decisions in a day (and you make better decisions when you start the day than at the end of the day)
you pick something that you are competent at that pays the bills and keeps you alive and gives you enough free time to work on what you actually want to do
traditional boomer advice was to pick something you love, but after putting in endless hours of doing it over and over just to make enough to keep you fed and provide a place to sleep, you will grow to resent it with a passion – for your own mental health, you absolutely must maintain a separation between the job and your personal life