Drain uncloggers are a caustic. Meaning they are a strong base that eats stuff away. They are generally safe to use except for two very specific circumstances.

1. you really don’t want to use them if you’re on a septic system. It will kill the good bacteria that eats your poop. It’s not a deal breaker, your system will repopulate eventually. But it could lead to a backup. In my opinion - just don’t use that stuff with septic tanks ever.

2. if your pipes are old af and on their last legs. Or some of your joints are shoddy. Draino might eat through that last little bit of metal and cause a leak. But to be fair, a snake could bust something open too. This isn’t a problem with modern plumbing. Nothing you can do about it except watch for leaks no matter what you do (or replace that old plumbing).

I’ll offer some advice. For like $35 bucks you can buy a real honest to goodness plumbing snake that’s hand operated. Mine has a little orange saucer thingy the snake coils up into. You pull out some of the snake, and stick it in the drain. You push with one hand, and you use the other to twist the snake via the big hand crank knob thingy. You push a foot or so of the snake down the drain, then pull out a bit more of the snake from the saucer, and then push that bit down the drain (always hand crank spinning). It’s SUPER easy to do.

The one I have is like 25 feet long, and I have cleared some of the nastiest clogs with that thing. I’m talking 5 foot long clogs of my wife’s hair/grease/soap grossness. Draino would never clear that - but the snake makes short work of it in less than 10 minutes. I spend a few bucks on some rubber gloves instead of hundreds on plumbers and expensive Draino.

TLDR: get a hand snake. They work amazing, are super easy to use, and are less money than Draino (and plumbers)

Edit/update: I’ve got one like this: https://www.homedepot.com/p/RIDGID-EZ-SPIN-Drain-Cleaning-Snake-Auger-80168/332294628

Food. I’m a fat ass. :/

Seriously

I’d give my left testicle to be 30 again.

And many of us were laughed at for saying recall was going to come to win11. This is worse than recall ever was.

I’ve installed Ubuntu and fedora workstation on 5 machines in the past 6 months. Not a single install required using the terminal even once. A couple of those installs were on sketchy hardware and everything still just worked.

Meanwhile I installed win11 on a new machine a couple of weeks ago and it had missing drivers on install, trouble activating, and the login screen switched to Chinese characters after a few reboots (it is a known bug).

/shrug

I’ve had good success with makemkv for ripping both blu rays and dvs. I’ve not had good success making a duplicate disk though. It can be done but it’s been a very long time. I used to use handbrake in that chain but it got to be too much trouble. I resorted to ripping all my stuff, serving it up digitally, and only taking the disks out when nostalgia hit.

But ya - makemkv and handbrake used to get the job done a long time ago, you can search in that direction. Maybe there’s a newer better way.

Yes, like this ;)

No no - not like that. Like crappy overpriced laptops. Like “I’m a piece of crap laptop masquerading as a good one and sold to people who don’t know better at a price way way way too high”.

Of course we have laptops :)

It’s often a laptop, something us nerds wouldn’t buy generally speaking, so they tend to have hardware issues. So newer tends to be better. So plain old Fedora workstation with gnome. I pin their favorite programs to the dock, and show them the basics of the interface. I show them the software button and say they can install anything they want from there, and that they should do the updates that pop up from there.

Zero issues. Honestly does a better job than windows - things are more intuitive for the non tech savvy.

Edit: mint is pretty good too if it works. It’s one of those two systems.

I don’t know why there’s so much nvidia hate going on here. It’s MUCH better than it used to be. Lots of distros mentioned work out of the box with nvidia cards, and if you pick something else - it’s just a matter of installing the right driver. On fedora for example you just go to the rpm fusion site and follow the very easy directions.

If it’s a texture thing, have you tried all the tomato varieties? Like Roma tomatoes have very little seed and pulp, cherry tomatoes are kind of like grapes, and I’ve even tried some obscure varieties that make me question what a tomato is.

If that doesn’t work, I’m honestly having a hard time thinking about a substitute for a tomato. They are pretty unique.

I had strange video crashing bugs on my laptop with 41. 42 has been rock solid for me. Was thinking of staying there for a while anyways.

I’ve used it since the 90s, but windows was always my daily driver. Linux always worked, but games could be spotty and there always seemed to be to be the random breakage for no reason.

But that changed a few years ago. Games “just worked”, device support became really good, and if I’m being honest - I became a gnome guy. That interface is very very productive, especially on a laptop with a trackpad.

And then windows just, started sucking. They break machines with every single update, it’s like there’s zero qa anymore. And the little things became more and more annoying - the pop ups “upgrade to 11, try copilot, OneDrive isn’t working omfg let me help you fix that” the “where is that setting moved to now” game, the extra clicks everywhere.

My dual boot setup found a windows drive that was never being used anymore. I didn’t switch, I just stopped using. Eventually I just deleted the partition and use it for extra space and playing around with other OSs.

During this process I distro hopped quite a bit and eventually settled on fedora workstation. It’s been good to me on three PCs.

I should note that depending on which internal drives are used - you can use them like external drives for backups. You can copy files and images there, then easily disconnect the sata cable. Then you can’t overwrite it by accident during install. But you get to use the large size of the drive for images and whatnot.

It sounds like you have enough drives to do this super safely with zero chance of screwing things up :)

Um, let’s just clarify a bit more just in case.

You have your pictures, music, videos, and other personal files on what?

On the internal hard drives (hdd/ssd/nvme/whatever) and the backup/copy of those files on the external drive (external usb hdd/ssd, flash drive, NAS, whatever)? Presumably both are formatted ntfs?

What I described above is the ideal scenario. It could be as simple as formatting your internal drives and installing Linux, then copying those files back to your newly formatted internal hard drives. This is going to be fine as long as you are SURE your backups are good. Linux can read ntfs drives and copy files from them.

I’m always a bit paranoid though and I like to take extra steps. Sometimes, you forget to backup a file. Like a save game file sitting in a random game folder, a configuration file (like a blahblah.ini) files for program settings, or your favorites, you get the point. This stuff usually isn’t a deal breaker - you really only care about the stuff that’s irreplaceable like pictures and home movies. But it’s annoying…

So what I like to do is to take a drive image. Not a backup - a bit for bit clone of the internal hard drives. Then you can’t forget anything ;) Pick your program of choice - I’ve used macrium reflect successfully in the past and it was free - it’s been a while and there may be better options these days. Make that image and store it on a large external drive/nas/whatever. Then if you screw something up - you can simply restore your windows computer or go grab that file you forgot in your backup routine. I usually keep both my “backup files” and the drive image for a good long while after I reload a pc. Sometimes it’s months before you realize you’re missing something.

So in summary/my advice.

1. Get a big external drive
2. Make a disc image of your internal drives onto that large external drive
3. Make a solid final backup of your files double checking you’ve copied everything you think you need
4. Disconnect that external drive and put it aside
5. format your pc and internal drives as part of your Linux installation
6. plug your external drive into your Linux pc, mount the ntfs drive, copy all your files
7. Put the external drive away in a closet and don’t overwrite it for a good long time
8. if you screwed something up - no big deal, you can go backwards in time because you have that external drive stored safely away.

2 day old spam account

There’s three threads recommending framework 13. I commented in one. I actually own a new 13 with all the latest stuff. It comes close, but it’s not a Mac.

The trackpad works really good except it has a lot of play in it - it’s annoying.

I’ve seen better screens. Yes I have the newest one, no it’s not terrible - but there’s better out there.

The speakers are just ok. Not bad, just ok.

The 13 craftsmanship wise is amazing. My father in law just bought the 16. That one has fit issues with the trackpad and the spacers on either side of it.

Fingerprint readers on both and they work great. No touchscreen.

Battery life is good. Macs are better. My 13 goes about 6-7 hours of continual “normal use”. If I’m using teams for a video call, it’s significantly less - maybe 3 hours. Games - depends on the game but that can drain it in a couple of hours. You cannot under any circumstances go an entire day+ of continuous use without charging.

They are both fantastic linux machines (frameworks) and I highly recommend them. But the hardware is not Mac perfect despite what others say. Just trying to be real here - sounds like you have high expectations and I’d hate for you to buy an expensive laptop and be dissatisfied.

I have a framework 13 running Linux. It’s fantastic - but it’s not up to the high bar OP has laid out (IMO).

The screen is nice - but I’ve seen nicer. The trackpad works well, but the fit has a little bit to be desired - it’s no apple trackpad. The speakers are ok. Not bad, just ok. It’s also pricey.

If OP can compromise on those things, then yes, it’s probably as close to Mac hardware as he’ll get.

You want a MacBook. Apple has always made fantastic hardware. If you’re not willing to compromise, you’re stuck with macs.

Example, literally nobody else makes a trackpad like that.

I bought a lifetime license for makemkv like 15 years ago. It was the single best software purchase I’ve ever made. It just works on all platforms and for all disks. The hardest I’ve ever had to work at it is to “manually” open all the tracks and play a little guessing game for what track is the real one - but it’s ripped every CD and blu ray I’ve ever thrown at it.

My latest config is fedora workstation 42 with a portable blue ray burner drive. Works like a champ.

Not asked for but honorable mention goes to EAC for ripping CDs. I run that in bottles just fine.