Surprised no one mentioned Memento.

I'd say that you HAVE to re-watch it to understand wtf is going on.

While they do work, the UX is kinda gimped (knowing Micro$oft - that's on purpose).

Source: using Rider Snap in Ubuntu in daily work

Recent Linux convert here. Had some small background with it due to use at work (through WSL, unfortunately 😅). When Windows became too overbearing and intrusive for my own taste, decided to take a plunge and created a dual-boot setup with Bazzite (of course on my private machine). It was honestly refreshing to see stuff run with the same (or sometimes even better) performance.

This short anecdote now leads me to the conclusion; is it as good as we think it is?

Imo: hell fuckin' yeah. It gets the job done and respects me as an end-user (with the trade-off of "some manual work might be required").

Also, as a side-note: I live in the EU; I grew tired with an overbearing, salesman/rapist-like mentality of MS (and Windows, by extension) while reaping benefits of some modicum of privacy regulations. I cannot even begin to fathom how fucked the situation is where ppl don't have these protections to rely on.

The increasingly inaccurately named Hitchiker's Trilogy by Douglas Adams (...)

Aka: the trilogy in five parts? But yeah, it's a great pick book-wise

Hoo boy, The Agonist... It's unfortunate they disbanded, but yeah, Lullabies for the Dormant Mind is one of their better albums. Great pick 👍

Arch Enemy - Stolen Life

And then promptly leave, before I get accused of attempted mass murder

Fellow .NET dev here, switched to Linux for side-gigs recently.

In general, the experience is a lot better than Windows / WSL. Some general remarks on the setup (relevant mostly for Debian-based distros, so YMMV):

• Rider / VSCode suggestion is spot on; go with the former if you have cash to spare and you're fine with snaps, otherwise - DevKit can do DevKit things (with the only problem here being lack of .dcproj support in VSCode; can be ignored with proper integration test setup).
• Containerization of DBMS: by all means, go for it if you have the resources to spare.
• Possible gotchas:
  • If you're going to use MS apt feed for .NET runtime / SDK, set up apt preferences to point to their feed for dotnet packages. Otherwise, you're in for a bad time when running updates.
  • Docker: personally, I recommend Rancher Desktop for this purpose, as Docker Desktop on Windows left a bad taste in my mouth. If you're fine with the latter, it's up to your own preferences then.
  • Test containers: if you do use it with anything else than standard, bare-bones Docker setup, you'll need a custom config; stumbled upon that the first time I tried running integration tests.

Some of recommendations I did not already see, that are not-that-well-known; all of these are various flavors of melodic death metal:

Parasite Inc. - Once and for All

Avatar - Bloody Angel

The Agonist - Panophobia (unfortunately, the band is now defunct)

At home: FLACs ripped from CDs (prefer to buy albums I enjoy instead of Spotifying them) -> KORG DS-DAC 100 -> TEAC AX-501 -> Elac Carina BS243.4

On the go: The same FLACs on Pixel 6 Pro -> B&O Beoplay HX

Seconding this. B&O know their stuff when it comes to sound (though I'd avoid TWS due to having bad experience with them myself); currently rocking HX, seem to work fine

Okay, I'll try to take a stab at this point by point:

• The intended effect was for you to go no-contact with her. Imo - a nuclear option on her part (and as you mentioned, there were alternatives).
• Yes, you do, and yes, I am sure. No discussion on this point, no moral hair-splitting-type-of-deal.
• That's the best thing you could have done. While battling addicition and your inner demons is an uphill struggle (been on therapy for 4 years after a distaster of a break-up myself), it's worth it, if not for your friends and family, then for you and for the sake of improving as a person.
• Unfortunately, cannot give you an answer on this. And, to be completely honest, you don't need one; best thing you can do here in my opinion is to let it go.
• Keep going to therapy, keep working on yourself. This will pass if you keep working on this, I promise.

Oolongs and senchas for pleasure... ...matcha for results 😄