For my use case, I wanted a hybrid distro that is more rock solid/no hastle but also updated enough for gaming. Og Debian’s update cycle is too slow for some of the things I was doing with proton and wine, while rolling release distros like Arch/Manjaro broke or required fiddling too frequently for my taste. I feel like LMDE is the perfect balance for me personally, taking the rock solid stance of Debian even further than og Mint or Ubuntu, while also being updated enough to not have problems gaming.

Secondly, I greatly prefer flatpaks to snaps, so that’s another reason I stay away from Ubuntu or Ubuntu forks.

I also respect the ethos of Mint and Debian much more than “corporate” owned Ubuntu. It feels much better being on a Debian based fork rather than an Ubuntu based fork, in case Cannonical wants to do stupid things to their OS.

Overall I think it comes down to me just wanting to use Debian, but with more frequent updates, that isn’t Ubuntu.

I use my pc for similar purposes on Linix Mint Debian Edition. Basically mint which is based on Debian instead of Ubuntu. Steam and emulation have been a breeze on it with flatpaks and I’ve fiddled around with Lutris as well. A lot of features are plug n play in many aspects, but the os gives you enough freedom as to not feel restrictive.

I’ve found that the community is helpful and big enough to have all my questions answered. You might need to do some tinkering if you use an Nvidia GPU though. I have an all AMD system, and it was relatively easy to get and install graphics drivers, which will probably be your biggest hurdle/headache with other distros outside of PopOS.

With firefox or a hardened fork of firefox (like mull/fennec/iceraven etc.) there is a button in settings where you can install/add to homescreen and have an app-like experience for any site including instagram. (Not sure if this is on ios though.) You can also have noscript, ublock origin, and privacy badger addons running for a bit of extra protection and as you said email alias and vpn at all times. If you’re on a hardened OS like CalyxOS or Graphene you can also sandbox or work profile the browser to add another degree of separation.

You may run into problems during signup because meta has been known to use viseo/photo upload verification for accounts made with alias emails and/or from a vpn IP, but once you’re in there shouldn’t be an issue. If there is, you might want to bite the bullet and sign up in a normal way, then use privacy measures to mitigate data collection, depending on your threat model.

I only use Indeed.com so that my info is only siphoned from one place. I feel like they have good listings and they have options to hide some of your info from employers and random observers. Avoid linkedin at all costs, having a profile has gotten me zero benefits and it is an extreme pain deleting your account.

You can also take steps to protect your contact info, specifically your email/phone/address. I only put the city I’m from on my resume and you can use email masks or alts like firefox relay or protonmail plus, or just make a separate email only for work. For phone numbers I use JMP.chat to give me a second number to use solely for work and Indeed.

In the end a lot of your work info is gonna be pseudo-public, because you do need to convince prospective employers of who you are, but you can control the sphere of that information to keep it confined. Imo, having a stable job is worth that trade; you don’t have to do a deep dive into your personality or personal life to get a job. Just enough to be convincing

I second CalyxOS, been using it for about a year now and I think it’s a good compromise between privacy and convenience. Is it the absolute most secure and private? Maybe not, but my threat model is low and I don’t mind trading a little bit of privacy for a bit of ease of use.

My favorite console has got to be the original Xbox. I would play it all day when I was younger and to this day I still use it because emulation is iffy for a lot of titles. Games from that era from like 1999 to 2006 hit home for me and I love replaying the greats like Knights of the Old Republic, Halo 2, and 007 Nightfire.

For everything else I do a lot of steam gaming and emulating on my linux pc, steam deck, and mobile. I use mobile for casual, quick, or pauseable games, steam deck for games that “feel” right like racing games and old adventure games, and pc for longer gaming sessions, or mouse and keyboard games like Starcraft and Age of Empires.

It’s hard to beat pc because it can litterally do everything better (except maybe portability) and you can customize it into anything, so it’s definitely the objective winner, but og Xbox is still my biased favorite.

I’ve played most of them, and minish cap is definitely the best imo. The music, story, world, and nostalgia were all there for me. I also think LOZ was at its peak in the 2D era.

Also special mention, crossbow training for wii is C tier and LOZ CD-i is definitely A tier because Morshu

I switched my daily driver to Linux Mint Debian Edition recently and it definitely does combine the best of both. It’s easy to use and coming from plain debian has everything that I’m used to. Been loving it so far.