+1 for SearXNG… I run my own instance in docker, and host it through a cloud flare tunnel. I set all my “web browser bars” on all my devices to auto use its address, so I don’t even have to think about it, and all my searches are auto routed through my instance. It’s Great!

Thankfully with the knowledge from my server, the switch will be more kind than if I’d never touched Linux before.

For real man, close to a decade ago I started off with a raspberry pi b+ and literally copying and pasting every code I found, and today I feel I can do almost anything I want in Linux. Moving from tinkering with Xbmc and retropies, to setting up openhan and pi-holes, then moving on to dockers, home assistant, and web-servers to building out a server/networking closet and running cat6 through the house lol

I love that the steam deck has a desktop mode as well. If steamos was out for desktop AND it supported nvidia (which it currently doesn’t), then that would be my new OS and I’d drop windows today.

I have and for the most part it’s actually really good and responsive… live video feeds aren’t working like I want (no live video, just an updated scene every 30 seconds), but house alarm, lights, garage door, outlets, door locks all work great and all of it is through home assistant then to HomeKit … none of my devices are “HomeKit” compatible, I use mostly z-wave and have home assistant parse the info and tunnel though home

Yea I completely forgot to mention HomeKit in my comment! Is it kind of generic and do I wish it could do more? Yea, but damn is it nice to tell Siri “goodnight” and all the light in the house go out, the doors lock, and the alarm sets! Plus my partner can use it better than home assistant, and if I need my bro to come watch my house for a week, I can give him access on his phone and revoke it any time!

Yea I love my steam deck, but I can’t even run holoiso on my main rig even if I wanted to because I have a 3080 and apparently they don’t play nice together. Then on top of that not being able to play online mp games, is a pain as well.

I like android and have a couple android devices (mostly retro handhelds and CCTV, and have spun up a few VMs), I also have many devices with linux (unraid, pihole, vpn servers, web servers) and run a pfsense firewall (FreeBSD), AND my gaming PC is windows…

I say all that because when it comes to mobile devices, however, I am all in pretty much on apple. Phone, watch, Pro 2s, and Ipad mini go with me pretty much every where. Why? not really the app eco-system (because I do so much self-hosting and use a lot of PWAs, and I dont play games on my phone), its the inter-operability between all the devices, its the find my device, Its the earpods going from my ipad to my iphone in an instant, Its the battery life, its (for the most part) security of the devices.

The blue/green bubble thing is weird and I don’t understand why people get so upset over it. I use everything, and to be honest the only thing at this point in my life I would like to get rid of is windows, but I can’t yet because of gaming.