It certainly has downsides in that regard, I will not deny that. However, if you want something that Just Works™, it is a very good option in my (admittedly limited) experience.

To add, if OP is looking to use the laptop for gaming, I can recommend Bazzite. Built upon fedora with some quality of life things and very stable as it’s immutable. Very hard to fuck up.

Hey now, we Dutchies love taking the piss out of Belgians just as much :)

“If there is a god, he will have to beg for my forgiveness”

This sentence was found carved into a wall in one of the sheds in a concentration camp.

FAR: Lone Sails

What Remains of Edith Finch

Divinity II: Original Sin

Frostpunk

These are all (mostly) non-vocal, great for some background noise. Great games too!

Im Westen nichts Neues (All Quiet on the Western Front). A movie about WWI from the German perspective. While not 100% accurate, it does a great job of showing the harrowing trench warfare, the propaganda, and the out-of-touch militarism in the higher ranks. I highly recommend it.

A much older one: Le Grand Vadrouille (The Great Escape). A French WWII comedy about a few British pilots that need to escape occupied France. There is a little bit of English but it’s predominantly French in language. While not all movies from that age have stood the test of time (e.g. Les Gendarmes are quite racist), this one does a decent job!

Yup, economics are all about “LiNe mUsT gO uP!!!” It’s infuriating as all hell for people that can actually see further than the tip of their own nose.

“All right, it seems that Bob cannot speak, so instead we’re going to talk to the next best thing: The chair”

Context: Bob was a guy that was imprisoned on a chair of living wood at a living wood teatable. When he tried to speak, flowers came out of his mouth instead. This sentence was uttered by our bard when he asked the druid to cast Speak with Plants on the living chair.

Honestly not planning anything crazy either. And thankfully I do know how to use command line so it doesn’t have to be 100% newbie friendly, the reason those two are my top choices is due to the included nvidea drivers. Mint was on my mind too, but from what I read it is better suited for older hardware, whereas I am using a decently modern system (Ryzen 7 3700x & RTX 3060 Ti).

If I may ask, from a user standpoint, how easy was it to switch from GNOME to KDE on Pop! and what were your problems with GNOME in the first place? Browsing both choices, it looks like both are very customizable, and those plugin options for GNOME look pretty neat. I am aware that GNOME does use more resources, but given my system specs it’s not my biggest concern.

Windows 10, still using it but am browsing distros and aim to switch before August. Most likely candidate for me right now is Pop! OS, but given that they have halted development for it to work on their own DE (by the looks of it at least) I may go for Fedora or regular Ubuntu instead.

Wholesome answer:

They are not mutually exclusive :)

Cursed answer:

If you run out of space remember that you can fit at least two up your butthole :)

I’m glad I’m not the only one! Though if I play something for a second time I do tend to up the difficulty a bit.

That does indeed make sense, thank you (and many others) for the answers!

I too love emotional games. Here are my personal favourites. Some of these have been recommended by others but idc:

What Remains of Edith Finch - as Edith Finch, you go back to the house you grew up in and explore your family’s history. The Finch family have had much misfortune, and many did not grow old. As you explore the house room by room, you see that person’s last moments. I cannot recommend this game enough. It’s only 2 hours long and best enjoyed in a single sitting.

Life is Strange - you (Max) have recently returned to the town you grew up in for a prestigious art programme at the Blackwell Academy. One day, you discover you have suddenly gained the ability to rewind time. In this game, you explore your powers and reunite with your old childhood friend, Chloe. Don’t worry too much about the superpower thing, it’s without any Marvel BS.

Detroit: Become Human - in this game, you explore a world where robots are servants to humans from the POV of three robots. There are three stories that you follow that do meet each-other at some points. Not all stories are equally exciting, but two of the three are pretty great imo. It really makes you think about what it means to be human.

Kentucky Route Zero - this is an odd duck that you may enjoy as well. You start as Conway, an old man driving for an antiques shop doing his last delivery, as the shop will close down soon. As you try to find your way, a gas station attendant gives you cryptic directions to Highway Zero. As Conway and several other characters, you explore the surrealist world beneath Kentucky. It’s a game filled with mystery, grief, loss, and being lost. This game is more like a strange dream rather than a videogame, and is therefore best played in the later hours of the day.

I hope there are some interesting picks here for you. Enjoy!

The game came out of the blue for me, but I picked it up yesterday. The singleplayer experience so far is pretty nice. It’s not too difficult so far, the story is a bit basic but acceptable, and so far it runs great. I haven’t experienced any bugs so far either. I did see in the reviews that the multiplayer needs some balancing/tweaking though.

A bit of an obscure one is Roadwarden. If I remember correctly, it was made by a single person. The grafics are pixelated style, which is usually a bit of a turn off for me (I don’t need hyperrealistic, just don’t like big pixels), but the gameplay is amazing. It is a combination of a graphical novel and an RPG where choices matter. It does not have spicy real-time combat or a leveling system, but your choices in the story and of your class matter.

To give a quick introduction to the story: You start as a roadwarden, someone tasked with keeping the roads safe. You are tasked by the elite in a rich city to assess the trading prospects with a poor province up north; assess its people, infrastructure, and resources that they offer. You have a limited time to complete your task, as autumn and winter are closing in, and the nights are too dangerous to venture on the roads.

In this game, you cannot help everyone. Helping one group can condemn another, and actions that may be noble in spirit may fail spectacularly. I’ve had a lot of fun playing through this, and it is my recommendation if you don’t really care for real-time combat.

I have seen it recommended somewhere in the comments but I want to shed some more light on this game: What Remains of Edith Finch. It is a walking simulator that should take about 2 hours and is best played in a single session.

As Edith Finch, you go back to the house where you grew up in your younger years to explore it. The Finch family has an almost genetic trait of bad luck; many of them have died before their time. You explore the house room by room and explore that person’s last moments.

There is no gore or horror of any kind, but there are children that die, so if that is a trigger I would sit this one out. If not, it is currently on sale for less than €5. It is worth it.

As a non-native English speaker I fully understand what it means and will happily correct it to football for you :P

Rollercoaster Tycoon 1, 2, and 3 when I was quite young. In my teens it was Minecraft.

If I could upvote you twice, I would!