lattrommi

True, it can be tricky for certain things. I suggested it because it fits the OP’s a) and b) points better than anything else I could think of. The different versions of it can vary a lot too. Bionicpup worked great on my old eeepc, a netbook with a single core 32 bit cpu, but didn’t do well on anything newer. Focal Fossa has worked without issue on everything I tried it on. I wouldn’t use either as my main OS, but it can be fun on a secondary system. I kept mine in the bathroom until the humidity from showering likely wrecked it.

Set up a flash drive with puppy linux. It’s relatively easy to do (depending on how much you already know about Linux) and is mostly risk-free (but you can still do damage so always use caution) because it runs entirely in RAM and shouldn’t mess with the internal storage drive unless you tell it to. You can use it to copy any desired files without booting Windows and it will probably run on that machine better than Windows ever did. I think that has a 64 bit CPU but there are 32 bit versions floating around the internet if it doesn’t. I’ve seen Puppy Linux versions advertised as being 'so easy your grandma can do it. One project of mine that was fun was creating a Puppy Arcade, a usb flash drive filled with emulators and ROMS but I had issues with some emulators.

Take a close look at your USB ports and any other ports for debris. Sometimes you end up with shorts that do all sorts of weird shit. The crappy mouse might have warped the port too. It’s probably not the issue but it never hurts to check.

I don’t know if there is a word for what I was trying to point out.

Like an opposite to gatekeeping, sort of.

I do not like when people use ‘we’, in ways that include people that it does not apply to. Lumping everyone together inaccurately into a group.

I agree that gatekeeping is no good and people should not do that.

However…

we all copy

I do not feel that assuming all people copy, should be done either, in my opinion.

I’ll bet a testicle this was done in GIMP

Sure you can! See?

I thought I could write something worse and came up with this. it was not really a good idea. (i modified it so no one makes my mistake by blindly copy and pasting it. hopefully.)

if [[ -f ~./kitten.sh ]] #     if the file kitten exists
    then killall -KILL kitten.sh || touch ./kitten #    kill all kittens. if that fails, touch kitten.
fi;
echo "Killed kitten... )"; #    announce the terrible deed.
# bash kitten.sh; #    runs this kitten script again. do not remove # symbol at start of this line, unless you want to have a bad time.
# it will make this run repeatedly. you monster.

Excellant write up, thank you.

I’m not exactly sure what ‘opinionated’ means in terms of software, could you (or anyone who sees this) define it?

This setup isn’t what I use, i had wanted to try as many monitors that i had ports for and this was one result that worked.

2 Sharp 18" tv’s at 60Hz, different models and one can’t do higher than 1280x720p so it was scaled 125%

LG ultrawide 34" 100hz

Asus 27" 75Hz

Samsung 42" tv scaled to 75% but I couldn’t get its refresh rate to change. it’s supposed to do 120Hz but i only get 60 Hz

since switching to wayland, i rarely have monitor problems and i love it, especially after switching to an AMD GPU. i had constant issues from my previous nvidia card.

side note, i’m super poor and all of these except the LG were given to me by friends who no longer had use for them. many of these friends do website design and ask me how their sites look occasionally. they can emulate different screens i think but they’re probably trying to show off or they know i have a huge variety of screens i can test things with. I have at least 6 other monitors from 4 different brands in 3 sizes and 3 different native resolutions with 2 that do rates other than 60Hz. two are CRT’s. now i’m probably trying to show off.