Tried that too. Its not federated and generally just didn’t like me lol

Sorry, I don’t knowingly support crypto bros or war profiteers if I can help it. Plus if in looking for an alternative to a bad service, I’m not gonna give cadence to the platform already doing shitty stuff, just for it all to crash again once that one gains traction.

I’ve heard Matrix was involved in some crypto bullshit and military operations of some sort. I want an alternative but Matrix is just shady enough all around for me to stay the hell away.

The only commercial social media I use anymore (or at least post on) is Bluesky, and I’m getting weary of that, too. I’ve switched completely to open source operating systems and workflows in the past year or so. During that time I’ve also become vegan and am trying not to go to any sort of shop at night. That last one has nothing to do with the state of things at this very moment, but I don’t want to give companies more reason to force people onto late shifts when working in retail/customer service already sucks and even full time won’t get you close to a living. The last thing anyone needs is their sleep thrown off, as I know from struggling with it myself. I may not be able to stop buying things, but fuck working when you should be sleeping. Unless you’re literally an essential worker, in which case those shit shifts should be cycled between people, not consistent.

…I didn’t mean for that to become a rant lmao

Plus with entertainment stuff they’re usually finished once released (or at least they SHOULD be cough cough game industry). It would be better if every game was open source, especially since there are tons of old games that could do with revamps but are too niche to invest in. If we had the source though, die hard fans would be all over that shit and wouldn’t have to spend years decompiling and romhacking! But that said, creative tools need to he constantly updated and should be open source always in case something goes bad. My ROM of Spyro for the PS1 isn’t changing anytime soon, so while it would be better for the source to be out there, I’m not worried about it suddenly becoming unusable.

That my strategy when I have to buy one of those dumb TVs. Just leave it ignorant of the internet

Weird considering I need my desktop to just be a tool as well, and Mint really does that for me. Just my experience tho.

Damn that’s… Really sad lol

This Movim thing is giving me really good vibes! No AI in sight, nor crypto shit. Thanks so much for the suggestion! Why don’t I hear anyone talking about it? If you have any other smaller open source projects to suggest, please let me know lol

looks at our existent (but remarkably shitty) healthcare system, the insane costs of living even when forgoing any sibilance of happiness, and the fact that we were gonna slide into fascism too if it weren’t for the USA doing it first Yeah, better look somewhere else, I’m afraid…

Therapy is supposed to be, if nothing else, a relief. Yes, its important to have hard conversations and take away the right lessons to work on yourself, but how in any way is therapy a chore? Man, I wish therapy was so unnecessary in my case that being forced to take it felt like a slog to get through.

Thank you for the info. I looked at people discussing Matrix for ages here and nobody brought this up? What the hell?

Do any of these options offer screen sharing with audio? That’s literally the only thing I care about in terms of one on one chats that only Discord can do.

Hey I know this is an old comment but could you elaborate on this? I’m trying to choose between Matrix and Stoat and no matter which is better, Matrix is out of the question if it’s into crypto bullshit.

As I should have mentioned in the post (and now have thrown in another reply), I mainly want to use the rig for audio recording, video editing, and gaming. Basically an all-rounder, but I don’t need a god-tier machine. It’d be nice to run everything in 4K but I super do not need it. I appreciate the recommendation of taking a pre-built and going from there, since I thought PC builders hated pre-builts. It’s a good idea and what I might go with at first. Would you happen to know any places I can get a unit other then Ebay or Amazon, though? I’ll check locally myself but as for online stores I try my best to avoid them.

Okay, thank you for the explanations and reassurance! I can tell you what I have rn is a Dell XPS 15 if I have the number right. I use it for gaming (mostly retro but plenty newER games as well) and most importantly audio recording and production. It’s pretty good with that stuff, running three monitors including it’s built in one, a giant audio interface as well as a handful of SSDs. It all works with few issues, but God does it feel like I’m stretching this poor laptop thin!

I should have mentioned what I actually use my computer for in the post, but I didn’t expect advice like this, only places to buy old parts, so thank you for your help! Would you be able to place the XPS 15 somewhere in the timeline of these generations of hardware? It was released around 2018 but laptops are always behind, so I’m not sure what era of computer it realistically IS, if that makes any sense. I know for a fact it could perform much better then it does, but the cramped nature of it’s design kneecaps it hard. I have it elevated for better airflow and I may need to clean the fans out, since it has been a while.

EDIT: I’m mostly into platformers and the like, so running new games would be great, but I hardly play any hyper-realistic games. To use two Fallout games as examples: I’ve run New Vegas smoothly for hours and hours, but 4 hardly works at all. Not that I have much interest in the latter so I only ran it for a few minutes, but even those few minutes proved it was far too slow to play at all. I fully believe this is due to the horrible cooling system and not the CPU itself being that bad.

I’ll have a look into this, thank you!

It’s simply that I’ve never taken one apart or put one together before. I’ve heard the stories of people frying things, fucking up the CPU while trying to install it, and just general small mistakes leading to big costs. It all makes me feel I need to do a test run before tackling whatever my final rig ends up being. I need it to last a long time, so that means it’ll be costly, and I don’t think top-tier parts are fit for my untrained hands lol

But that assumes that the right and left are both searching for truth and a path to a better future. Any flavour of leftist can be wrong about something, but at least leftism attempts to help society at the end of the day. A conservative is only ever out for themself (and would likely get pissed with me for using “them” in the singular lol).

If it could be vegan cheese, then I’d go for that. I think its good on toast and pizza is great, of course. I say I hardly like it because everyone else seems to die for it in all forms. Meanwhile I rarely go out of my way to have it unless its an integral part of something, like pizza.

I hardly like cheese AND I’m asexual so this question hardly applies to me lol