Replying to give you an extra boost. If your courses are remote or have online exams, you may need to install spyware onto your computer. I’m re-imaging my wife’s computer this weekend because of it…

Agreed - for someone moving from Windows / Mac, the immutables and flatpak are the way to go now. It’s going to take a bit for the Ubuntu / Mint crowd to change their song. Bazzite in particular is a huge olive branch to the gamers. Even for someone who is “tinkering” learning distrobox and/or flatseal can enable most things you would ever want to tinker with on a desktop. If you are really developing something, chances are that you use containers or a VM anyway.

I have to concur on flatpaks though: they have room for improvement. More validation / trust is needed, and the options are wide open. For non-technical users, the *surety and security *isn’t necessarily on par with the app stores of Microsoft, Apple & Google - though the experience is getting there.

Mass adoption won’t come easily. People treat social media just like broadcast and print mass media: they want to follow big names and brands. It’s a change in mindset looking for niche communities instead. Look at Bluesky, it didn’t really take off until big Twitter accounts moved and brought their minions with them.

Using computers since before GUI was available… Sometimes I think we ought to go back to it

It’s all about the instance. For the Lemmy instance I chose I had to write a few sentences. For mastodon I had to provide a picture of my SubGenius pastor card. I intentionally picked ones that had requirements.

If you had installed bazzite those kids would worship you

I sick of the red state garbage. Nearly every “red” state has “blue” cities. Stop blaming entire populations, age groups or other demographics. You’re just falling for the divide and conquer message they want to use against everyone.

Late to the party, but I’ve read that OP is going to be the sole admin. Do Not Do This. I admire what you are trying to do, but ultimately, you will have no rest, no vacation, no backup for yourself. The hardware & software aren’t the issue here - it is the human support of those services. You will put a single point of failure on yourself, and likewise your peers.

Many of the FOSS projects you mentioned have commercial services. SAAS exists for a reason. By subscribing to those services as a business, you underwrite their ability to provide the software for free to the community. It’s a win-win.

I just use SMB shares on my NAS. Why over think it?

This reads like an angry old man complaining how the internet was better back in my day. It may have been better, but it didn’t have every human being plus armies of bots. It was not user friendly. It was hard. So hard most people didn’t bother with much more than email. Neither is the fediverse easy. Facebook, xitter, reddit, Instagram etc… they are as easy as passively watching television or listening to radio. They require no thought, or even much interaction. There are so many trackers across the web that they already know you and what bullshit you’ll eat. That’s both their greatest secret to success and their greatest danger to society.