I really want to get on this but I have no time

Good luck

I almost broke my uni laptop today which really made me think I'd have to move my linux partition over from it to my other laptop, but I managed to avert that particular crisis ^^

and every day I'm closer and closer to setting up my own server,

I was also going to recommend just looking down my followers list for servers if you think you'd be interested in similar things to me, but I forgot that I have it set to private!

If you want any more help/advice or want that list I'd be happy to help! (I'm UK-based so I don't have dms on here fyi)

My main recommendation is to pick a few good-looking servers from a curated list (fedi.garden is quite good for this), then browse the local timeline and consider if its the vibe of feed you'd most like to have. Something important is don't be put off by ones that require a reason for signing up.

Feel free!! I'll be happy to help

And in the end it's not too big of a choice. As long as you pick a well-known one with packages you need and with a DE you like, you'll be golden ^^

- And this one's not a suggestion, but recently I installed void linux (similar to arch) on a 17 year old laptop and it runs splendidly, and it's not hard to install really, it just takes loads of time.

- Mint was my first distro but now it now just gives me bad vibes, it just wasn't powerful enough to be worth using all the time. I also really don't like the default DE compared to almost all the other options.

- I've tested out fedora recently and I can see myself installing it on my next system. I have no complaints with it so far, and I like the fact it's more bleeding edge than anything else I've tried.

- Ubuntu/Kubuntu I've been using as my main distro for many years because of uni, but it's very useable and was very familiar to me as a Raspberry Pi user. It's the least fussy distro I've tried, but just might be going downhill. I've installed it for friends who are all mostly very happy with it.

Good question! I actually haven't tried out too many but I have lots of experience with a few (in multiple posts because I'm not used to char limits anymore):

Do it!!!

Yeah, its a shame, but lots of people value convenience a lot more than I do. I've seen many people show vague interest, but they often think they're going to ask a silly question, because they don't expect it to be confusing and think it's on them for not understanding, which it isn't.

Well *on average* it's much better, the hard thing is finding a place with nice rules and moderators you trust.

I appreciate that all my friends are here, but even though I turned off all algorithmic features immediately, this site never felt that fun to look through.

I know I won't persuade anyone to join Mastodon, but I hope it's understandable why I prefer to only post there.