I switched to Pipepipe from Newpipe because I wasn’t sure Newpipe was being maintained. Pipepipe has SponsorBlock.

Most of the Paradox games support Linux natively. I play Europa Universalis 4, Stellaris, Crusader Kings 2 (haven’t bought 3 yet but it has native support), Hearts of Iron 4. Victoria 2 doesn’t have native support and I didn’t get Vic 3 but it is supported. Rimworld is native, so is Factorio.

Have a look at what you want to play on protondb.com and figure out if gaming on Linux works for you. Baldur’s Gate 3 has a gold rating (gold being one level lower than platinum - the best rating for non-native games) which for all practical purposes should work.

EDIT: I recommend installing Proton Glorious Eggroll in addition to the native Proton on Steam if you can’t get a game running with the native Proton despite protondb reports saying the game works. The installation is fairly straightforward, just read and follow the installation instructions on the page.

I agree with what you say as one aspect of it. But there could be insidious uses of your data. What if your insurance company pays a couple of raccoons to sort through your trash and find out you eat fatty burgers and fries for most meals? When the raccoons get back with that report, what is to prevent your insurance company from raising your premium since you are at risk (according to them) of a heart attack?

ChatGPT is an engineering marvel in that it has understood the semantics of language. However, it has absolutely no idea what it is talking about beyond generating the next token in a string of what sounds like natural language. I wish more people would understand this nuance.

I exclusively use Freetube for my Youtube needs. It is great when it works. Sometimes you have to find the right Invidious instance for it to work properly. A few times videos play at 720p. I have also noticed search failing for specific terms sometimes - for example “machine learning”. I don’t know if it is a bug or blacklisted words/phrases.

These are a few reality checks highlighting it isn’t a perfect experience all the time, but I will be damned if go back to a vanilla Youtube interface after having gotten used to Invidious and then Peertube.

The upsides are less fluff that is recommended, you control your own feed with the videos from the channels you subscribe to, no ads, sponsorblock, and I guess more privacy.

I’ll probably end up spinning up a virtual machine just for Youtube if they decide to go after Invidious and Freetube.