You have some points but I think you’re overexposed to forks and drama by being in these communities. Most OSS works and steadily improves and becomes a reliable tool. Closed software often gets better but often gets worse with bloat, subscription models, etc. I think that closed software does more harm to the utility and reliability of their products than open software.

A streamer using OBS doesn’t worry about drama or forks, but they know they have to switch to Windows 11 with new hardware requirements and ads built in. A commuter using the Transit app (OSM map data) doesn’t care about where the maps came from, but they know when the app has a bug, they have nowhere to turn to get it fixed. A 3D animator sees Blender steadily improve and knows if they switch to Adobe, they’ll have to pay increasingly high subscription costs to keep using it. Any individual project is not forking all the time. You just know about it when it happens to any project, whether you use the software or not.

I’m not sure what all those words mean so I’m not gunna do that. I might learn these things later but I’m trying not to frontload a lot of the learning.

Why would I need to remove the Windows SSD if adding a second? Just to make sure I don’t accidentally overwrite it during install? Is there some other risk I’m not thinking of?

Good point that I didn’t consider. I actually don’t know if I have 2 slots. I just took a peek in the glass door and I can’t see well enough without unplugging a bunch. Either way, I’m buying another SSD so I guess I’ll make that call when I open my case to put it in.

Yeah I thought about booting from a flash drive as a test run option but I figured that would not be a very accurate way of gauging what the experience is like. Also, it would keep me from “settling in” with Linux because I wouldn’t want files and stuff on a flash drive, which would make me keep my PC at arms length.