sending personal data to someone else’s computer.

I think this is spot on. I think it’s exciting with LLMs but I’m not gonna give the huge corporations my data, nor anyone else for that matter.

Telemetry, licensing and proprietary extensions in VS Code is the whole reason for VScodium to exist.
https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium

For details follow the link. This is nothing more than the headlines.

Finances
The GNOME Foundation reserves policy says that the buffer is too low to run at a deficit any longer, which it has done for three years. This years budget is a break-even budget.

Strategy & Fundraising
A five year strategic plan has been prepared and a draft approved by the board. A variety of fundraising activies will be launched over the coming months.

Board Development
More directors are being added to reduce workload on individual board members. Non-voting officer seats will be added for the same reason.

Elections
Annual board elections is coming up, 6 seats are being elected.

Now let’s look at Office. Open an Excel spreadsheet with tables in any app other than excel. Tables are something that’s just a given in excel, takes 10 seconds to setup, and you get automatic sorting and filtering, with near-zero effort.

I mean you have the same functionality in LibreOffice Calc, the automatic sorting and filtering is called AutoFilter and the table style is chosen from AutoFormat Styles.

That’s a lot of text to basically say “categorize your data and give the files descriptive names”.

It didn’t end
They actually flip flop a lot.
2006: Migration to LiMux begins
2008: 1200 out of 14,000 have migrated to the LiMux environment
2013: Over 15,000 LiMux PC-workstations (of about 18,000 workstations)
2016: Microsoft moves german HQ to Münich
2017: Dumping Linux https://www.linuxinsider.com/story/munich-city-government-to-dump-linux-desktop-84307.html
2020: Going back to Linux https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-not-windows-why-munich-is-shifting-back-from-microsoft-to-open-source-again/
2023: Microsoft opens new Experience Center in Münich https://www.munich-business.eu/meldungen/neues-microsoft-experience-center-emea.html
2023: Analysing what needs to be done to switch to Win10 before new vote https://www.tweaksforgeeks.com/ditching-linux-for-windows-after-wannacry-is-too-risky-for-munich-green-party-warns/
https://lemmy.world/comment/7251741

If it works, it works and staying close to defaults means less worries about updates breaking stuff.
I use the workspaces a whole lot more now than when I first installed GNOME but I still want my taskbar with appindicators.

If you start missing the classic taskbar and startmenu it is easily available in GNOME too:
Startmenu: ArcMenu
Taskbar: Dash to Panel
App Indicator: AppIndicator and KStatusNotifierItem Support

Sometimes the appeal of socketed RAM is to just buy the bottom model and upgrade.

Yeah, I’m all for swappable RAM and disk in my laptops, problem is that those that care about it generally also spend more on their computer.

Soldered RAM has better performance and reliability while consuming less power than socketed RAM and users of budget machines rarely want to upgrade. If you find one with socketed RAM at that price, colour me impressed!

For an upgradable laptop frame.work comes to mind but even their outlet is $200 above your budget.
https://frame.work/marketplace?outlet[]=Factory+seconds&outlet[]=Last+gen&outlet[]=Refurbished&availability[]=in_stock&availability[]=coming_soon

There’s an android fork of Endless Sky:
Main game - https://endless-sky.github.io/
Android github - https://github.com/thewierdnut/endless-mobile
Android repo - https://f-droid.org/packages/com.github.thewierdnut.endless_mobile/

The Fedora and Debian thread solution should definitely work with Pipewire, as both those distros comes with pipewire default and no changes are discussed.

Keep an eye on the issue here:
https://github.com/thesofproject/linux/issues/4055#issuecomment-1332331409

Just to make sure we’re on the same page, I take it that the following isn’t working for you:

1. Download necessary-verbs.sh from https://github.com/joshuagrisham/galaxy-book2-pro-linux/blob/main/sound/necessary-verbs.sh

2. move it to /usr/local/sbin/necessary-verbs.sh

3. make it executable with
   chmod +x necessary-verbs.sh

4. Create a systemd service in /etc/systemd/system that runs the script at startup:
   [Unit]
Description=Run internal speaker fix script at startup
After=getty.target

[Service]
User=root
Group=root
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/usr/local/sbin/necessary-verbs.sh
RemainAfterExit=yes

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

Seems to be a common problem to have sound issues on Galaxy Books.
This thread has solution for Fedora and also Debian. The Debian solution should be usable by you:
https://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?331130-Fixing-ALC298-audio-(no-sound-from-speakers)

Here’s an arch and manjaro solution to help you figure it out if the above doesn’t solve your troubles. :
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=269385
https://forum.manjaro.org/t/howto-set-up-the-audio-card-in-samsung-galaxy-book/37090

I would try a LiveUSB with Fedora or another distro with a more up to date kernel and test my wireless card there, if wifi and bluetooth plays nice then you can install a new kernel on Linux Mint and probably have it solved that way.

If you’re using wireless then you could try disabling power saving on the wifi card. It will drain more battery but the only reason I can see iptraf helping is if it wakes the network card.
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/269661/how-to-turn-off-wireless-power-management-permanently#315400

GOG is always my first choice to buy games.
It’s a bit frustrating that you have to dive into the forum and check whether the developers actually maintain their GOG release properly before buying though.

Sweet! Here comes a random tidbit now that your problem is solved.

Easy screen mirroring of android to linux:
Prereqs:

1. Setup DHCP to always assign the same IP to the phone.
2. Install adb and scrcpy on the Linux machine.
3. Allow the linux machine to usb debug the phone.
4. Allow wireless debugging in the phone settings.

.bashrc function:
#Connect to Android and view phone screen
#Tip: If using PIN on lock screen you can unlock by entering PIN + Enter even if screen is black
function phoneconnect(){
sudo adb start-server
adb tcpip 2233
adb connect <phoneIP>:2233
scrcpy
}

Simply write phoneconnect in terminal when both devices are accessible on the LAN and you can remote control your phone. Some applications will blacken the screen on the computer if sensitive data is shown.

Which version of KDEConnect do you run in Linux Mint? Seems like they package an old version from what I gather when searching for answers:
https://discuss.kde.org/t/can-not-pair-android-phone-and-linux-mint-21-1-desktop-with-kde-connect/1455
https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1b5fvay/how_do_users_of_mint_or_other_debianbased_distros/

Are your other machines running distros with more up to date repositories?

With your EDIT my first thought was “Have you tried turning it off and on again?”.

I mean the beautiful thing about linux distros is how customizable they are. My GNOME is much more similar to a classic windows workspace than what the developers intended thanks to extensions.
Personally I chose Fedora (gaming VM) and Debian (servers) as my first distros because I wanted to start with distros without upstreams and as they’ve been working out fine I haven’t felt any need to continue downstream to other distros.
I am a bit curious to try Arch and Gentoo, but that would be on a secondary pc for fun.

Regarding muscle memory I setup shortcuts and some custom bash to make switching between my fedora and the windows pc at the office easier. And it was a whole lot easier than it would’ve been to make windows accept default linux shortcuts.
Super+E opens Nautilus for me, Super+D minimizes all open programs and Super+R opens up a terminal.
Writing excel in a terminal windows starts LibreOffice Calc while writing calc opens Gnome Calculator.