Generally, it depends on the issue. The first thing I’d check is journalctl, and if there are any errors, I usually look up “[pasted error] [distro name]” and go from there. if I’m unable to find errors, then my next bet is to look up “[description of issue] [distro name]”. Unless I am directly familiar with the component that is having an issue, I try to see if I can find a solution online first. Of course, I never recommend running commands you read online that you don’t understand, so take it as a learning experience and pull up some man pages to see what everything is doing. By doing that, you can even begin to learn how to debug and fix these issues by yourself. Even just finding issues other people have and proving it isn’t your issue helps narrow it down.

What I will never under any circumstances recommend is using an LLM. Please, just use a normal search engine (I prefer DDG), and find forum posts from real people. Those people are generally capable of understanding what they’re saying, so they won’t give completely made up information based on generation of the most likely next word from the data an LLM model was trained on. Besides, chances are that the LLMs are trained on the data you would find by searching anyway, so why not go straight to the source?

I do find myself having to troubleshoot issues entirely on my own sometimes, but usually those are of my own doing, and I can likely figure out what I did wrong (I host my own server and tinker with it quite often). Of course, since switching to atomic distros on my desktop, I haven’t had any system issues to troubleshoot with it in years. Running Manjaro is practically a guarantee that you’ll have system issues, though. I’ve never had a worse experience with my system than when I ran it, and I’m not alone in that.

Otherwise, if you find yourself unable to find an easy solution, backups are a wonderful thing. My server recently had part of its boot corrupted, and it was just a case of recovering from a backup to restore it. Remember, with backups: 2 is 1 and 1 is none. Data can (and will) get corrupted eventually.

My Estradiol is going to be a different viscosity than yours given that it’s homebrew and 40mg/ml, but I don’t really have trouble drawing mine; just takes a little patience

I currently do subq with 30G 1/2" insulin syringes. The needle is directly attached to the syringe, so I draw and inject with the same needle and it works perfectly for me. I cycle through 8 spots on my abdominal area, spaced separately from the 5 spots I cycle through for another medication I take subcutaneously so there isn’t overlap. I pinch my skin with my off hand, and inject at a 45° angle, bc that’s what works best for my body type.

Since I do DIY, my Estradiol Cypionate is 40mg/mL, so I only inject 0.05mL (2mg) once per week (down from starting at 0.1mL which is 4mg based on lab results and a gradual decline in dosage), thus I need to use a 0.3mL syringe so I can get an accurate dosage (hence the insulin syringes).

I’ve never cored my vial, and given that it’s a 10mL vial, I need it to last as long as possible so that I can get my money’s worth, so I don’t mind the tedious 30G draw.

If you want the easiest experience possible with Nvidia, I’d recommend Bazzite (and go with the KDE Plasma version). It comes with everything preinstalled and consistent across installations. Plus, it’s a tank when it comes to stability; very hard to break it due to the atomic nature. Just install everything through the built in store and you’ll be fine. Installing programs is much easier than Windows in Linux due to easy software stores. Bazzite currently uses Bazaar as its software store.

I’ve run Nvidia with Wayland for years and never encountered a single issue. This sounds like it’s probably just an Ubuntu issue (go figure, there’s a reason the Linux community despises Canonical). It’s worked perfectly fine for me in Fedora and Arch in Wayland, and my distro of choice nowadays is Bazzite, which is based on Fedora.

Yes, and I’m currently on it, though I only started in January so I still have a good wait for a lot of it

I don’t have experience with mobile Linux (still on Android), but you can emulate Android apps through Waydroid and that would (probably) work. Granted, Idk if notifications would work, but that’s an option if mobile Linux can handle Waydroid. There’s also Molly, which is a signal client that doesn’t rely on Google Play Services for notifications.

I just bought an 8bitdo Ultimate 2C with hall effect sticks, and it’s been amazing! Highly recommend, and the D-Pad is great

For injections, the blood test should be taken on the day of your dose, right before you do your injection. So you should get bloodwork on Sunday, as your blood testing should reflect the lowest point of your E.

The same premise is true for other methods of administration (i.e. for oral, you should get bloodwork done right before/at the same time of day you normally take your pill)

I think identifying as sapphic makes a lot of sense, honestly. You’re right in that I’m still kind of figuring myself out, but I do think I’ll probably go back to identifying as lesbian now that I’ve had time to think about it, and come back to thinking about it if I have another exceptional experience. Besides, if I were to see someone in the near future, I’d probably eventually explain all this anyway, so the label is only there to get the broad message across. I think I still have a journey to go before I fully understand myself anyway!

Thank you for your response, it was very helpful!

This was incredibly helpful, thank you for such a detailed response!

First, I am moreso wondering how to present myself to others, because I’m fine with my own attraction being a bit fuzzy, but I’m curious how I could accurately communicate my interests to others.

As a trans woman myself, I felt uncomfortable with exploring the idea that my attraction to him was because he was trans, especially since I’ve only ever known him as a man, and other than his voice, he fully passes. That being said, I can’t say I haven’t considered that as a possibility, it’s just that admitting that feels wrong in a way, and the way I prefer to think of it in my own mind is that his experiences growing up were more similar to mine, so he gained experience in areas that most men would struggle with due to societal pressures (emotional maturity being a big one, since toxic masculinity often prevents many men from exploring their emotions and the emotions of others to the same degree as women). It’s kind of a strange thing for me to explore in my mind, because thinking of him as anything beyond just a man feels like I’m being disrespectful, especially given how uncomfortable it would make me feel if someone were attracted to the masculine parts of myself. But I think you have a very good point that it could be relevant. He’s even told me himself he’s found that he’s very different than most men, and even most trans men.

I guess I should really clarify that sexually, I genuinely don’t care what someone has or how they identify. The reason things feel more vague for me is that I can enjoy fantasizing about anyone, it’s just the romantic part I feel is exclusive to women, mostly due to emotional connection (barring the exception). For instance, I have no problem internally fantasizing about having sex with a cisgender man, though I would not have a great time imagining a date with one. Even within sexual fantasies, I can’t imagine the romantic parts of it with a man; y’know, the parts I enjoy most, being demi and all.

But I think for all intents and purposes, you’re right that there’s no reason I couldn’t continue to identify as a lesbian. Labels are only really useful in communicating broad things, anyway. I feel like it’s okay to admit there are exceptions to the rule and just continue with the label I feel more accurately describes me. Thank you, again.

Former vice president of the United States, who ran in place of Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee in the 2024 US presidential election.

Honestly, just a vagina, normal B-C cup breasts, feminized facial features, more feminine vocal chords so I can sing in a feminine range (my speaking passes but def not my singing), no body hair or facial hair, smaller rib cage that tapers more at the bottom for a thinner waist, wider hips, fat redistribution away from waist to my butt, hips, and thighs, shorter clavicles, smaller hands, and like 4" shorter. I wouldn’t change numbers of body parts or add anything extra, I just wanna be like any other “average” woman.

Don’t forget to remember 5 minutes after you leave that you forgot something else important! I forget my glasses half the time when I leave the house only to get in my car and realize I can’t see before I pull put of my driveway. I almost never forget any of my other stuff though, because that gets neatly(ish) organized into my purse (and very rarely leaves the seemingly TARDIS-like pockets in my tiny little crossbody), and I can’t even get into my cars without the keys from my purse ¯_(ツ)_/¯

You say that like it’s a bad thing? I’d gladly take an orchiectomy :3

Okay, then mufasio’s comment may be more on track.

Hmm, what method did you use to back it up? It sounds to me like something got corrupted, though perhaps someone more experienced could identify a different issue. What I usually do to clone LUKS partitions is use a liveUSB (so no files change while backing up), then use cryptsetup to create a new LUKS partition on the backup drive if it’s a new drive (otherwise for incremental backups you can skip this step), then unlock both drives and rsync to the backup drive. This is also usually faster than pure cloning, as cloning would also copy the (encrypted) empty space in the partition, and for incremental backups, rsync will only copy the changed data so it’s much faster.

This would also have the benefit of preventing corruption on transfer, because rsync uses checksums to verify the file was properly reconstructed in the new location, whereas something like dd won’t have the granularity to check per-file checksums (especially if used to clone a whole encrypted partition).

How do you feel about democratic confederalism, then? It’s a form of libertarian socialism that has feminism as one of its core principles. I only ask out of curiosity, as it takes a big deviation from traditional state socialism.

I second that Nvidia is fine on Linux. I have an Asus gaming laptop with an Nvidia card that I use daily with no issues whatsoever, including in games (though do keep in mind some anticheat games blacklist Linux; that is not a compatibility issue, it is a conscious choice by the game makers, so not the fault of Linux). I recommend that anyone who is thinking about installing Linux checks their frequently played games on https://www.protondb.com/, and check any games they plan to buy there before purchasing them.

I’d also like to make a recommendation for a distro. If you want the easiest, practically no way to break it distro, I’d recommend Bazzite. You can select an option on download that includes the Nvidia drivers in the install so there are no extra steps to install them. It’s about as easy as it gets for gaming on Linux (it even comes with Steam preinstalled!). Find it at https://bazzite.gg/. It’s always what I recommend for Windows gamers thinking about switching to Linux (and choosing the KDE Plasma image bc it’s more Windows-like than GNOME). The other great part is that it’s immutable, so there is consistency across installs, it’s much harder to accidentally break, and you can roll back to a previous version in the bootloader if anything does break. Most things a person will want to install can be found in Flathub via the Discover app (or sometimes an AppImage), so most people wouldn’t really need to mess with rpm-ostree package overlays (tho they really aren’t difficult, but only use them as a last resort since it often makes updates a lot slower). I personally think that atomic distros are the most newcomer-friendly option out there. They just work, and they do so consistently. Unless you mess with package overlays, your exact root filesystem will be tested before an update is pushed, and bugs that do show up will typically be found quickly and fixed quickly due to the fact that the same bug will likely happen for everyone else (the exception is hardware-based or firmware-based issues, of course).

Just my 2 cents, having switched to Bazzite after over a decade on Linux, from Linux Mint, to Ubuntu, Manjaro, Arch, Void, Fedora Workstation, and Fedora Kinoite.