I am by no means a master at OBS, and I wouldn’t know where to point you to learn. Everything I know I’ve learned by either poking around in the software or googling specific questions, i.e. “how to overlay twitch chat in OBS”. As you can probably guess, I used to use it to stream to twitch. Not very suddenly, mind, but I did it. Lol!

OBS is designed for streaming out and recording video, not really for music production. I’m sure there are some FOSS music production softwares worth checking out, though!

I adore OBS. I’ve been teaching my friends the basics on how to use it, as they’ve all been using some proprietary crap that makes their lives marginally easier in one or two areas but adds a huge headache in others.

This is the good news I needed but never knew it.

There is a place for graphically gorgeous distro’s

As a current KDE user but extensive user of XFCE in the past, it may not come “pretty” out-of-the-box but XFCE can be a very aesthetically pleasing desktop environment. It can be configured just about every which way, and if I had to switch back to XFCE right now I could have things just about how I want them and be 100% as happy with my desktop as I am with KDE.

It’s got defaults that just make sense, doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel or the way we interact with our desktops, it’s light and fast and reliable. It’s associated default programs (Thunar, etc.) follow the same design paradigms and are a delight to use.

I Iove XFCE, and it will always have a special place in my heart.

I would add to this: any widely used among enthusiasts Android to ensure (as best as can be ensured) decent long term support.

Find a ROM you’d want to flash (GrapheneOS is a popular option for its privacy and lack of added bloat) and visit their website. View their list of supported devices, and pick one from among them that fits your bill and can be had unlocked (i.e. not bought from a carrier in some kind of subscription/payment plan) and get that.

Google Pixel phones and OnePlus phones are devices I regularly see getting the latest versions from the major OSes. Samsung devices also. I know you had bad experiences with them in the past, but the manufacturer’s (lack of) continued support plays no small part in the reason you’ve experienced that. If they stop supporting the device 3 years from now and it starts to slow down, they might just be able to convince you to buy the new one…

I actually really like openSUSE Tumbleweed for gaming, personally. It’s rolling release, keeps up-to-date with the latest feature and security releases, and manages to be far more stable than any other rolling release I’ve tried, and I’ve tried my fair share lol.

It does require a little extra work at the beginning to get all your stuff sorted out – non-free drivers and libraries, though they’re easier to get access to than ever – but once that’s done, it’s largely minimal tinkering to get games up and running on Steam or Lutris or Bottles or whatever else launcher you choose to use. I was running Elden Ring the day after it dropped and all I had to do was switch to ProtonGE, for example, and while that’s not the greatest achievement ever I think it’s pretty great.

Valve has really done a lot of good work though, and using most Linux distros to game seems largely trivial compared to how it used to be.

Isn’t OnlyOffice proprietary software?