flashgnash

I do the same with nix, unless I'm fucking with the bootloader I'll do risky updates because I can always just boot a previous generation

Not everyone has that luxury though

If it's actually possible when my Chromecast stops being usable I'm putting Linux on it and using it to run some light weight projects (someone mentioned you can Linux them)

And this is why you don't update your system while in the middle of something you need it for

On nixos i managed to uninstall nix (package manager), remove my user account, git, ls, WiFi drivers and basically everything else

I can't remember how I rescued it now but managed to get it back without a reinstall

That's awesome if they're implementing it.

My Google home and Chromecast at the moment are necessary evils because when I sit down to watch something I don't want to have to worry about whether it'll work with x or y, whether I'm getting good bitrate etc

Would however be really cool if I was able to cast my screen, cast YouTube etc from my Linux laptop

Have been able to do it in the past using chrome but I already need to keep two browsers installed don't want a third

Imagine how much more convenient the world would be if the Chromecast protocol was open source

Bear in mind most tiling wms don't come with much installed by default, you'll need a bar and a launcher at least

No idea what distro you're currently using but generally you can install whatever window manager/desktop (gui) you want

For a tiling wm I'd recommend hyprland. It's not the most stable but I've had minimal issues with it and it's really easy to get started with. You can install it alongside gnome/kde I believe and switch between the two on login so if you break one you've still got the other

You've gotta ask does an old person care more about Google spying on them or being able to use a computer as easily as possible

Depending on use case it doesn't sound like that'd be an issue. I used one of the like 3rd generation Chromebooks for school, I had to rdp for visual studio and Photoshop but it was perfect for everything else

Are we expecting this old person to suddenly embrace their leet gamer skills

Ah you seem to be missing dnf. No worries! Just do pacman -S dnf

Then you can run

dnf install apt