Auster

Any with good hardware as long as you can switch to stable and community-made ROMs.

If you like reading books, comics, etc, maybe Librera Reader?

Dunno how it is on Google Play, but it’s available FOSS and DRM free outside of it:
https://f-droid.org/packages/com.foobnix.pro.pdf.reader/

Since 10 y.o. is old enough to be a cutoff for me, PS Vita, and because modding community never stopped. You can even play some Android and PC games through wrappers in it. *-*

Iirc, there are unofficial ports of LineageOS for newer devices. Also, I’ve been using another system, ArrowOS, in its vanilla form, on a Redmi Note 10 Pro phone I have, and it’s working fine so far, so maybe an alternative for your case if you don’t find a decent phone compatible with LineageOS?

Duolinguo feels more like a very annoying ad than a learning tool, often under-explaining what it tries to teach while heavily penalizing and shaming the user for getting things wrong.

What I would suggest, other than hiring an actual teacher, would be to immerse yourself in works from their language, such as music, comics, books, movies, and so on. Also, Spain’s Real Academia Española has a dictionary+conjugator site that is VERY helpful, even for “dialects” such as the Latin America variations (link for the tool is dle.rae.es). Finding someone to try to talk to in Spanish may also help, although getting to know some of the grammar beforehand is advised.

Now, as for either free or FOSS programs specifically for learning the language, sadly, I’m not aware of any.

Same as the past 10 or so years, from what I can tell.

First, I’d suggest flashing a community system ROM. OEM systems are both very bloated, and stop being supported much earlier than community ones, so they’re not ideal unless you need to use it with some banking app or the sort. And if you don’t need Google’s services (de-Google, anyone?), I strongly recommend going for a vanilla system instead of a Gapps one.

Now, as stated in MargotRobbie’s comment, one good use is as a media player. If you can sideload stuff like VLC and Librera Reader, you should be covered.

You can also use it for some lighter gaming, if that’s your thing, as there’s plenty of emulators, wrappers and engine implementations for Android.

You can also use it for running servers, if you do this sort of stuff.

And if you like to test around with softwares, a spare Android device is pretty good to have.

Got a gaming laptop some months ago, and it is actually very powerful indeed. But it came with Win11 by default, only requiring the final setup. Now… How can a system lag a decent laptop so much.

Needless to say, it didn’t take much for me to decide to swap for good ol’ Mint Xfce, and even try out a few other Linux systems, and now, pretty much everything runs flawlessly, at most requiring to avoid using the ultra settings.

But indeed, Windows is bloat incarnated, and it only gets worse. So much so it even feels like Win10 on a VM can clog the whole system. Weird how that doesn’t happen with Win7, no matter how long I leave it open on a VM.

I check sites that list hardware specs, and once I find a phone that seems interesting for an average price I’m willing to pay, I check places like XDA to know how much of a hassle it’ll be to unlock the bootloader and add a custom ROM. And if modding the phone has too many/too big drawbacks, I return to the first step until I find a phone that seems good.

Yes. ( also just remembered there are some mix up in naming conventions across the fediverse… "<.< )

Just checked your instance, and this page seems like a good start:
https://lemm.ee/communities?listingType=All&page=1

Then you can filter pages around, subscribe to pages as they pick your interest, etc.

Then, if it’s anything like Lemmy World about sorting (can’t verify since I don’t have an account in your instance), you can visit https://lemm.ee/?dataType=Post&listingType=Subscribed&page=1&sort=New to check all your subscribed contents, and by newest (I recommend “newest” because I get the impression posts start repeating themselves after a while with other sorting features).

I’d suggest Linux Mint.

• Simple UI
• (Xfce version specifically) is very fast (within reason; it’s still a modern OS)
• It’s already pretty keyboard-centric and it can be improved further if you like tinkering (my reason for dropping Windows was precisely lack of keyboard-centric controls, so if I stick to Mint, I guess it’s good on that front)
• Keys can be custom mapped, although I guess most bigger Linux systems allow that either out of the box, or through 3rd party software
• Unsure what a “dotfile” is, so can’t comment on that
• And Mint is still slowly adding animations to its functions (to some people’s dismay), and I don’t feel lag when alt-tabbing around, so I guess it is snappy too

If I may suggest, start following federated pages too. Each social media has its niche, and now, with federation that allows direct communications, it’s the perfect opportunity to find a social media whose features you like (which you seem to have already gotten), and curate your contents so it’s perfect for you without depending solely on your chosen social media’s niche.

Never understood why repeating the last word from the top text at the bottom is done in some memes.

Besides, Windows can be very laggy even on supported hardware.

Looking for a more stable distro could be a good idea. Some distros are pretty much only PoC, or too niche to have a good support, or the beta channel of another, better supported distro.

Brazil does, but while such a set laws exist, seeing those laws being enforced is a distant dream.

Xiaomi mobiles aren’t available in the US

Maybe the OP could import one? Or are there sanctions even for importing?