Don't go for Ubuntu LTS. There are many choices that would work equally well for you. I'd go for Fedora KDE edition (but could easily be EndeavorOS or OpenSUSE Tumbleweed).

What we should be talking about is how to get rid Apple ecosystem all together.

You can just not use it at all, there are alternatives.

Why do you want to get rid of something which you are not forced to use?

It's worth it for me. I learnt and set up my home manager config once in 2024 and I now only occasionally make light tweaks. But I deploy it on every personal computer or remote development servers at my jobs (previous and current). Granted, I'm probably one of the handful of people in my community who uses nix, because it's too arcane - but I've already paid the cost.

I've been using Fedora and OpenSUSE Tumbleweed on my laptop and desktop respectively. Both are going around a year, and I haven't had major issues with them.

Looking at the logs I installed Fedora 35 on this laptop over 4 years ago when I got it and have upgraded through to 43 with no serious issues aside from some mDNS configuration that I had to fix.

> why is it that the Linux people seem to be so needy for everyone to make the same choices they make?

This is the sort of question an apolitical person would ask a liberal (I am aware liberalism had been tainted in the recent times), like why is it you people are so needy and constantly preaching about democracy?

> I've observed that most "enthusiasts" are really just brand ambassadors.

Well said, and in the tech community that's predominantly Apple. We need to change this.

Israeli society is no less radicalised, so this is irrelevant. What's relevant is that Israel illegally occupied Palestinian territories under international law and instituted a regime of apartheid on those territories.

Training to failure for me personally only brought injury and set back my progress by weeks.

If you were a newbie just getting started.. the ligaments and tendons take much longer to strengthen than the muscle. So the muscles getting stronger will outpace the connective tissue.

Second potential issue is too much training vrt recovery.

A good way to add safety margin when training to failure is to reduce the weights and slow down the exercise and increase the time under load.

For example bench press, do 5s down (eccentric), 5s pause (isometric) and then (optionally) 5s press (concentric). Your weights will go way down because this exercise will be so hard. But the stress on the joints and ligaments will be reduced.

Happy New Year, everyone! 2025 was tumultuous but in the end I accomplished my professional goal of the last 10 years: transition from academia to industry. I went through several job rejections (in the hindsight very fortunately so), decided to commit to my research project and a startup idea, endured months-long unemployment and wound up at an up-and-coming industrial R&D AI lab. I feel like I drew a lucky ticket, but this is only a beginning and I need to double down on my goals in 2026. While the locus of my attention was on survival, I drifted away from someone I loved dearly and eventually I lost them. My newfound success has tasted bittersweet.

I also established a sleep schedule with consistent going to bed time at or before 10pm and waking up before 7am; this did wonders for my productivity. I am still affected by anxiety and looking for ways to improve my focus in 2026. I am hoping that it will be my most prolific year.

I could not have done this all without several of my close friends and collaborators, to whom I owe a big thank you.