Android Auto is a proprietary standard that's basically glorified spyware - if one thing isn't being fed to it 24/7 exactly as Google wants it so they can sell it, it breaks. It's basically just that there are a lot of dependencies that it would need that are fundamentally incompatible with privacy.
Can confirm; this is exactly why I switched to Linux. After my fifth-ish reinstallation of Windows, Microsoft pushed an update that caused the OS to use 80-90% of my CPU and I couldn't fix it because they locked down the service that was doing it despite it being entirely unrelated to my use of the computer (it was an Edge-related service that scanned web traffic for "optimization" if I remember right - one of those where Microsoft says "it's necessary but we won't tell you what it is and it wasn't in the OS before a couple months ago").
Trillium is my personal choice for self-hosted notes. I haven't really had issues with using it on mobile, but I also just tend to put the stuff I think of when I'm out and about into a single note that I periodically go through and reorganize. It's been good to me so far, and it has all of the features I really need. If I need something fancier (or public-facing), I toss it in BookStack instead. Then again, I don't use either of them for business (mostly for tabletop RPG stuff and instructions to friends/family about using the other stuff I self-host), so if that's your application, I have no clue how it holds up.
The Vulkan vs DirectX thing isn't an absolute in terms of performance. In addition, it's worth keeping in mind that Windows is horrifically bloated with unoptimized "features" and can use up to 8GB of RAM at idle plus 10-50% of your CPU at idle depending on your configuration as well as which unnecessary services are bugged in that update. That in and of itself makes a huge difference; my W10 install was using 8GB of RAM and nearly 80% of my CPU on system services for almost a month straight before they finally fixed the bug and reduced it to 2-4 GB + maybe 15-25% depending on the day, meaning I was getting huge stutter playing games as simple as Old School RuneScape. My Tumbleweed install on my much worse specs-wise laptop, on the other hand, used effectively zero CPU and less than 1GB of RAM at idle (fairly confident on the RAM thing but I'd have to check for exact numbers).
The article explicitly talks about that multiple times, though. Were you reading one of the articles that this one references? It mentions repeatedly how inaccessible and unaffordable healthcare is, using both of those points, and then moves on to discuss the issue as part of a broader societal trend.
I know I said "unionize" in another comment, but I've realized that might not be immediately helpful, so some other advice: if you're in a place where it's legal to record with one party's consent, secretly record the whole thing. If not, I still advise recording, but you'll have to say you're recording and get everyone's consent. Ask for everything in writing whether or not they allow that. Expect to be fired. Expect to need a lawyer. Get a lawyer. Expect that the lawsuit will take time and you won't get much of anything but you might be lucky enough to hurt them in the process. Resign yourself to the fact that without unionization or governmental change, we're absolutely and totally fucked if we're disabled, neurodivergent, or even just different. Then do whatever you have to in order to survive knowing that.
Is there another alternative? Bandcamp is the only similar website that a lot of artists I enjoy use.
Vulkan is basically unsupported by nVidia on anything before the 20-series on Linux. My 1060 6GB can only manage around 4-5 FPS at 1080p in some games as a result while others work totally fine. In addition, the drivers aren't open source, so no one can go in and fix that problem.
Honestly, I've seen the Fediblock thing on Mastodon, and it's...pretty terrible. A whole lot of minority groups get targeted disproportionately by that stuff, especially by misinformation about their instances. The answer is really to leave instances if you disagree with moderation policies and the admins won't listen, and to join instances that are philosophically aligned with you, because unlike in a centralized/capitalist model, this actually works at cultivating a community that you can engage with in a healthy manner. If not, and you go with something like Fediblock/the one big blocklist site, you're just gonna end up with most instances that serve 2SLGBTQIA+ people getting blocked or having more harmful misinformation spread about them. Hell, if a lot of Lemmy had its way, anything but being capitalist and pro-USA would be banned.
But also, a lot of clients can subscribe to feeds already. ActivityPub is pretty great at cross compatibility with Mastodon and the like. You just subscribe to someone who uses a microblogging platform based on ActivityPub and it'll show up in your feed.
In certain parts of the world, you quite literally do not have a choice. For example: I'm in a rural community on an island. No one uses any other website to post anything, from local classified ads to events to important city/community stuff. The choice isn't to use a better alternative but whether a person here has social contact with anyone locally at all.
No, moving is not a realistic option, especially not moving as far as we'd have to move; even the biggest city in the province doesn't use anything else.
I had about 16TB of total storage when it was using that much RAM. It still didn't like it.
All my notes for tabletop RPG stuff, mainly! I run a few Pathfinder campaigns.
Windows often uses 8GB at idle for me with a single browser window open due to how much background BS it runs that is entirely irrelevant to anything I use the PC for. I upgraded to 32GB, then just finally decided to switch to Linux for good because it uses around 4-5GB with 10+ programs open (and most of that is Steam and Discord being inefficient).
Having played Halo CE for PC recently...no, it doesn't have split screen at all. That was only on the Xbox version (which is technically superior in quite a few ways). The only way to have split screen on Halo CE on PC is via console commands/mods. That said, I do agree with your overall point and I would love to be able to do split screen MCC on my PC without mods.
Unionize, then.
It's the cost of federation with instances that try to be giant general-purpose instances (.world and .ee, mostly): just constant shitty takes that overwhelm participants in the conversation. Federation works far better with lots of small purpose-driven instances instead of gigantic ones; my small (<1000 users) specific community-focused Mastodon instance sees absolutely nothing like this and is full of people who intentionally engage in good-faith conversation with the rest of the community while every large instance I've seen has the same issues as centralized social media in that regard.
If you're watching movies with friends and want a FOSS alternative, Jellyfin is the way to go. It's basically a way to host a media streaming center that others can connect to. It might be a bit overkill depending on your needs, but it's great for that exact purpose. It doesn't have chat or anything, though, so you'll want to keep something else around for that.
I think that would be useful! I also think that anyone putting that much work in should look into hosting their own server, because they've already done the hardest part of hosting a server in the fediverse. A big part of the issue is that a lot of ActivityPub apps don't really have granular enough customization baked in to support that sort of thing just yet; you can get some apps that do that on the user side, but anything on the server/community side is usually just "block all" or nothing. The admin of my Mastodon instance is always complaining that he can't just hide certain instances from the "all" tab without blocking then entirely, and he just wants to hide them so they don't overwhelm the server, not block them from showing up for people who choose to interact with them.
itch.io is fantastic. Mostly indie stuff with some bigger name stuff, but it's by far the best out there for devs.