This may be an unpopular opinion, but NixOS. It has package up-to-dateness comparable to (and sometimes better than) Arch, but between being declarative (and reproducible) and allowing rollbacks, it's much harder to break. The cost is, of course, having to learn how to use NixOS, as it's a fair bit different to using a "normal" Linux distro.
Darohan
Look up "Commonality"/"Commonality Sol" (theme), "Reactionary" (theme), and "GNUStep" (icons) on the Plasma theme library, I think you'll find some stuff you like. Also, in Plasma Settings' "Window Style", select "MS Windows 9x".
My laptop looks very similar to this, running KDE Plasma 6.1, so yes, yes it is.
Something to make you feel even older: yeet isn't really considered "new" anymore 😬
Woman empowers woman?
Was ready to downvote but this is actually a really good guide, well done OP! The one issue I will raise, though, because I faced it myself, is that as long as you're still using Windows, it is way too easy to just go back to using the Windows programs not the open source ones. Only through switching to Linux can you really "throw yourself into the deep end" and force yourself to learn these new things. Microsoft has made themselves the "path of least resistance" (or at least that of "most momentum" for a reason) and if you've been using a computer for a while, it's a lot easier to break the habits and realise the benefits by giving yourself no other option than it is by trying to discipline yourself into using the new options.
Decipher #52
deciphered in ⏱️ 28s
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
https://decipher.wtf
Huh, that's probably the best I've ever done on one of these...
Only if you want it to
Ah great, that could be why a bunch of my photos didn't get metadata. I'll look into that, thanks for the tip.
Ooh, might look into that instead, actually. I always love a reason to write myself a little tool, but dealing with Google's bull makes it much less appealing to me when existing tools can do it for me.
Just gone through this whole process myself. My god does it suck. Another thing you'll want to be aware of around Takeout with Google Photos is that the photo metadata isn't attached as EXIF like with a normal service, but rather it's given as an accompanying JSON file for each image file. I'm using Memories for Nextcloud, and it has a tool that can restore the EXIF metadata using those files, but it's not exact and now I have about 1.5k images tagged as being from this year when they're really from 2018 or before. I'm looking at writing my own tool to restore some of this metadata but it's going to be a right pain in the ass.
This is equal parts so silly and so possible that I have no idea if this comment is a joke (I've never been to a circus)