Linux gives you freedom.
Freedom lets you break stuff.
If, like Windows or MacOSyou just use it as intended by official support, it should be fine. If you start just adding everything and anything from anyone you're gonna break stuff.
Other stuff is made to be idiot proof, Linux is not.
This seems more like UK Gov vs. WhatsApp.
Nice Signal are also holding their ground but they are a little fish in a big pond. The Government uses WhatApp heavily and there have been quite a few leaks, assume they would love a wee backdoor.
Think I'm still on keepassxc but looking to change. Bitwarden is looking good.
Do you selfhost?
Morons are everywhere, be prepared. Occasionally I'm one of them.
Check out the 'selfhosting' communities.
Retro gaming is an another option, Arcade Punks have a lot for resources for this. I don't retro game that often and storage speed is not an issue when I do so I have a few old drives with gaming systems on them I can just connect via usb & boot into when I'm in the mood.
On YouTube Network Chuck, Jeff Geerling and Explaining Computers have a lot of easy to access tutorials on setting up server stuff but most of it you can just copy & paste from tutorial sites or github.
Connect a few TB's of storage via usb, hdd dock is great but use whatever you can get. You could even run the OS from a USB stick and use the internal drive just for media storage, I done this for years with a 2008 pc server running Alpine Linux......as you have loads of ram you could even run the entire OS in ram from usb for an even faster system than ssd will provide with Alpine's diskless or disk data options.
Tailscale was a big one for me. Makes it simple to install on my server, laptop, desktop & phone so they can all talk to each other when out and about instead of worrying too much about firewalls and open ports at home....I am looking into this for hosting my own Lemmy instance at the moment.
If you have a personal music collection Navidrome + Symfonium, or other client, is amazing imo. Spotify killer. I also have slskd docker daemon running for soulseek so I can download flac music to my server when out and about and instantly stream it as mp3/ogg to my android device or laptop. Jellyfin and a torrent deamon does a similar job for video. As other have mentioned Pihole is cool and stuff like NextCloud too.
Best bet at the moment is to look for a sub about dogs, or even just animals, as opposed to hoping for a vibrant labradoodle community. Or cars, instead of The Honda Civic Users Club.
The entirety of Lemmy & Kbin is around that of a medium sized subreddit at the moment.
I've decided to ditched the subscription option, it feels largely pointless for me aside from expressing support at the moment. The whole thing can be managed as one would a subreddit using the local/all/hot/new/timescale/active options, the text search and alerts system.
84.93KB...I feel cheated.
slskd is a game changer for me. I have it running 24/7 on my pi but should run on pretty much anything.