for my home network, i use adguard in combination with my opnsense for dns.upstreams, if it needs to leave my network, are the usual suspects: google, cloudflare, and quad9 - selected based on performance

for my servers/domains i used to just be a regular BIND user, editing the zonefiles manually when needed… but i have since switched my dns over to cloudflare because “easy and no maintenance”

(i might be one of the weird ducks in this sub: i still do my mailserver myself, but outsourced my dns to cloudflare…)

though, to be honest, there are quite a few additional reasons i did the cloudflare move:

• the use of their cdn
• hiding the actual server IPs
• using their zero trust

pro tip: if you do not read the ToS, you also can’t lie about if you are breaking them or not

came here to say basically the same thing: preservation

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But I guess you don’t need to share files in your local network, connect to servers, use KDE Connect, use MKV files with embedded posters, mount .ISO files, etc.

kde connect works fine on cinnamon (and there are a few alternatives as well, but i haven’t bothered as i’m not using it often enough since most mobile transfers are now done by bluetooth.
i do share stuff in the local network, and i do connect to (a lot) of servers.
however, i use sftp mounts that i can access directly from nautilus, so it’s just like any other folder. (could also use samba shares for windows, but i don’t have windows machines i need to connect to)

connecting to servers is usually just done through the tilix terminal,
and if i want to get fancy i use snowflake (believe it’s been renamed though).

i also mount iso’s from time to time, but pretty much same thing: i mount it and access it directly from nautilus.

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Maybe, but I don’t think Valve chose KDE Plasma for Steam Deck’s desktop mode just because of its resemblance to Windows

they likely did so based on “what is the easiest ui for users who are windows-based to understand” (and, i do assume that kde’s layout is a bit more mobile-device friendly than the other DE’s out there)

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I bet implementing color management and HDR suppor will take them another 10 years since they have started so late with Wayland support.

“so late” is a relative term - ubuntu has had it for about 2 years now, after trying to be an early adopter for wayland and rolling back that decision because it was not stable enough.

and even though wayland is now considered “stable enough”, last i heard it still has a lot of things it breaks (ofcourse, mostly somewhat older apps), and it requires (if i’m not mistaken) a very thorough rewrite of big parts of cinnamon to be functional and as stable as it needs to be (remember, they favor stability and reliability above pushing for more modern things).
so it is better to “wait and go slow” than to follow the “lets be modern” folks and risk breaking half of your userbase’s stuff.

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I never knew that X can allow different refresh rates per monitor.

that’s ok, i never even questioned that it couldn’t :)
but, i am running 2 screens at 60 and 1 at 75.
(their respective max at the set resolutions - atleast, in X, so it might limit the resolution/refresh combinations, but it is def. possible to set different ones)

thank god for all the different options, because things you like, such as dolphin, are things i do not like at all… the beauty of linux, i suppose.

the fact kde comes bundled as default does not say anything about quality, because otherwise, obviously, windows would be the best OS… (it does, in part, explain its popularity - just like windows, though) apart from that, i believe most of those vendors also just let you pick the DE you want upon ordering

wayland is coming to mint, but at a “everything at a time” pace (preliminary support in 21.3 iirc)

concerning multi-monitor support, i’ve never had issues with my nvidia card and 3 27" connected screens, running 2048x1152 at 60hz (i know, people these day want more hz but i’m not going to change my screens for some hz i won’t really notice personally) (by the way, the 3 screens can be set separately both for resolution AND refreshrate)

never heard of okular, and the best torrent client for me is transmission, while in gaming i had no issues whatsoever in running cyberpunk in high quality back when it came out (heck, i didn’t even encounter any real bugs!)

then again, i’ve been gaming on linux from back when loki’s installers were still a thing

kde… it may be the most used desktop, likely due to it being “windowsy-like” but that does not mean it is the best desktop (and on top of that, DE’s are often -luckily- a personal preference).
in my case, i find it absolutely horrible, and always have…

if you like eyecandy, deepin’s DDE and solus’ Budgie are 2 great choices, but i find myself always returning to the clean cinnamon environment with plank.

that being said, why would one DE be more “gaming compatible” than another? i mean, it is the OS and libraries that count, not the DE itself.

name me one game that i wouldn’t be able to run on my mint machine ?

you do ofcourse need to keep your system updated (says the guy currently running 1 dot-release behind), but if you do that… pretty much never an issue.

also don’t forget you have mint and you have LMDE which are both very much different in how they treat updates and packages.

you should throw in ubuntu and almost all ubuntu-based distro’s in that pot as well if you’re shooting down mint for gaming, as most of them will be in the same boat.

that debian itself is not suited for the latest and the greatest is known, as they favor stability above all else, meaning the stable debian versions are usually a long way behind.but mint has never given me an issue, especially not since steam.

(my previous distro’s include ubuntu, debian, deepin, elementary, solus, and probably some other ones - yet after a cycle of several years where i hop and stay with a distro 1 to 2 years, i usually end up back at mint, and yes, i also used LMDE but returned to regular mint)

self hosted mailserver here (on an old, dedicated vps)… just dovecot/postfix/mysql and the usual (amavis & spamassasin) - if i need to add/edit/delete users or domains, that’s just a bash script.

there’s lots of other options already mentioned, but you could also consider aws for this: you set your domain up with them (or verify it), set SES to forward inbound mails to wherever you want, and set your mailclient to send out through ses.

antispam & dkim/dmarc/spf included.

i’ve been running my own mailserver for about 10 years.
last time i’ve had to look at it was 2y ago (and that was because i was using quite strict blocklists, had 1 not ‘optimally configured’, and that one discontinued service, causing me to be forced to remove it from my list)

honestly, once it is running as you need it to, and you have all the regulars set up for your domain (dmarc/dkim/spf) it’s not all that much work.

blacklisting is pretty much a non-issue if you are using a decent provider (i.e. one that does not have 100 spammers on its network) and you are not spamming out yourself.

in 10 years i’ve had 1 or 2 blacklists - both from long before i was using dkim/dmarc/spf and also both due to the ip range (which was fairly straightforward to get my own ip out of the list)