I’m back! I got a few pairs of universal plugs, Loop Switch 2, Westone TRU Music and Westone TRU Travel, and I also have a pair of Etymotic ER20XS I’ve had for a long while. The Loop can attenuate at various levels, including 20 dB, 23 dB, and 26 dB. The TRU Music attenuate at 10 dB and the TRU Travel attenuate at 7 dB. The Etymotic attenuate at 13 dB.

The Loop Switch 2 are pretty versatile, but also kinda strange. Unlike the other plugs, they are single-flange. This makes getting a good seal not as easy, and even when they do seal, they might not stay sealed as well. Single-flange does make them much more comfortable than other offerings, they wear exactly like standard in-ear monitors. They’re also much more “fashionable” depending on what you subjectively consider to be fashionable. When you wear the Loop, people know you’re wearing them because they announce their presence with a unique shape. The three switchable modes are great! The 23 dB “Experience” mode seems ideal for concerts, with the most balanced quality compared to the 20 dB “Engage” mode and the 26 dB “Quiet” mode. The Engage mode would be adequate for everyday use if you’re getting around a city and wanted enough spatial awareness whilst also making things more comfortably quiet. The Quiet mode dampens the upper end by a lot, and sound quality is terrible when using them. Quiet mode would be ideal for sleep or focus.

The Westone TRU plugs are triple-flange tips with slightly different acoustic filters. They are both pretty great, and they both come with two sizes of silicone plugs in the box, but only one pair of acoustic filters (you can remove the filter and put it in the size of your choice). Not as comfortable as the Loops, but I’m also more confident in their seal and they are also much more discreet. You could wear these plugs without people knowing you have ear plugs in. The 7 dB Travel are great as “everyday” plugs, with enough attenuation that you can hear everything around you well enough, but attenuated enough to make louder sounds more comfortable and take the edge off. I would not wear these at concerts though, unless you’re going to a small concert that won’t be very loud. The Travel plugs would be fantastic for use in a busy office though. As for the 10 dB Music plugs, they sound very natural and would be pretty good for use at concerts, but that’s assuming the concert isn’t going to be playing too loud for too long.

The Etymotic ER20XS… I hate these things. These are the ear plugs that made me think all universal ear plugs must suck. Before I had my custom-moulded plugs I had these, and even though I had these I would always opt for foam plugs. I won’t even try to talk about the sound quality, I cannot wear them long enough to enjoy music because I’m too distracted by the pain in my ears to enjoy a concert.

Here’s what I’ve learned: universal ear plugs can actually be pretty comfy! The ER20XS are just horribly stiff and my ears hate them.

The defaults really do give you everything, from a first glance, one might actually think it is Windows because of how the taskbar is set up exactly the same by default.

Also something to note is that the KDE Plasma desktop environment has a very similar layout to Windows 10/11. It feels incredibly similar, honestly almost 1:1 in some aspects. Tons of distributions use it as their primary DE, or at least give you the option of using it

Hey there, I made the switch a few months ago and my Linux machine has quickly become my primary laptop! I started out with Fedora, using the KDE desktop environment.

I know folks often recommend Ubuntu or Mint but there are reasons you might decide it’s in your best interest to avoid that. Ubuntu’s package manager (a.k.a. app store) pushes something called Snap packages. There isn’t anything inherently wrong with them, but people tend to avoid them simply because it’s a proprietary package system and the Linux community overall favors more open-source solutions. Also, Mint was an easy recommendation years ago and I’m sure it’s still nice now, but Mint really just looks like Windows 7. It feels aged as hell.

When picking a distro, do understand you’re really picking more the assortment of things your Linux will come with and how the OS will lay things out. It sounds awfully convoluted but really you can’t go wrong here, this is such a wide community and there are guides and how tos for just about everything.

Depending on where you go to have it done, it likely can increase the price you pay to have them done. If you’re crafty enough with an at-home mould you could likely pull it off, but I know very little about those, do they come with an acoustic filter? Depending on how the DIY customs turn out, they might not sound as good as a universal fit. Edit: looking online, Decibullz DIY custom ear plugs look the most promising. Their “High Fidelity” model appears on Amazon and comes with three different acoustic filters, attenuating at 14, 17, and 19 dB from lowest to highest. If I was gonna try an at-home custom, these are the ones I would go for.

I was fortunate enough to have gotten my customs when I was part of a live production group in college where we had it in our budget to get executive board members custom-made ear plugs. We had an audiology center right on campus with a doctor that could take the mould and send it to the company that would make the plugs, at no extra cost to the student.

I’m actually looking into some universal plugs right now because I might have written off universal plugs entirely due to the Etymotic’s triple-flange shape being such deep insertion. This weekend I’m expecting a few pairs of universal fits to come in the mail, I’ll follow up with how they work out soon! :)

Live audio guy here, and I can say that custom-moulded plugs truly are tremendously above anything you can get in a universal fit. I got mine done for about $100 USD and they are super comfortable. If you are able to save up for it, I cannot recommend enough that you get custom ear plugs.

I also own a pair of Etymotic ER20XS universal fit ear plugs and they really irritate my ears. It hurts to wear them for a long period of time, whilst the custom plugs I can wear for hours at a time. Your mileage may vary, depending on the size and shape of your ear canal, but for me, universal fit ear plugs are just really painful. Whenever I forget my customs, I just go with foam ear plugs because I just can’t stand the Etymotics.

None of that is to mention how much more balanced the sound is with custom ear plugs, I find that universal ones just don’t sound as good.

I like the DuckDuckGo search engine, but I don’t care much for their browsers (mobile nor desktop). I do keep the browser app on my phone so I can generate alias Duck addresses, I do find that feature pretty handy.

As for how private DDG search is, I feel like the best practice for using any search engine privately is to clear browser data when you’re done searching with it. That’s a hassle though, so it’s smart to have a browser dedicated to temporary browsing sessions that you don’t plan to go back to later. On Android, browsers like Firefox (and forks like Mull) as well as Cromite allow you to set it so browsing data clears when you exit the browser.

Fun fact: the reason recipe books and blogs share these anecdotes is because you cannot copyright a recipe.

I mean the boxes for font and paragraph style are all dark when they should be light. I think it’s got to do with the system theme, I just wish I could selectively choose the theme for each application so dark mode doesn’t mess things up like this.

Which repository do you use? The F-Droid official one hasn’t been updated in three months 😬

The PC equivalent would simply be using Arkenfox with Firefox. If you want a similar out-of-the-box experience without having to tamper with it too much, Librewolf is also pretty good. There aren’t any real downsides to them not being the same, fundamentally they’re pretty similar and it shouldn’t impact one’s workflow across the platforms.

That is such a beautiful disc machine, I wish I could get one of those now

You say there’s no good Firefox browser for Android, but I strongly recommend you consider Mull. It’s pretty much Firefox w/ Arkenfox but for mobile and it works exactly as it should. For Mull you should add the DivestOS repository to F-Droid because the F-Droid one is outdated.

I like Fossify’s apps for phone and contacts. As for photo gallery, I really like Aves Libre, paired with Image Toolbox and Open Video Editor for light edits.

I don’t use an RSS aggregator myself, but Feeder tends to be rated well.