Amazing how every prediction the Reddit community has made re: this situation has been coming true. They called this well before the blackouts began.

Congrats on your jump! May your move be a positive one!
I'm on the Arch side of things and don't touch Gnome a whole lot, so I probably won't be a lot of help, but one thing I might suggest is to be prepared for the sheer modularity of it all. It's no longer a Windows issue, likewise, it's not generally a Pop_OS issue, it's a specific app's issue. If your desktop misbehaves, it's likely Gnome (or Gnome extensions), if games aren't loading in general, it's probably Proton/Wine. I say this because it helps immensely to narrow down where an issue or incompatibility lies.

The modularity also has some really cool benefits to it though! If you find that you don't like your file explorer, install a different one. If you find that you prefer Plasma's customization but not ready to make a leap off of Gnome, install it alongside Gnome so you can try it out and see what you like or don't like about it.

The other thing I'd suggest is to be ready to rewire your brain on what apps you default to, just like you're doing with Lemmy & Reddit, but on a mass scale. It can be subtle differences like gNotes vs. Notepad, or as extreme as Krita vs. Photoshop. Getting familiar with the FOSS replacements for many of the common apps that you use will take you much further than trying to get familiar Windows apps to work on Linux.

Gaming: There's a lot to learn, but if you take it bites at a time, it'll make sense. Start with games on Steam, play some Windows games on Linux, note how freaking cool that is. Start to make use of ProtonDB.com to make some games work that might not out of the box, or optimize games you currently have working based on people's suggestions.
Small jump, ProtonUp, here you can install various runners, compatibility tools, and get your hands messy with the runner side of things. While I don't need ProtonUp very often, understanding runners can be invaluable, since you might benefit from using a GE version, or take for instance, when Overwatch 2 came out, it wouldn't run on Wine, but you could copy the runner from Bottles into Lutris and play off of that.
Then the big leap: Lutris and Bottles. These two are fairly similar, Lutris is predominantly for games that aren't in Steam, and Bottles is generally for applications. I use Bottles very little, because using Linux stuff on Linux will always treat you better than trying to get a Windows thing to work on Linux. Lutris has scripts to help install games for you, but its interface allows for more exploring what those properties on ProtonDB actually are and what they do for you. At this point, you can customize some of the compatibility tools to fit your liking or contribute back to others so they can also play things that may not already have a premade script.

Last and certainly not least: 3 expectations \

1. Be ready to be a self starter: if things go wrong, be ready to read some (fabulously written) documentation, pulling up some (well organized) logs, and doing some good old fashioned research. \
2. Do not be afraid to reach out for help: The Linux community is a passionate one that wants to see others thrive in it. If you have issues with Lutris, why not hop on their discord and get help directly from them for free? Most paid services (Windows) don't even offer that kind of support! \
3. People are people. I know this sounds obvious, but while Linux is fantastic and its community is wonderful, try not to take it personally if someone's difficult. Most people that support the Linux ecosphere are volunteers, they're not paid, some of them are really not good with people, and there's always a lot to do. Be patient with folks, temper expectations, and be ready to get your hands dirty with your computer, because while someone might be able to help guide you, it's going to be you pushing the buttons.
   
   Congrats again, my friend, and welcome to a big new world <3

Great looking out 😊

In your profile settings is a way to set the default. Some users have reported a visual bug where when you go back to the main page it will say that you have a different sorting method selected, but the results of the page should still reflect what you've set as your default. We're all Alpha Testers for Lemmy :)

Matrix is great, Element has a really nice UI for it. Signal also does work without a phone number, in fact it doesn't really work for SMS anymore. Signal provides P2P for any communications with another Signal user. Matrix supports P2P as long as you set it up (encrypt a channel) and I think DM's are P2P

Edit: So Matrix is cool, End to End, NOT P2P, and probably the right decision for OP.

I'm not sure if it has a different name, and I apologize if I'm saying things you already know. Viewport is basically just what's visible on your screen.

Wayland, for optimization and security, suspends apps not visible on your screen. Normally, this is a really great feature, but it becomes problematic for me.

For instance, I'm playing an mmo, I keep a browser open on another virtual desktop so I can find things I need and the game doesn't alt-tab very well. While I'm on the second virtual desktop, it suspends my game, the mmo assumes I've disconnected, and logs me out. This is becoming more of an issue with most games now being live service, so I can't just queue for a game in Overwatch, then go browse on the other vdesktop.

Let's say you don't use virtual desktops. I play music from my computer while I'm cleaning the house. Screen locks, music stops. I know, I can use caffeine to keep it from sleeping, but I shouldn't have to, and what if I want to leave the room and not have to worry about what kind of damage a family member can do without having to know my login?

It's technically a good feature, and I would absolutely keep it on if it were on my work computer, but it just doesn't fit for my personal rig. It's not an optional function since it's considered a big win for security, but I'd love the option to toggle it off so I can keep using my computer the way that I want to. It may sound silly, but it drove me back to xorg, despite me otherwise loving Wayland.

I think it does send the request the first time you click, but it takes a while to get a response from another server. Try it with some communities that are local to your server and you'll notice it's not so much an issue. I'm not a Dev and not am authority on the topic, but I think it puts your request into a queue, this helps make sure that your request makes it to the requested server in the case that one of those servers is temporarily down for maintenance or updates.

What I think needs to happen is just to provide a visual response to indicate that your request is sent and awaiting a response, which doesn't usually happen until you click it a second time.

Anyone else suddenly getting Reddit followers? I've yet to purge my account, and my account, which has no real activity, is suddenly getting an influx of followers. wth is going on over there? lol

That's amazing!!! Great news! Now just need the option to disable viewport suspension, I'd be on it 100% of the time

I hopped on Manjaro back before people started flaming it to kingdom come. I'm still using it 4 years later and still loving it 😊 I play with other distros on another computer for funsies, but my home rig stays the same

Ah, that makes sense, thank you for educating me!

I do like the idea of making x-posting nice and easy so we can hit several communities of similar topic at once

Apparently it's just a visual thing, whatever you've set your profile to in the browser extends to your Jerboa app.

I can get behind that, that'd work great for me. / I saw some app that allows certain apps force preventing suspensions, but that feels like a hacky solution, and I'd still rather be able to lock the screen, so a sort of trust or exemption to the viewport rule would be great

Closest thing I'm seeing on the Github is https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/1279 Which has a dev comment writing it off as a non-issue. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding or somehow I'm an edge-case on two different browsers on two different computers and different filtering combos, which seems pretty unlikely.

This also reduces server storage requirements for our friends hosting Lemmy instances, which is cool 😊

For some reason, I thought it was interchangeable terminology, I'm glad to understand better now. I could see a lot of P2P's forgoing encryption then, since presumably you're not hopping over any other devices or networks.

Of course! Thanks for coming to my TED talk :P
I really hope they can add that option, but I get the feeling it's looooow on their priority list since it's perceived as a feature. But here's hoping :)

I apologize, I was thinking End-to-End. Though would someone mind enlightening me to the difference? Is is just multi-client support? Or that there can be a broker in between?

Also, to everyone currently roasting me, here is what I was referencing

Aaaah, got it, thank you so much for clearing that up for me. I apologize for my incorrect message then. From these comments, I'm inclined to say Matrix remains OP's best option.

Thank you for educating me! 😊