Kushia

On the plus side it's going to keep you employed, a bit like COBOL programmers today.

Never get your mental health advice from a "technology consultant" especially one that quotes things like the DSM-5 without the required knowledge on how to apply it.

The DSM moves at a glacial pace as does many academic publications as it takes an extremely conservative approach to declaring new disorders. Most of the time it tries to classify things like "gaming addiction" under the general addiction category rather than make a new separate category for a specific form of it. Being addicted to anything including gaming is still a form of addiction and the lack of a specific category for it in the DSM doesn't mean it magically doesn't exist.

Tldr: this technology consultant is clueless about stuff outside of his field. Just because it beeps and boops doesn't make him a mental health expert on the use of it.

Everybody woke in the morning which explains why they seemingly hate everybody.

Newbies should be taught to review what they install beforehand on the AUR which almost anyone can contribute to with minimal barriers. Most users treat it like any other package repository but its not the same thing and it's definitely more risky then a curated repository.

Fedora tends to include a lot of the latest tech in a stable working configuration, stuff like Wayland and GNOME in the past and more. I like that I can get that while still enjoying a nice curated set of package repositories and without relying on something like the AUR for most packages. I'm happy to let others do the testing on the absolute bleeding edge and take the risks while I get to enjoy the fruits of that with a lot less pain with Fedora.

Best distro imo right now for desktop. Fedora a close second.

Others like Arch are great too but more for enthusiasts.

All my most played, loved and returned to games all support mods and there are a ton of mods for them. Even online games like Wow where mods at least make things a lot better.

We had mods. They're a bit like skins and new content, only free and far more creative. They are what you call microtransactions today but you didn't have to sell your right arm to get them because anyone could make them.

Many people vote but may not have much to say about the topic or that someone has already said what they're thinking.

When you release your software for free you don't owe anybody a thing. If you're getting burnt out or it's impacting your personal life too much then don't be afraid to stop and hand over control of the project gracefully. The latter is hard to do for most people though, because giving up something you've spent so much time and effort on is challenging. However, your irl always comes first.

Burn out and stress applies regardless of whether you get paid for your work or not. Plenty of people feel the same way about their paid jobs too. I think all being paid to continue work on this project will do is prolong the inevitable, that it's time to move on regardless.

OP seems to mention a bunch of things that can be summed up as belonging to "grind mentality" or the need to feel like everything you do should be productive in some way. That's capitalism tricking you into being a good little worker bee so you can be exploited for maximum profit. Life is too short to base ones personality too heavily around money and it's ruined so many hobbies as a result.

Pick one you do like and just use that. I originally overthought the Fediverse and made accounts everywhere and thought I wanted all the things. Turns out it's perfectly fine to just use one and get content federated over from the others.

Also, most phone apps allow you to store credentials for multiple instances and quickly switch between them which is really handy.