(My original attempt at this post was deleted by the moderators, I'm not sure why, but this is a follow-up  in reference to a post I did a few days ago called "It's been a great ride, but maybe it's time to exit? or maybe not?")  
  
First of all, I want to thank everyone who commented on that original post. I learned a lot about my printer and 3D printing in general, so thank you. After some of the suggestions, and using those nozzle cleaning rods, and checking belts, wheels, things improved for sure. However, I was still like, "this printer is done, I'm just going to get something else". I'd get a messy, but successful print, then I'd have to take half my printer apart and clean it otherwise the next print would fail.

Then, I decided to try a different slicer. I've been using Cura since day one, and it's been....I don't know...fine. I had no reason to change. It worked, but I realized that it doesn't have a pre-set for the X2, so I've been using the X1 settings which have, again, always worked fine. Well, I decided to try OrcaSlicer because it has a pre-set for the X2 and figured, why not? It does seem like with every Cura update, things get worse lately so maybe it was time to change, so I did.

No joke. I downloaded the Flatpak version of the current stable OrcaSlicer (I'm running Linux Mint) and fired it up. Selected the X2, imported my model, sliced it, exported to the USB drive and printed. It was perfect. No problems AT ALL. It was the cleanest print I've gotten out of my X2 since I bought it. I've been printing without issues since.

I have no idea what is different between Cura and Orca, but SOMETHING is... I need to dig into the settings and see what I can find, but it's like I bought a brand new printer. I haven't had to mess with it at all, it just prints like it used to.

I fixed my X2 - I think