Bazzite scared me when it chose not to boot one day. I had to do some sort of command and got it working again (saved the details to my system build notes). I can’t have stuff breaking on me so I was concerned. I haven’t had an issue since, so I’m pretty stoked on Bazzite now. I will say, I couldn’t get Steam Play working (the thing that let’s you play games remotely on a tablet or phone or whatever, Steam itself works fine). I fixed the issue with Sunlight/Moonlight which does the sane thing but did it with less lag, picture degradation. Personally, I suggest you hold out on choosing and load a few different distros on USB sticks to try. I recently built a PC for a family member and did some distrohopping to find the right OS for them.

I once slept in an apartment directly across the street from a broadway-sized LED billboard. It was a comparable experience to staring into those LED headlights. You could see it change >>through<< the blackout curtains.

I don’t trust Microsoft’s motivations, but these are all important considerations you bring up.

The lowest step of pushiness is a tray icon. Cinnamon did(does?) it like this. You have an exclamation point in the tray if you have updates available, otherwise it’s a green check mark on a shield. I thought this was an elegantly simple and effective solution though, as you point out, easy to ignore.

On the other end of the spectrum, Microsoft have gone to the extreme: you will upgrade, you have limited options to defer, you will backup to our cloud. Updates show up and you get to be surprised every upgrade cycle when something that was formerly working is broken.

I will always opt for freedom for myself and others, but I imagine a middle ground that holds the hands of non-technical users would look something like the warning when you access about:config in Firefox. “Here be dragons!”

Ultimately, on a normie-focused OS it may even be useful to provide the user with information about backups and let them choose. "Having a backup reduces your likelihood of losing your cat memes by %. By confirming below you acknowledge that cloud backup will not be set up. To avoid data loss, please follow the 3-2-1 backup methodology (link).

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This is a cool tip. Not the autoexpanding tiling that Pop has, but still very useful. I wish I had had this on my work computer.

Thanks for the primer on KDE tiling. It’s been a while since I tried, but this will give me a better starting point!

Yeah, hopefully Patron doesn’t roll over and just removes the option to do it in iPhone. Taking away functionality will make Apple look bad, which they deserve.

Sad. Having used the OPX, OP6T, OP9, and briefly the OP10, I can honestly say their hardware is usually pretty good. I went to Graphene on a Pixel for the software. Software was always Oneplus’ weak point so it’s extra silly that they’re doing this. So many hobbyists have bought OP hardware and used it with software of their choice. They started co-developing their Oxygen OS with Oppo a while back and that’s when it really went to hell.

I’m aware of Stash. I wouldn’t have thought of it and that might actually be a good solution. I’ll spin up a copy and see if it’ll work. Thanks for the suggestion. :)

With the number of breaches and leaks, my chosen birthday is likely more substantiated than my actual birthday.

I can’t bring myself to throw anything out anymore. Someday, when all my working PCs have worn out, a $200 bottom of the barrel 32bit netbook could be the last thing standing between me and having to rent compute from some shitty tech company who doesn’t respect my first amendment rights, hides any advanced configuration from the end user, and has an AI constantly rewriting my files to remove any objectionable language, like YouTube or Facebook, but in my home. I’ll hack my toaster to run Linux before I let that happen.

Currently running a ~10 y/o Dell-XPS laptop that still runs absolutely great.

For me, I was a long term gnome 2 user and have used gnome 3 and various derivatives. Gnome 2 was still very customizable, but Gnome 3 was very prescriptivist. I feel like KDE gives me the ability to dial in my desktop quite a bit more and I really like dolphin and the KDE apps. With that said, I don’t hate Gnome. I’m glad it exists if only to encourage other DEs to keep getting better. I don’t see myself daily driving it, but I would gladly recommend it to a Linux beginner.

I have issues with that too. Some of it might have to do with VPNs, but even with everything off, my devices sometimes still can’t see each other. I’m guessing I made a mistake configuring the network or something. Instead, I usually copy files from my phone via SMB, then access the same share from an NFS mount on my PC

If they truly believe in their AI offerings, they should release them as an extension so users can choose to install them. You only bundle shit people don’t want. If it’s good, you distribute it stand-alone.

Yeah, when I support a social program, it’s with the knowledge and acceptance that some abuse will occur. It’s just that I think, despite the abuse, the upside is still a superior outcome to not doing it at all. Maybe one day we’ll rebuild the cultural fabric to the point where people don’t feel so desperate they immediately exploit any crack in the system regardless of the risks or long-term outcomes. With changes in culture and wealth distribution worldwide, I believe global prosperity is absolutely possible.

I can’t imagine welfare of any kind is more abused than the process by which the US government farms things out to private companies. If the poor are suckling at the teet of the welfare cow, then private industry is the wolf ripping it’s head off. Just look at the clusters of contractors that show up like flies on shit any time the money faucet is opened.

Yeah, I want my neighbors to have heat in the winter, food when they lose their job, and universal childcare. If I have to pay a few extra bucks a year for that it’s better than pouring it into the rest of the money-holes in Washington DC.

OP mentions being from another country. I don’t have a ton of experience with countries commonly regarded as corrupt, though I did go to Nigeria once; money flows >>differently<< there. But there’s also a stronger social fabric. I don’t know if I could vote for any tax when there is suck a blatant track record of shady dealings (though it’s arguable we’ve all been doing that). It was fascinating and I hope to go back some day.

Lol, I would wake up some time in February with an apetite sufficient to cause a global famine.

Wife was happy. Though I have now been asked to retrieve all the ornaments from the attic so her and her sister can decorate it. I only did the lights. Teamwork!

Haven’t done this, but I’ve known people who do. Beats the tree lots.

When I was a kid we did a real tree. When we visited my brother last year we did a small real tree. Normally we have a fake tree.

We had some deaths in the family and some sicknesses, so we weren’t feeling festive last year and set up a 3 foot tall fake tree before we skipped town. This year, today, I set up the big huge fake tree as a surprise while my wife wasn’t home. I’m hoping the Christmassy decor without the work will get her into the Christmas spirit. We’ll see if she’s glad or annoyed. :-D

I appreciate the share with anyone feature as well. I have a few friendships that are largely based on testing cool songs back and forth. This way the only inconvenience is me getting inbound Spotify links.

I read that even Azure, which you would expect to have a ton of Windows machines deployed, is like 66%+ Linux VMs. I was surprised to hear that, but it matches my limited experience.