Michael

Please don’t hurt yourself. Not everybody here on Earth lacks hope and a determination to do the right thing and see things through. We can do this and make this all mean something for ourselves - letting our future generations inherit a world better than what we did, and universally improve the conditions for all living beings here on this planet.

I have been in a pit of despair just like you seem to be right now. I know it’s hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel, but it’s there if you seek it out. Start by controlling what you can - help yourself to feel good, get some fresh air and some sun, eat good food that nourishes your body, do fun things and expose yourself to things that uplift you - if it calls to you!

The news often stirs up fear and feelings of helplessness. It’s intentional. It gets clicks and it is exactly what those in power want us to feel - helpless and afraid - small and weak. These violations of human rights will not be able to continue much longer, public awareness is reaching critical mass. Take a break from social media and news if you can. Have a good time with the people that love you, you deserve to be happy and healthy - we all do.

The Solarpunk movement has given me a lot of hope. You can find it on reddit at reddit.com/r/solarpunk and slrpnk.net here on the fediverse. Consider reading about the movement and engaging with the community. But please take a break if there is too much doom and gloom.

We are not doomed! Don’t pay attention to the headlines and articles that reach that conclusion. Even if that is the prevailing feeling many are feeling, we are SO close to being able to expose the artificial scarcity and games of the so-called elite, and start living in balance with our planet and collectively thriving!

I was nothing but polite…? Feeling strongly about Microsoft’s behavior and the enshittification of Windows is not the same as “pushing a cult-like mentality” as I was accused of or as you accused me of - being an asshole. Disagreeing and providing reasoning for the disagreement is not being an asshole. I am not a Linux cultist, I switched in January of this year. I am happy if other people are happy, and I respect their personal choices.

In every response, I merely responded with my reasoning and ways that they could use Linux without sacrificing anything (VFIO setups are viable albeit hard to setup). I did not resort to name-calling or insisting the person switch. In the last response, I reiterated that they were free to feel the way they do (accusing me of mental gymnastics) and to disagree. Re-read my responses with a helpful tone and I’m sure you’d see - tone is often not conveyed well online.

The only thing that I said that could be implied as being an asshole to somebody is saying Windows sucks or calling people in a regular office “tech-illiterate”. I’m not insulting anybody or being an elitist, I’m sorry that came across as harsh or unfair - I’ll be more careful with my language moving forward. I love it when things simply work for people and they are not struggling. I feel bad when people have issues. I don’t take any pleasure in others having problems or think lesser than them. Technology should be easy and accessible to use for all.

Arch Linux is not a beginner distribution, I started using it myself this year and I know with even using archinstall some things do not work out of the box even when selecting a desktop environment. Like bluetooth. CachyOS would’ve gotten you setup much quicker if you need the AUR. Bazzite or Nobara (or simply Fedora) would’ve been much easier if you don’t mind the Fedora ecosystem. PopOS is shaping up with COSMIC and will be a wonderful option for creators, gamers, and regular users when it is fully released. ZorinOS is great for beginners. Ubuntu is great and so is Debian. Linux Mint is used by a lot of people, and even though it doesn’t support Wayland yet, it’s a good option for new users. Almost every option is great for Steam and also Lutris and Heroic Games Launcher, which both help you to run various games.

Wanting a so-called minimal or vanilla setup (which is something I also desire) is hard if you are picky like me. Most people aren’t so picky, a couple extra packages or a little distribution-specific customization isn’t any sweat off their back. There are times when just getting your foot in the door and getting comfortable is much easier on yourself. If there weren’t great options for beginners, I wouldn’t be suggesting Linux to anyone.

If you were to have posted for support, I would’ve gladly helped you out if I saw your post.

And I don’t think we’re fucked. I know the news cycle and current state of the world is a lot to handle. I think we need to continue pushing awareness and other positive action. I’m sorry you are stressed and are seemingly feeling bad and overwhelmed. I would do anything I could to help you - we’re all in this together.

And you are free to feel that way or disagree with me.

This is a federated platform. Nobody here is a regular user akin to a tech-illiterate user at a company. Typical users here likely have the ability to read, which is all I needed to install all common (gaming/user-focused) distributions on my hardware.

I gave plenty of reasons why it works better for me. I have no special Linux knowledge and I use an entirely vanilla setup.

but telling others what they must give up to conform to what Linux can do is pushing cult mentality.

If all you’re losing is your specialty audiophile hardware, which you paid good money to consume, you’re not a regular user. Regular end-user hardware works fine, whether your GPU is NVIDIA or AMD.

You are only providing proof why people should always avoid Linux at all cost.

Unpatched admin account access, sub-par security features/process isolation, and running on the most common operating system targeted by malware is harmful to regular users. Windows Defender sending everything you download to their cloud is an invasion of privacy. No regular user of LTSC would know how to disable Windows Defender or even know how to use the group policy editor to disable exposed sources of telemetry. Since finding a source of LTSC is more difficult for regular users, they’d likely experience less hiccups just downloading a common Linux distribution and putting it on a flash drive. The principles of installing most user-focused Linux distributions are the same as the Windows Installer when proceeding with a graphical setup to write the operating system to your drive.

The reason that recently sparked me to switch to Linux was my bluetooth headphones not receiving audio when my screens turned off on Windows. My microphone frequently not working unless I uninstalled the drivers and rebooted. Take that in for a second. Neither device is uncommon for regular users. No, my computer wasn’t going to sleep/hibernating.

VFIO setups are mostly practical for non-gaming/games that don’t care if you’re running them in a VM. This is viable especially if you have an iGPU to allocate to Linux or have a spare discrete GPU to insert either for Windows or Linux.

As for audiophile hardware, why support companies that only develop with their proprietary drivers in mind? That stuff is expensive - you can ruminate prior to purchase.

People only push Linux for gaming out of ideology, not a solution.

For me, it’s been a much better solution. My microphone actually works properly on Linux, as opposed to not working on Windows.

I use my mouse left-handed and have to rebind keys on every game I play. When backing things up, I don’t like dealing with configs and other files in random places all over my drive. Add in the better performance I have experienced and it’s a no-brainer for me with my use case.

Using a translation layer or emulation means incompatibility, not a solution.

In my experience, Valve has been very eager to fix any bugs that sprout up. Maybe if more people adopt the Steam Deck or SteamOS/the various alternatives, more game developers will choose to support Linux natively - if there is any merit to doing so (which I highly doubt in the vast majority of cases).

Gaming on Linux because hate Windows, is not a solution.

I think their software and design philosophy is crap. 11 LTSC is particularly shit in its taskbar features being severely limited as opposed to previous LTSC versions - which are unwise to use if you are a gamer or are using software that targets the “latest” versions of Windows (e.g. the latest versions of 11 or 10). Developers are uninterested in fixing bugs that only affect LTSC versions. They cannot reproduce the bugs to fix them. I’d much rather be a non-Windows statistic for game developers to see, especially one that reports bugs that are actionable to them and Valve, as opposed to being part of the mass of Windows users.

Mental paranoia over telemetry does not make Linux a solution.

I am boycotting Microsoft because they are using their AI and cloud infrastructure for war. I’m unconvinced that a company with no morals, would also not have a backdoor/actively exploited zero-day in their proprietary operating system. We can’t audit it. Call it mental paranoia if you wish. Backdoors and their security aside, they siphon too much data, even after hitting the group policy editor and disabling all exposed sources of it AND going into safe mode and disabling Windows Defender completely through the registry (since Microsoft thinks they know better than me setting a group policy to disable it).

I definitely don’t trust Microsoft with my security when they have a multitude of UAC bypasses which they absolutely refuse to fix:

https://github.com/hfiref0x/UACME

Linux/Wayland is more secure by default than Windows is ever going to be - more secure even when considering the use of tools like Sandboxie-Plus and a strict software-based firewall on Windows.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/30/tyson-foods-toxic-pollutants-lakes-rivers

Don’t forget the massive amounts of toxic dumping they engage in, which to the best of my knowledge, has not been remediated.

No, I’m just pointing out that the lesser evil option sucks (after years of using it). It’s better for your sanity to simply jump ship and use a VM for applications that don’t work on Linux.

They still get a surprising amount of telemetry out of LTSC, especially 11 LTSC.

I guess we’ll see how it all pans out.

If you read the chain, I wasn’t comparing. It’s possible in a couple years that engines like Ladybird or Servo will take the place of Gecko, at least in part.

Mozilla has no public plan in place to deal with a loss of Google’s funding.

Source? I read that there was an issue with gender neutral pronouns not being used in the codebase (he stated that he has no problem with gender neutral pronouns), but I’m not a simp for him or somebody to argue for lesser evils.

Edit - finally found it: https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/pull/6814

awesomekling commented on May 2, 2021

This project is not an appropriate arena to advertise your personal politics.

Not the best look for him, but if this is all the meat to your accusation, then I am going to have to disagree with your statements of him being “vocally against a minority” and “calling somebody’s existence politics” - it seems like a stretch as nothing was said that targeted a minority or calling somebody’s existence politics. Was he being needlessly pedantic and insensitive to a contributor whose only contribution was that PR? Yes, I’d say so.

The use of gender neutral pronouns or pronouns in a more general sense are not politics, I strongly disagree with him. It was his choice to die on this hill in this instance, but they now use gender neutral pronouns. Again, if there is more evidence besides this singular statement, I’m all ears. Is it still concerning? Of course.

I was satisfied with how Andreas explained the funding situation of the Ladybird browser. They are relying on sponsorships, in addition to individual user donations, and also engaging in fundraising (but not in the venture capital sense).

As Andreas (loosely) put it; they are melting the hearts of people that echo some of the same views as yourself. They are being careful with how they scale and utilize funding, and they aim to make a codebase where everybody working on it is generally proficient in the entire codebase.

Mozilla’s funding isn’t sustainable and (in my opinion) their leadership are not reliable actors anymore - merely masquerading as activists. They do not utilize their money effectively. Relying on the money of an ad-tech/search/browser/etc. monopoly that is openly engaging in mass surveillance, and more recently, selling their AI for war isn’t ethical or compatible with Mozilla’s mission.

Ladybird is quickly shaping up.

See Brodie’s interview of Andreas Kling, the lead developer of the Ladybird Browser: https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/IXdBndEipps

There are several clips of the interview on his channel if you don’t have time to watch a 2 hour interview.

As for something taking place of the Mozilla Foundation itself, their activism in influencing web standards isn’t really enough anymore anyways. They are silent about fingerprinting, which their main source of funding engages in openly to track users across devices.