Yes, the freedom to murder people would not be good for most people, but you are taking away others’ freedoms when you do that. But, this thread is about private property, speech, starting a family, and thought. Maybe I should have been more specific in my original comment. A better world wouldn’t require sacrificing these freedoms. It would require giving up the freedom to take others’ freedoms away.

Any freedom that means you have control over your own body and thoughts, I would consider an “essential” freedom, and those are the ones that I mean when I say a better world wouldn’t require giving up those freedoms. If you’re giving up your right to control your own body, you’re inviting a worse world.

By design, it’s supposed to be barely profitable, so it makes sense it would cross that boundary once in a while. Then some miners leave the network or slow their hash rate, the difficulty is adjusted automatically, and it becomes profitable again. It’s actually a pretty interesting strategy.

Ostensibly, the difficulty depends on how many miners there are on the network. More miners = more difficult. Fewer miners = less difficult. The “difficulty” is just how “lucky” you have to be to hit a successful hash on a block. The block’s hash is based on the previous block + all the transactions you include in your block + a random number you add. That random number is what you change to try to hit a successful hash. If the hash starts with a certain number of zeroes, you have a successful block you can add to the chain, and you’re rewarded with some brand new coin in your wallet (you include that in the transactions in your block). If not, you change the random number and try again. How many times you have to try again is controlled by the leading zeroes requirement. You’re competing with every other miner on the network to find a successful block first.

The amount of new coin constantly goes down as the chain gets longer, until it hits zero and mining doesn’t create new coin. Then, you would charge a fee for including someone’s transaction (a lot of miners already charge a fee). The more zeroes required at the start of the hash, the “harder” it is to mine. The network automatically adjusts how many zeroes are required to keep new blocks being added at a roughly constant rate (one block every ten minutes is the target).

All of this is enforced by the algorithm Bitcoin miners use. If a “rogue miner” submits a block that doesn’t meet these criteria, the other miners just reject the block and don’t add it to their copy of the blockchain. The consensus is what really matters, and no one entity controls a majority of miners. Each miner has their own copy of the entire blockchain, so each miner can validate any block it receives before adding it to the chain.

Fewer miners would mean blocks are being added too slowly at the current difficulty, and the network adjusts to make it easier to hit a successful hash. The network automatically adjusts difficulty every 2,016 blocks (it’s all just math, and it’s part of the Bitcoin algorithm), which is roughly every 2 weeks. So, it should in theory only be not profitable for up to two weeks.

(Please note that this is simplified to the point of being technically wrong, but in principle, that’s how it works. Technically, in a mining pool, you can still get rewarded even if you don’t hit a successful hash. You get rewarded based on the hash rate you provide to the pool, with the understanding that you won’t get the full reward when you hit a successful block. Also, it’s not really about the number of zeroes, but a “target” hash that your hash needs to be “below”. A hash might have the same number of leading zeroes, but not be below the target, so wouldn’t be successful. That’s really unlikely. In practice, this basically means more leading zeroes. If the target got high enough, it can even have no leading zeroes. That would probably require an intergalactic sized network.)

We’re talking about a better world and giving up freedoms. Americans have given up a bunch of freedoms and have gotten a worse world because of it.

America is not nearly as free as it claims to be.

You’re just moving all the transcoding from the GPU to the CPU. If you can get Quick Sync working, and you use h264, that’s fine. If not, you’re eating into your CPU.

“Calm down. You’re acting very presidential right now.”

A better world wouldn’t require sacrificing freedoms.

I mean, Wine stands for “Wine Is Not an Emulator”.

What are you talking about? Out of the 248 games in my Steam library, 190 of them are rated as working on Linux (Steam Deck Verified and Steam Deck Playable). 21 of them are untested, which means only 37 of them are rated as unplayable. Of those most are unplayable because they’re either VR games or they have restrictive anticheat. Some of them, like Medium, say they’re unplayable but work fine for me. I’m assuming that’s because the Steam Deck isn’t powerful enough to play Medium at more than 15 fps, but on my PC, it runs around 100 fps. Others, like GTA V, say they’re unplayable, even though I’ve fully played through them with no issue, even on the Steam Deck. I’m guessing that’s because GTA Online has anticheat, but I’ve played the single player and online and both have worked fine for me. (I just looked it up. They added BattleEye to GTA Online late last year, so yeah, GTA V is rated unplayable, even though the Story Mode is fully playable.)

I’ve even gotten games that refuse to work on Windows (like the original American Mcgee’s Alice and the original Journeyman Project) running great in Linux.

After running through a few of the untested games, some of them are untested, even though they have native Linux ports that run just fine. I’m assuming that’s because they haven’t been tested specifically on the Steam Deck.

Other than the ones with restrictive anticheat, everything I’ve tried from my Epic Games library works great too.

Of the games I play, almost none of them have worked worse on Linux than they do on Windows. Most work exactly the same, and a few work better. One (exactly one) has worked worse, for about a month, then a new version of Proton fixed the missing cutscenes.

A lot of stuff runs with windows emulation as if it’s native.

Proton is a compatibility layer, not an emulator. The binary is running on the bare metal CPU, just like on Windows. It’s only the system and API calls that are translated to their Linux equivalents. That’s why the performance is basically the same, unlike a hardware emulator.

First off, welcome to the light side.

Will my ability to play games be significantly affected compared to Windows?

It will be affected, but not significantly. Almost every Windows game works well on Linux. The notable exceptions are games that use anticheat software. They can detect that they are running in Linux and generally disallow it.

Many games perform better in Linux. A few perform worse. The vast majority perform exactly the same.

If you run games through Steam, everything should just work. You might need to enable the option “Enable Steam Play for all titles” in the settings. Honestly, if a game has a Linux version, I usually set the compatibility option in Steam to use Proton instead, because it just works, really well.

If you run other games, I recommend using Heroic Launcher for the game stores it supports, and Lutris for anything else. (Oh, and Prism Launcher if you play Minecraft.)

Something to note is that Windows games run through a compatibility layer called Proton, which is based on Wine. You can kind of use the terms Proton and Wine interchangeably, because Proton is just Wine + some enhancements for games. To the game’s perspective, it’s just running in Windows and making Windows system calls. Proton translates those calls to Linux system calls. It doesn’t emulate anything though, it just provides a Windows compatible API.

Can I mod games as freely and as easily as I do on Windows?

Maybe. Probably. If it’s running in Proton, then mods should work fine. You may need to add some launch parameters in Steam to load the mods first. You’ll also need to figure out the “Wine prefix” of the game to install the mod. The prefix is just the directory that Proton presents to the game as the C: drive, so it’s like having a specific drive for each game.

If a program has no Linux version, is it unusable, or are there workarounds?

This depends. Most programs will run through Wine. You can use Lutris to install them. I do this to run WinSCP on Linux. Some programs (notably, Adobe Creative Suite) don’t work with Wine. It’s usually better to find a Linux native alternative instead, but this isn’t always an option, so it’s nice to have some Wine once in a while. ;)

Can Linux run programs that rely on frameworks like .NET or other Windows-specific libraries?

Yes. Steam, Heroic, and Lutris will automatically install them for you.

How do OS updates work in Linux? Is there a “Linux Update” program like what Windows has?

OS upgrades are a lot easier in Linux. There’s one program that updates all your system software and apps at once. On Gnome, it’s Gnome Software, and on KDE, it’s Discover. This is also where you go to install apps. Don’t ever download anything from a website to install it (with the exception of Windows installers that you will be installing with Wine), just find it in these apps. It’s safer.

System software is installed through the package manager. Apps can be installed through Flatpak to make it easier.

How does digital security work on Linux? Is it more vulnerable due to being open source? Is there integrated antivirus software, or will I have to source that myself?

Security is generally better than Windows. Most Linux users don’t bother with antivirus for two reasons, viruses are really uncommon in Linux, and software isn’t installed from random websites, but package managers instead. A lot of things in Linux, like Flatpaks, are run in a sandbox too, so access controls are granular and permission based.

That being said, if you’re installing Windows software with Wine, then you’re at risk of installing a Windows virus on your Linux machine. Just like most Windows programs work well in Linux through Wine, most Windows viruses work well in Linux through Wine.

Are GPU drivers reliable on Linux?

Very. If you’re using an Nvidia GPU, install the Nvidia driver through your package manager. If you’re using anything else, they’re already installed.

Can Linux (in the case of a misconfiguration or serious failure) potentially damage hardware?

Probably not. Technically, yes, but it’s extremely unlikely and isn’t something you should worry about. Windows can too, btw.

And also, what distro might be best for me?

Fedora, Mint, or Pop OS should be your starting points. Steer clear of Ubuntu. Ubuntu used to be very user friendly, but lately it’s been atrocious. Fedora has always been awesome, and it’s very user friendly. Same with Mint.

More importantly, what desktop environment should you use. Fedora Workstation offers both Gnome and KDE, the two big ones. Either one will work great for you, but KDE is more similar to a Windows layout by default. Mint uses Cinnamon, which is very user friendly and similar to a Windows layout. Pop OS uses Cosmic, which is new, and in development. It’s promising though.

Some final thoughts I want to share with you:

Linux uses a Unix like file structure, so you don’t have drive letters. Instead, you have a root file system, and other file systems are mounted within it. Your root file system is just a slash /. It’s like your C: drive. Directories are separated by forward slashes, not backslashes. Not something you should worry about, just something to know.

Linux is a diverse field of operating systems, and some work very differently than others. They range from super easy and approachable, to wildly difficult to learn. Some are specialized for gaming, like Bazzite, while others are general purpose, like the ones I mentioned above. Technically, “Linux” is just the kernel, like “NT” on Windows, but most people mean a complete operating system when they say Linux.

You should learn about the difference between Wayland and X11. Just some basic overview of them. You don’t really need to know, but it might be worth it. Basically, Wayland is new and more secure, X11 is old and less secure. Wayland can run X11 apps just fine, so it really shouldn’t matter to you. Wayland is also the default nowadays.

You probably won’t need to use the terminal, but if you do, don’t be scared of it. It’s just a way to launch programs that generally don’t have a UI.

Lastly, Linux is free and easy to install, so don’t be afraid to try out a bunch of different distros and desktop environments and see which works best for you. Once you find one you like, you can always switch to something else in the future if it stops working for what you need. Also, backup early and often. I use Pika Backup. It’ll help if you forget to grab something before you reformat your drive.

I’m pretty good at thinking outside the box and innovating, so I’d probably just die.

I’ll be excited again when they give up on Snaps.

HDMI and a mouse, maybe?

Take out a loan using it as collateral. Then it doesn’t matter if you take it back, I still have the loan. Then I guess buy a small company and gut it for resources. Rinse and repeat. Get rich. Lose my ethics. Start paying off women with offers of a horse. Lose my hair. Get my butt hair put on my head. Buy a shitty company and make it shittier. Treat my kids like garbage. Buy the president. Be the most hated man in the world. Fake my gaming stats. Die alone.

I think some of their business oriented laptops are fine, but every consumer model I’ve owned, I’ve had problems with. I can’t trust them anymore, especially since they marketed an XPS as working with Ubuntu, then later changed their marketing to remove the fingerprint reader, which didn’t actually work with Ubuntu. I bought that machine solely because they promised me it fully worked with Ubuntu.

Maybe we should have another system for canonical ownership, where the character enters public domain, but there’s still an idea of legally canon. So after expiry, anything SpongeBob related that wasn’t made by Nickelodeon couldn’t be considered legally canon. Cartoon Network could make a new SpongeBob series, but that would be legally fanfic if it wasn’t transformative enough. Then you could still profit by selling the legal ownership of the canon, but everyone else could express their creativity freely.

I think we should use the same length as a utility patent, 20 years in the US.

I don’t know if I would say they’ve “left the planet” in low earth orbit. They went to space, but they’re still very much gravitationally bound to earth. If their orbital velocity were to suddenly become zero, they would fall to earth very quickly. The people who went to the moon left the planet.

But to answer your question, the fact that we harnessed electricity to create a communications network that can nearly instantly communicate from anywhere on earth to anywhere else, still amazes me.

I’ve never had a Dell that didn’t have issues with Linux. The fingerprint reader never works, sometimes the webcam doesn’t work, sometimes the WiFi doesn’t work, and sometimes the ambient light sensor doesn’t work. But, there’s always a problem. After having four different Dells, I finally swore off the brand for good. Never again.