Chromebooks are what everyone’s using in school. Windows is in a state, and if businesses are going to replace it they sure as hell aren’t going to use Linux (too informal) or MacOS (too locked down).

For individual users, something like 90% of internet browsing is on mobile devices so Android and iOS have already won over Windows bigtime.

This is a problem for me. I’m a good rememberer but not a great creative thinker.

And that reorganization and reinterpretation is the difficult part for AI.

I don’t really care about timed exclusivity, especially when it’s just downloading a different launcher. Permanent exclusivity, or worse eventual unavailability I do care about though.

I’m really glad for all Valve has done for Linux, but Microsoft is not the monopoly it once was. Chromebooks are the new frontier and Epic is the one taking on the Play Store monopoly.

Add in GOG to the mix with their anti-DRM advocacy and I’m left with a tough choice for who I would rather my 30% store tax to go to.

Communism isn’t magic. Humans are still in charge.

In my case I’m just accepting the slim pickings. Even with the pickings being so slim, I could still theoretically never run out of things to read.

That said the search functionality is abysmal and that’s what’s really giving me pause.

It’s really frustrating that this whole situation is caused by people not knowing how to enable parental controls.

I’ll never switch to Chromium no matter what happens, not on an ideological basis, but because Firefox is the only browser that allows me to create duplicate bookmarks without manually copying and pasting it.

The XZ Utils thing is a prime example of the risks Linux faces.

Mobile operating systems in general are far more secure than Desktop operating systems. ChromeOS seems to be the most secure desktop option, but given the privacy implications of a Google operating system and the lock-down of Google Play I wouldn’t touch it with a 10-foot pole.

Tried it. Firstly it wouldn’t install. Secondly, the developer lead developer is a very private person and I don’t trust a Linux distro made by someone who is so secretive.

Linux in general is not secure for desktop users. There’s basically never sandboxing, and when there is it’s usually weak, antivirus is rarely used, and developers aren’t vetted as stringently as with paid software. Apparently Fedora and OpenSUSE take these issues more seriously, and SE Linux does somewhat restrict what malicious things a piece of software can do.

It’s a pretty widely held view that Fedora and OpenSUSE are more secure than Debian, Ubuntu, and Arch for desktop users but I’m not really an expert so I’m mostly retroactively justifying what I’ve heard second-hand.

With LUKS the whole “reboot to update” thing is 1000 times as inconvenient. I set it to install updates immediately, and even automatically, but the update process just isn’t going great for me in a bunch of ways.

I’ve recently had some issues with Fedora (KDE). After I install any update it tells me to restart to finish installing. So I restart and it still tells me the same thing. Probably time I distrohop again.

With the usual restriction of “either upstream or Mint, otherwise you’re doing it wrong”. There are 6 options. Ubuntu is obviously out. Arch is not my cup of tea. Fedora is already ruled out. Debian/Mint aren’t as secure as Fedora/OpenSUSE. That leaves me with going back to OpenSUSE Leap.

But the proprietary media codecs on OpenSUSE come from the AUR … looks like I’m out of options.

Ultimately duckduckgo is the best.

Bing and Google are out for obvious reasons. Startpage kept asking me to prove I’m human. Qwant blocked me whenever I enabled a VPN with an exit in a region they couldn’t run ads to. Ecosia is a non-profit so I’d feel bad blocking ads, but I don’t want to see ads. Mojeek returned garbage results. Kagi is ridiculously overpriced and restrictive. Brave Search often didn’t return the results I was looking for. And SearXNG I don’t remember what the problem was.

Now if they would stop being so selective about what they allow on their platform. There is a wide array of popular games available on Steam and DRM-free on Itch but for some reason they aren’t available on GOG.

I get that some people have been loudly calling for curation on Steam, but curation is a terrible thing. The customer should be the one to decide what they buy (provided the developer isn’t mass-producing asset flips). If they want a middle-ground they can just not promote any unendorsed games.

The AUR is never safe.

Name one nuclear-armed state America has dared to invade.

Yet the reverse is somehow not double standards, simply because the Russian state has a historical connection to communism.

Also an ability to hide games with a certain tag. For example my “MyComputerCan’tRunThis” tag.