• @KindredAffiliate
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    1431 year ago

    You forgot “Only uses 10+ year old librebooted Thinkpad” on tech paranoid

        • @KindredAffiliate
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          441 year ago

          It’s an open source bios. There are only builds for a certain few laptops and it involves opening it up and flashing the bios chip

          • @KindredAffiliate
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            271 year ago

            If you want to disable Intel Management Engine, the always-on backdoor built into every Intel CPU and/or want as much software as possible on your machine to be FOSS

            Also it boots much faster than most stock bios.

              • @[email protected]
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                21 year ago

                Not that I know of, AMD is also soon going to make their own FOSS bios with OpenSIL so they’re generally the better option if you’re a privacy/libre software junkie.

                • @pitajellybug
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                  31 year ago

                  As far as I know, OpenSIL stands for Open Silicon Initialization Library, and handles only the hardware initialisation part of the boot process. It may still require loading binary blobs like the Platform Security Processor (PSP), which is AMD’s version of Intel Management Engine

  • @[email protected]
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    1131 year ago

    Brave being listed alongside Firefox

    Bestie Brave is literally just Chromium again. Not to mention the fact that their CEO is someone who got ousted from Firefox for being a tremendous bigot. It’s not a better alternative to Chrome, it’s just the same thing again. It you must use a chromium browser, use ungoogled.

    • Sanndy
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      331 year ago

      Brave also does sneaky shit with your data

    • @[email protected]
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      91 year ago

      I personally use Librewolf. Its just a hardened version of Firefox so you don’t have to do it yourself.

      • R0cket_M00se
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        41 year ago

        I tried it but didn’t care to find out if there was a way to stop it from deleting all my tabs and logins, and I’m not relogging into everything just because I needed to close my browser.

        • Ádám
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          21 year ago

          You can set exceptions to the cookie deletion in the security settings. I personally have everything I use frequently (invidious and stuff) to keep the login cookies. Or you can just completely disable that feature.

    • Carlos Solís
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      01 year ago

      Unfortunately he’s also the inventor of JavaScript. Which makes the entire concept of Web 2.0 problematic by association.

  • LennethAegis
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    1001 year ago

    I fall under Tech Conservative mostly, but I would like to edit the last 2 points to this for myself:

    “Believe every publicly traded company is inherently evil”
    “Doesn’t morally support big tech, but uses some anyway”

    • @TheBSGamer
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      101 year ago

      An important note to your last one is for some of us we don’t get an option. Work does everything with Office 365? Welp, guess you gotta use Microsoft products now 🤷

      • LennethAegis
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        61 year ago

        I mean, work is work, you don’t get a choice in what product your company uses. My point was meant for personal use.

  • Yote.zip
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    891 year ago

    Grats on Arch Linux install, S-tier distro for what it attempts to accomplish.

    It feels like there needs to be a category in between conservative and paranoid. I’m probably 90% of the way over to tech paranoid but using Tor Browser and Tails is a little much.

    • @KindredAffiliate
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      411 year ago

      Grats on Arch Linux install, S-tier distro for what it attempts to accomplish.

      For some reason, the best word to describe it in my mind is “fun”. Just fun to learn and play with, fun to install, fun to configure and customize, and fun to daily drive. Definitely not fun when a random package update breaks your system (looking at you grub), but that hardly ever happens anymore provided you don’t enable the testing repo.

      Also pacman is the fastest package manager I’ve ever used.

      • AlmightySnoo 🐢🇮🇱🇺🇦
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        201 year ago

        Also pacman is the fastest package manager I’ve ever used.

        I hope you enabled parallel downloads, that makes it fast as fuck.

      • Yote.zip
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        91 year ago

        Apt is very quick as well (with the nala frontend), no complaints there. I’ve been running Arch for the past 5 years and recently switched to Debian Stable. The “grub event” was certainly notable, but otherwise I don’t think Arch is really that unstable or gimmicky. Arch itself is a very solid and dependable platform - the reason I decided to move is because I really don’t need the bleeding edge packages from other projects anymore. With Flatpaks and all the rest of the /home-based package managers that are around now, I can keep a stable base system and install a couple bleeding edge packages that I want, instead of being forced to run my entire system as bleeding edge (do my printer drivers really need to make me bleed?).

        Overall, I’d say the Arch experience is as high quality as the Debian experience, they just target different usecases. Neither of them is better, it’s just up to the user how bloody they want their system to be.

        • Programmer Belch
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          21 year ago

          Is it really not that stable? I’m trying to switch from ext4 because of the built-in compression

          • @[email protected]
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            21 year ago

            I just lost a raid 0 array for what seems like no reason, all I even had to do was reformat and both drives are working again. It’s fortunate I only use them for my steam library.

            That being said I have an Ubuntu machine that’s been running 4 drives in RAID 5 for like 5 years so… Your mileage may vary?

      • @[email protected]
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        21 year ago

        Somehow mkinitcpio broke my initramfs the other day when I installed the latest microcode updates. Took me like an hour to debug the issue and boot from the fallback 😑. That’s the first time I’ve had an issue like that though. I’ve been using arch for a few years now.

    • Sean
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      111 year ago

      There is another version with two more tiers

      • substill
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        171 year ago

        Please tell me there aren’t two more tiers to the right of paranoid. The last tier would just be “homemade pencils only.”

        • Random Dent
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          There’s one either side!

          Edit: also, I’m at “Newborn Paranoid” and definitely feeling the pull towards tech paranoid. Writing this on Librewolf in Arch (btw) lol.

          • substill
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            61 year ago

            The only things I even recognize from those two are fdroid and lynx.

            • NebLem
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              61 year ago

              Most of the others were Emacs related. I’m sure someone on here is even using the new emacs client lem to read this comment.

    • oce 🐆
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      81 year ago

      Also the middle should be called Tech Centrist or Tech Social Democrat, daring to use the projects from philosophical minorities is not conservative at all.

      • gun/linux
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        11 year ago

        Conservative means “not extreme”

        E.g. conservative estimates

        • @[email protected]
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          31 year ago

          Words can have multiple meanings - it might be best to find one that doesn’t have the same baggage that conservative has, such as “risk-averse”

        • oce 🐆
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          Not extreme is rather moderate. Conservative estimate means there’s a tendency to not change what was estimated in the past. Moderate would mean that a small change would be accepted.

      • Corgana
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        11 year ago

        Conservatives are always trying to make themselves seem “cool and different” like the middle guy in the meme. Being anticonsumerist, pro-privacy and pro individual liberty is far from actual conservative policy goals but they obviously have to pretend otherwise.

    • Dolphinfucker420
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      01 year ago

      I use arch as my main disto with Firefox but use tails and tor for “purchases”

  • @[email protected]
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    531 year ago

    For fellow paranoids:

    Mullvad browser is a fairly new Firefox fork which aims to reduce fingerprinting potential while also having sane (paranoid) defaults. Developed with the Tor project. Basically the Tor browser but without connecting to the Tor network. Passes coveryourtracks.eff.org.

    SimpleX Chat is a fairly new privacy oriented IM platform which seems to address many issues current ones have. Development is very active. E2E, video and voice calls, decentralized, doesn’t have user ID of any kind.

      • CUFTA22
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        61 year ago

        It’s librewolf if they had a VPN to shill to you

      • @[email protected]
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        Tor/Mullvad are better for anonymity use cases, but when you go tweaking it (settings, add-ons) you are no longer blending in with the pack. LibreWolf suits a more privacy-oriented use case I think since it’s not aiming to mimic Tor, but just have privacy settings mostly maxed out & you opt into everything you are comfortable with, such as cookies—whereas base Fx you have to opt into more privacy.

        • Programmer Belch
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          21 year ago

          I mostly use librewolf as a substitute for private browsing. Firefox is my go to for places where I log in

      • @[email protected]
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        Honestly, I can’t remember specifics but I read some bad stuff about Librewolf a few months ago (nothing nefarious, just seems the developers didn’t necessarily really know what they were doing and made some weird design choices).

        I trust the Tor project somewhat, so I tend to trust Mullvad browser more.

        Edit: here’s some good information: https://github.com/mullvad/mullvad-browser/issues/1

      • @[email protected]
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        21 year ago

        Honestly, I can’t remember specifics but I read some bad stuff about Librewolf a few months ago (nothing nefarious, just seems the developers didn’t necessarily really know what they were doing and made some weird design choices).

        I trust the Tor project somewhat, so I tend to trust Mullvad browser more.

  • @[email protected]
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    531 year ago

    What does MKBHD have to do with this? He’s just a tech reviewer who kinda fits between tech normie and tech conservative

    • illectrility
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      631 year ago

      He’s the kind of guy that looks at a Fairphone and says “if you compare this to a Pixel, the Pixel is faster”, talks about how important repairability and sustainability is, vows to mention it in future phone reviews and then proceeds to never mention it ever again but instead keeps on saying how great the new iPhone is.

      I’m not kidding: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkmzDwgvqQM

      • @Scotty_Trees
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        11 year ago

        Hey I watched this video when it came out a year ago, and honestly don’t remember a single thing about it, other than I had already “liked” the video. Damn my brain needs an oil change…

    • Nioxic
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      And he mostly talks about phones anyway… hardly relevant to the avg pc enthusiast as he only covers macbooks and not their competition, which is silly.

  • Semi-Hemi-Demigod
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    421 year ago

    What if my favorite OS is Mac, my favorite browser is Firefox, and my favorite app is self hosted?

    • @soviettaters
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      231 year ago

      Not really. People who use the apps are trying to preserve (conserve) the time when privacy wasn’t an afterthought. It’s not working, but they’re sure trying.

        • @soviettaters
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          91 year ago

          What I mean is that privacy is no longer mainstream. The software shown does work but the majority of people don’t use it or don’t even know what it is.

      • VeganPizza69 Ⓥ
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        Conservationists are not the same as conservatives.

        The only thing that conservatives are trying to conserve is their own privilege and impunity.

    • @[email protected]
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      81 year ago

      It’s using the word conservative in its literal definition, rather than the definition it’s been given by some that incorrectly use it to describe their beliefs.

      The word they’re looking for is “Facist”

  • @[email protected]
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    321 year ago

    🏳️‍⚧️ Congratulations on coming out and I wish you a successful transition. 🏳️‍⚧️

  • @[email protected]
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    Tech paranoid all the way, although not the same type of tech paranoid as Luke Smith. The only good computer is one you have the hardware schematics to (i.e. virtually none of them). Thinkpads are just another brand of overpriced laptop. Besides the occasional steam game, I heavily prefer FOSS only and will flat out refuse almost anything that has drm. My unlocked bootloader android phone is so heavily locked down with privacy stuff that I cause Google to lose money merely by existing.

    • @LemmyNameMyself
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      The only good computer is one you have the hardware schematics to (i.e. virtually none of them).

      Purism, System76 and, more recently, Framework

      edit: Purism apparently is not trustworthy as a company

      • Hobovision
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        101 year ago

        What’s the point if they still have AMD, Intel, Nvidia, Qualcomm, etc. chips on them?

        • @LemmyNameMyself
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          91 year ago

          You mean things like the Intel Management Engine? I think they are partially disabled, like in librebooted ThinkPads.

      • @[email protected]
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        11 year ago

        This is only for laptops by the way. System76 desktop BIOSes are still closed source. It’s such a shame that there’s no FOSS BIOS for desktop PCs, hopefully AMD OpenSIL changes that.

      • @[email protected]
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        11 year ago

        PinePhone Pro for the mobile side. The schematics are available. I quite like mine, especially with the keyboard case. It’s basically a pocket laptop.

    • @[email protected]
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      61 year ago

      Assuming the schematic is for repairability, not security. Seems unlikely that enthusiasts would have the equipment to non-destructivly identify malicious deviations from spec, introduced by competent actors.

  • Pasta Dental
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    251 year ago

    i am litterally a 100% match with conservative wtf did you hack me (except I use XMPP for phone service, JMP.Chat is an amazing thing!)

    • Mkengine
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      41 year ago

      Could I reach people using WhatsApp with this?

      • Pasta Dental
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        31 year ago

        From memory you can, but that may have changed, there is a useful page ok their wiki that keeps track of all services that work and refuse to work with them since they use VoIP numbers and some companies refused to accept them

  • Eochaid
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    I fit somewhere between normie and conservative. Philosophically, I agree with the tech conservative, but I also have shit to do and when FOSS gets in my way, it’s hard to justify it.

    I use Firefox because it was an easy switch.

    I used Signal until they killed sms support. Sorry, most of the people I know use a default messages app. And the day I force everyone I know to use Signal is the day they stop talking to me.

    I dabble in Linux, but I main Windows because I’m not a programmer or IT admin. I know how to use it, for better or worse, and I don’t have to memorize terminal commands to perform even basic tasks. Sure, gaming is getting better on linux, but it’s still a compromised experience and I still, to this day, have to look up tutorials and terminal command every time I try to do anything on my Linux box.

    But…wherever possible, I use FOSS software.

    I like to call it the tech pragmatist. I agree with the conservative, but I’m not that smart and I got shit to do.

    • @nomadjoanne
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      41 year ago

      A lot of us are in this boat. I do daily drive Linux but I am very fortunate in that I’m my own boss so I can use whichever computer I want.

      And yeah, there is no way to force people to use Signal. It is what it is. Fortunately here in Europe WhatsApp is the default messaging app. It is at least better than SMS for UA non-iPhone people.

  • @[email protected]
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    “I can’t live with modern tech anymore”

    uses modern tech

    A truly paranoid individual unplugs every piece of technology and uses nothing with screens, buttons or electricity going through it.

      • @[email protected]
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        91 year ago

        Your body uses electricity to send nerve signals…

        “self-hosted alternative to nervous system 2023 foss reddit”

        • @[email protected]
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          51 year ago

          Monkey brain

          The nervous system of humans has been corrupted by being fed data from the internet, alcohol, toxic people, society in general etc. A lot of people, understandably so, want to escape this and take control of their own brains, and by extension their nervous systems.

          It is illegal to slice up humans and analyze the source code of our brains unless you have a licence. And we as consumers are not provided with all the data the professionals gather. Think about it. We aren’t even allowed to know what is in our own brains. This goes completely against the philosophy of Free and Open Source.

          You can find monkeys in the wild. They are not an endangered species by any means, which means that people will only report you to the police because of disgust, not because you are breaking laws. [Note: I am not a lawyer and haven’t read the laws relating to animals deeply, I do not take responsibility for legal troubles you get in if any]. Rip apart the monkeys and you can see the brain and nerves in their full glory.

          Now you may ask, why monkeys of all animals? That is because they are one of the animals closest to humans that an individual can realistically capture. You do not want to fight a Chimpanzee unless you don’t care a lot about your life.

          You may realize that you don’t understand the brain even though you have it. No worries there. You can’t understand the code of any FOSS application you use either. The important thing is that the source is available to you without restrictions.

          Another question you may ask is that “This is too primitive”. This is a misunderstanding. People(non-developers only) think the command line is primitive and outdated now that graphical interfaces exist. This is simply not true. We are simply going back to our roots.

          To self host it, you can simply install its docker image. Now this is the tricky part, since we don’t have a traditional OS. Basically, primitive brains, all they do it eat, sleep, reproduce, and do dopamine releasing activities. All you need to achieve this is follow the following two steps. They are very simple and everyone can achieve it without any technical knowledge or difficulty.

          • Reject modern humanity
          • Return to monkey

          That is it for the article. If you enjoyed reading it, please do consider sharing it on Lemmy, Kbin, Mastodon, Peertube(if you have a channel to talk about this) and Pixelfed. Thank you for your time.

          This article was sponsored by monkeyresurgence.com. They are a group that wants humanity to reject modernity and return to monke. Please visit the website and click on as many ads as possible so that they can get a decent earning. We are also completely dependent on their funding so if they earn more, we can provide you with more articles.

          • @[email protected]
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            31 year ago

            You do not want to fight a Chimpanzee unless you don’t care a lot about your life.

            As someone who lives in a country with monkeys, you do not want to fight them either.

            • @Ryantific_theory
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              11 year ago

              People don’t realize that part of diverging from our monkey ancestry traded a lot of brute strength for dexterity. Chimpanzee’s can weigh as much as an average adult male, but their hand and arm strength is enough to literally tear your face off.

              Not joking, there was a lady who made the news because a chimp removed her hands and then all of her facial features. The way muscles insert in their arms and the upper arm/forearm proportions maximize force but reduce the range of motion and fine motor control, but it’s still like fighting a middle schooler with the strength of a couple of adult men. And also that kid’s a an angry cannibal.

              Apparently chimps have been seen killing and eating gorillas. Basically, monkeys can be rough, but chimps are scary as fuck. This website almost reads like it’s joking, but all the numbers actually line up and it seems like a legitimate zoology website.

      • @[email protected]
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        No, nerves use cascades of ion potentials. Those are just triggered by touch or electricity.

        • @[email protected]
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          71 year ago

          Ion potentials are electricity… That’s the same thing as a voltage measurement: a difference in ion charge between two areas. Open the gate and the charge diffuses. That’s a wire.

          • @[email protected]
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            And in nerves it’s ion pumps first shoving ions outside and if a trigger occurs, the gate opening, ions flooding in, opening the next gate and so fort. It’s not the same.

  • @Vlixz
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    181 year ago

    Wish I could just ditch Windows and Whatsapp for something else… I’ve tried Linux but every time I quickly wanted to do something it first took me 30/40 minutes to get it working :⁠’⁠( was driving me insane after the cool factor of daily driving Linux went away

    • @[email protected]
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      201 year ago

      How long ago was that and what did you want to get working? In my experience anything I do has been smoother on modern Linux than on Windows.

      • @Vlixz
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        101 year ago

        Probably 1,5 months ago. I used Fedora 38 - to be fair I was really impressed with how far gaming has gotten. Basically anything I trew at it just worked (big F for Rust). However my audio kept breaking when switching application’s which I could only fix by restarting. Besides that I was really annoyed by Fedora somehow not picking up my second display from time to time. No idea what happened but every like 20 restarts my second display wouldn’t work, or games suddenly started to display on my second display instead of my main. These where probably the biggest things for me, besides some applications I use for debugging not being supported on Linux. Anyhow I’ll probably try Linux again in a couple of months, maybe another distro, since I do really enjoy programming on Linux.

          • darcy
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            51 year ago

            nope. if your not installing arch for your first distro then linux is too good for you

            /s ←←

            • @[email protected]
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              71 year ago

              My now-husband thought a good first date was to compile gentoo on my computer with KDE 4.0 (so raw that folders/desktop/drag and drop didn’t work). 13 years later, I finally decided to use Arch on one of my computers… the other two are still Ubuntu, though that’s likely to change.

              I still can’t quite figure out why I kept dating him and eventually married him. Maybe it’s the free tech support?

              • darcy
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                31 year ago

                thought a good first date was to compile gentoo on my computer

                sounds like a keeper

        • Rikudou_Sage
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          71 year ago

          I recommend Linux Mint, it’s very user friendly. And it’s based on Ubuntu, meaning almost every Ubuntu guide works for it as well.

          • @Vlixz
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            11 year ago

            I’ll look into it!! Haven’t got much todo anyway right now since my summer break just started.

        • Mkengine
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          41 year ago

          What do you think about Zorin? It’s Ubuntu in a Windows Skin if I remember correctly, so target audience are Windows and Mac OS users who want to switch.

          • Corgana
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            11 year ago

            Been daily driving Zorin a few months now. Once I got past three very large hardware-related hurdles (that unfortunlatey would be impossible for normal users), it has been much better than Windows. I do recommend it if you’re like the middle guy in the meme (but not conservative lol)

        • panCat
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          11 year ago

          Well my mother , who is in her 50s was studying for a course two years back , so i booted my old PC with linux mint and gave it to her , for libre office , some browser stuff and pdf etc, the thing it is just worked , and as a programmer I love how i get things done easily via terminal !

          • @[email protected]
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            11 year ago

            75% of users use only the browser, and maybe the downloads folder of their file explorer. OS basically doesn’t matter as long as they have that.

      • @Valmond
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        51 year ago

        Yeah both Linux (IMO, I use Mint BTW) is getting better but also windows getting crappier.

    • @[email protected]
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      31 year ago

      A lot of linux platforms are pretty plug and play now unless you’re trying to get a programming running that wasn’t built for Linux. That’s why I think both Linux and proprietary operating systems have their place. Its just too bad not everyone makes their stuff for linux. It’s definitely getting better though.

      • @[email protected]
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        31 year ago

        unless you’re trying to get a programming running that wasn’t built for Linux

        That’s exactly what people do. Everything we use was made for windows. Games. Editing software.

          • @[email protected]
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            11 year ago

            Unfortunately i think steam removed support for team fortress 2 on Linux a long time ago. I didn’t stay long on Linux. I mean i use headless ubuntu and debian for a bunch of projects but not on my desktop.

            • @finestnothing
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              11 year ago

              What do you mean? I played TF2 yesterday, proton has been a massive game changer for gaming on Linux. Most games without official support still work and run perfectly, the main things that hinder it now is anti cheat since some anti cheat is built around monitoring the entire system and intentionally only works on windows

              • @[email protected]
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                11 year ago

                Ah really? I just be mixing up with Rust. If tf2 is playable on Linux i might give it another try then