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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: January 17th, 2022

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  • I’m not sure where you get the “corporate conspiracy” part. Is anybody in 2025 still not understanding that platforms do everything they can for their users to consume any content available there constantly in order to sell more advertising because that’s one of the most profitable business model? Isn’t that public knowledge? If it’s not public knowledge are you implying it is “secret” despite those very corporations precisely publicly (at least during shareholders meetings) claiming that their strategy is simultaneously user base growth AND user engagement? If so wouldn’t that be more ignorance that conspiracy?

    Anyway, that’s not even my point, rather I was trying to say that it seems OP is interested in Linux for the ethical aspect whereas the corporations listed there are, by definition and by their legal mandate of being for-profit companies, participating in order to improve their bottom line.

    Please let me know if I misunderstood your point and/or if I’m still unclear.




  • Look at corporate members at https://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/members

    There is a difference between Linux, the kernel, as a tool and free software the ideology. A lot of contributors to Linux are there for the money. They contribute resources, including money but also usually staff, without caring for abstract concepts like “freedom”, or they might even actively (arguably) work against it when they are strategically establishing walled gardens and exclusive stores.

    So… I’m not saying that’s OK but I believe by confusing the ideology with the tool used for profit by gigantic corporations we are being unrealistic.


  • Honestly it is going to take you longer to read all answers here than try yourself!

    Get an extra HD, even a slow external one if you must, put Linux on it, install Steam and some games, try, decide for yourself.

    Overall yes you can work and play on Linux comfortably, I’ve been doing it for year. No you don’t need to be an expert to use Linux BUT it can be an amazing empowering moment to actually learn how a computer work BECAUSE you are free to do whatever you want with it. Just back up your data first THEN go nuts. Break stuff and learn, it’s even more fun than gaming.


  • Well played NSA…! Anyway :

    fabien@debian2080ti:~$ df -h
    Filesystem                         Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
    /dev/mapper/debian2080ti--vg-root   28G   25G  1.8G  94% /
    /dev/mapper/debian2080ti--vg-home  439G  390G   27G  94% /home
    /dev/sda3                          1.7T  1.6T   62G  97% /media/fabien/a77cf81e-fb2c-44a7-99a3-6ca9f15815091
    
    /dev/nvme0n1p2                     456M  222M  210M  52% /boot
    /dev/nvme0n1p1                     511M  5.9M  506M   2% /boot/efi
    udev                                16G     0   16G   0% /dev
    tmpfs                              3.2G  1.9M  3.2G   1% /run
    tmpfs                               16G  168K   16G   1% /dev/shm
    tmpfs                              5.0M   24K  5.0M   1% /run/lock
    tmpfs                              3.2G  2.6M  3.2G   1% /run/user/1000
    

    so basically NVMe for system and /home in .5T and HDD 2T for backups and rarely accessed files, ext4.

    No dual boot, no Windows. No regrets.


  • I’m on Debian stable on my desktop but I tinkered with SteamOS on the SteamDeck, so Arch.

    no more “oops I bricked my system” moments

    I don’t actually know what that means. If the system because unbootable it’s because I explicitly messed it up, for example by editing fstab or tinkering with GRUB. I honestly can not remember an apt update that broke the system, and I don’t just mean my desktop (which I use daily, to work and play) but even my remote servers running for years.

    So… I think that part mostly comes down to trusting the maintainer of the pinned distribution. They are doing their best to avoid dependency hell in a complex setup but typically, if you do select stable, it will actually be stable.

    I do have discussions like this every few months on Lemmy and I think most people are confused about what is an OS vs. what is an application. IMHO an application CAN be unstable, e.g. Firefox or the slicer for your 3D printer because you do want the very latest feature for some reason. The underlying building blocks though, e.g. kernel, package manager, arguably drivers, basically the lower down the stack you go, the more far reaching the consequences. So if you genuinely want an unstable system somehow, go for it, but then it is by choice, explicitly, and then I find it hard to understand how one could then not accept the risk of “oops I bricked my system” moment.



  • A group having rule is fine, in fact it’s needed for the group to sustain over time.

    Unfortunately if this group is hoarding a resources, here a very popular meeting point for people who (in theory) care about “privacy” then the rule itself does not have to be “fair” or “right”.

    So sure, when joining a group one must aware of the rules of said group, but it does not in itself means the rules of that group are automatically correct. I’m not saying here the rule is fine (I do have a personal opinion about it) but rather that this kind of event if precisely canary in the coalmine showing the genuine nature of the group, not what its name claims to be.




  • normal window user who don’t know what a terminal is. Most of them even freak out when they see “the black box with text on it”.

    Good point! That being said I’m wondering how we could help anybody, genuinely being inclusive, on how to transform that feeling of dread, basically “Oh, that’s NOT for me!”, to “Hmmm that’s the challenging part but it seems worth it and potentially feasible, I should try”. I believe it’s important because in turn the “normal window user” could potentially understand limitations hidden to them until now. They would not instantly better understand how their computer work but the initial reaction would be different, namely considering a path of learning.

    Any idea or good resources on that? How can we both demystify the terminal with a pleasant onboarding? How about a Web based tutorial that asks user to try side by side to manipulate files? They’d have their own desktop with their file manager on one side (if they want to) and the browser window with e.g. https://copy.sh/v86/ (WASM) this way they will lose no data no matter what.

    Maybe such examples could be renaming files with ImagesHoliday_WrongName.123.jpg to ImagesHoliday_RightName.123.jpg then doing that for 10 files, then 100 files, thus showing that it does scale and enables ones to do things practically impossible without the terminal.

    Another example could be combining commands, e.g. ls to see files then wc -l to count how many files are in directory. That would not be very exciting so then maybe generating an HTML file with the list of files and the file count.

    Honestly I believe finding the right examples that genuinely showcases the power of the terminal, the agency it brings, is key!




  • as how to change your default browser and search engine, suggestions for different OS’s and how to install them on any kind of computer, different options for Microsoft software, etc. For example, I’m on a Mac just because it’s still good and I don’t want to pay for a new one…I’d love either some simple ways to “harden” it and/or install Linux.

    Wonderful, I can do that! I indeed assume that people just don’t “want” to install Linux because they think Windows, or other Microsoft products, is “good enough” for them but maybe they just don’t know how or imagine they don’t have the ability to do so. That’s a great suggestion I’ll try to address it soon, thanks!