Yes.

If you still want to play such “modern” games loaded with what is akin to spyware, I recommend a dedicated only-for-gaming PC (running Linux of course*) using a different IP address than your main system (probably a notebook), for example by using a VPN on one but not the other. I’d recommend using the VPN for the gaming machine, it’s less of a risk there, it allows for easy circumvention of geo-blocking, etc. If you need to access some services (e.g. chat) from both machines, create a separate account for it. Don’t share account credentials between machines. In fact, act as if the gaming machine is permanently infected with random stuff “required” for modern games, and isolate it accordingly. This is just an idea how to mitigate those problems and don’t let them creep into to your real machine where non-game-related data could leak out as a result. But you’re still going to support the developer doing this which is not recommended.

*) Why still no Windows, in this isolated case, you ask? Well, because it’s important to fight MS’ monopoly on gaming machines, so don’t support it by running it and contributing to its marketshare. Instead, run Linux and enjoy watching Windows’ sinking market share. In fact, if you can, don’t support such games either by not playing them, that would be the ideal solution. But this is written under the presumption that you or your friends still want to play it and you kind of feel left out otherwise.

Flameshot is great, I use it every day at work and home. The integrated editing/annoation/drawing functions are superb.

Clickbaity titles on videos or news sites is the new standard. I watched it. The point he’s making is basically that music was harder to make/produce some 50 years ago, so there was more incentive to “make it worth the effort”, compared to today. And the 2nd point he makes is that music consumption is now so easy as well (listen to whatever you want instantly) compared to when you could only listen to something when you bought the physical album, that there’s also less incentive for the listener to really get involved into some albums.

Personally I think these are valid points on the surface but they are not “the answer” to this kind of multi-faceted question. They’re at best a factor but we don’t know how big these factors are. Also I think one big reason he thinks that way is because he grew up in that environment and so he has a bias for “owning physical copies of albums”.

I also think music hasn’t gotten worse, the market is just simply over-saturated because there’s just way too much music, you’ll never be able to listen to it all. And there are absolutely hidden gems or really good bands/artists forming even today, it’s just much harder to find them. Generally a problem of today’s age: it’s likely that what you’re looking for already exists, you just have to find it within a whole ocean of content.

If you’re looking for innovative or non-standard stuff, you can always look at smaller artists or the indie scene, same is true for movies, games, music. The big producers always have a tendency to stick to what works and what’s proven to be popular so everything becomes similar. But smaller artists do not have to care about such things, they are ready to risk much more and in doing so, you might just create a real gem or something that was never or almost never tried before.

Yes. It’s basically about a ban or circumvention of E2EE, as usual. And as usual, this is not an option. Do not throw away your rights to strong, working encryption. Never.

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Arch is not at all problematic, however if you’re still inexperienced with Linux in general, there might be smaller issues with some packages which might be unsolvable or hard to solve in that particular case (but any experienced user can easily solve those by e.g. downgrading the problematic package until a fix is available, or by restoring a filesystem snapshot). My current Arch installation is almost 5 years old and I only had a couple of very minor individual package update issues, and one time where the system couldn’t boot anymore after an update, which could be desastrous for a newbie, but only for a newbie. So, any talk about Arch being unstable is most likely exaggerated. Windows 11 these days has more update failures than Arch, and Arch updates almost daily. Yes, Arch is not “perfectly stable” due to it being rolling release and receiving updates almost daily, but on the desktop or notebook that “less-than-perfect-stability” really doesn’t matter much unless you have some kind of allergy against breaking changes or spending 15-30min to fix something or get annoyed if you have to reboot. The fast updates and generally very up to date packages generally more than make up for the disadvantages. At least on the desktop and notebook. I’m not sure if I could recommend Arch on servers. Also, you should at least update Arch once a week (or more often). If you don’t update for multiple weeks, then updates might fail because Arch assumes that everyone is on or close to the most current updates. Or you might have to first update the pacman-keyring before updates work again. In any case, updating often is also a way to keep Arch more stable. If you don’t like updating often, don’t use Arch.

Not generally, however you might want to avoid any early dot-zero releases (e.g. 6.0.x). These tend to be a bit buggy with KDE Plasma, but the bugs get fixed soon. NVidia drivers should be better with the very latest updates, they are supposed to work well on Wayland now. But I don’t buy Nvidia, just AMD, so I’m not following this stuff closely.

The free software movement was started 40 years ago. We can’t just give up now. How many years should we wait? People are only becoming more dependent on computers and our problems keep getting worse. Windows users have been able to abandon it many years ago, but they don’t care about freedom.

It’s not about giving up. It’s about continuing the fight while also making sure that people have real, tangible alternatives in the meantime. Look at GNU/Hurd - it might just as well never grow into something useful or competitive. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. The first “goal” is to get rid of Windows, and Windows is for the first time in like 30 years losing one of its pillars (gaming) to Linux (and by extension also MacOS, because every non-Windows OS profits from the developments). It doesn’t matter if the overall situation isn’t perfect. It’s still real, tangible progress. Also the market share jump from < 1% (since pretty much forever) to 4% recently.

I had the same feeling about 10 years ago, but users of proprietary software are willing to take a lot of abuse. It’s almost impressive how stubborn they are. This includes users of Reddit, Twitter, Apple and others. I don’t think Microsoft will lose any significant amount of users just by abusing them more, and when it comes to features, Windows is improving lately.

Not by itself maybe, but in combination with Linux becoming more mainstream-viable for sure. I’ve heard from so many long-time Windows users lately that they’re considering switching to Linux in the near future. I don’t think Windows is in it for long, except on business desktops because they’re usually vendor-locked-in with special applications. Maybe a generation after that, when home users aren’t all guaranteed familiar with Windows anymore as they are today. I also don’t think people will take much more abuse, the EU is also pushing back hard against abusive US companies. Also, if the AI copilot stuff blows up or doesn’t become popular enough, Microsoft will have put all their eggs in one basket in vain. Currently it seems more like a very expensive gimmick - who needs an AI admin copilot to clean up the trash bin, change font size or toggle dark mode? Sure, you’ll be able to talk to your bot, but everything you do will be harvested and the gain you get from it is almost irrelevant. Maybe if you have a disability or so it could be cool.

I agree that more freedom is better, but if people don’t understand the end goal, they will keep making the same mistakes. SteamOS is proprietary. Most of the popular GNU/Linux distros have proprietary software in their repositories. On mobile I see people switching from proprietary Android to proprietary Sailfish OS. They just keep falling in the same traps over and over again. Steam is one of those traps. If GNU/Linux became mainstream on desktop today, I have no doubt that it would be a proprietary distro. Then it will be only a matter of time before it turns into something even more proprietary like Windows. Because why wouldn’t it?

I don’t think it would. It would be a mixture of libre software and propirietary software, which is better than 100% proprietary software still. The most important component is the OS itself.

That’s why we must explain it to them. Some will listen and others will not, but there is nothing else we can do. We are doing our best to rival the proprietary apps, but it’s a battle we’ve been fighting for 40 years. There will always be something missing and even if there isn’t, it will always be inconvenient to switch from something you already know. Reddit users could switch to Lemmy, but they won’t. If at some point they decide to switch to some other proprietary alternative, that will not fix their problem. It will be only a matter of time before the other company or developer starts abusing them too.

Yes, we must continue advocating for libre software. However, it’s still time to celebrate the beginning of the end of Windows.

I know, but if we make compromises on our freedom, we will never keep it. The companies that make proprietary software will not let us. They could make money from developing libre software instead, but they don’t have to, because our society thinks non free software is fine.

We will keep enough freedom. It’s a gradient. The world isn’t black and white. Playing a proprietary game or playing back a BluRay on an otherwise fully free system is still much more progress than running 100% proprietary sofware. Change also won’t come in a perfect way. First, desktop Linux needs to fight back on equal footing against Windows, and that (unfortunately) means it needs to be able to run whatever proprietary apps or games the users still need. Because otherwise they wouldn’t switch and your utopia would remain an utopia without any measurable progress towards it.

https://piped.video/watch?v=KW6E51xXcWc for Valve’s contributions, by a KDE dev. According to a 2022 interview they pay over 100 open source developers working full-time on various important open source projects, from Mesa to Vulkan to AMD GPU drivers to KDE Plasma to gamescope to Wine to DXVK and VKD3D to you name it. The whole desktop ecosystem is benefitting from this, not just the Steam Deck, and not just gaming.

I get that proprietary software and DRM is a general problem, and Steam is part of that problem, but completely getting rid of that is simply a battle for another time, further in the future. The first battle is to get Windows users abandon their Microsoft/Apple cages, and that’s a win that’s actually within reach now. Windows also becomes worse by itself, further accelerating the change. That’s important, because running a proprietary OS is still much worse than running some proprietary applications or games on a free OS. A closed OS completely shifts control away from the user, leaving only what the developer allows you to do, and it allows the dev to always push his or her agenda by favoring applications from the same developer, and allowing the developer to establish proprietary APIs and libraries like DirectX which was problematic for the competition for quite some time. Establishing Linux as a neutral, user-controlled, non-proprietary, much more trustworthy OS is the first step away from that. And to reach that, users will have to be able to run at least some of their usual applications or games on Linux as well. Otherwise they simply wouldn’t switch in the first place. For a regular user, using Linux cannot feel like being a downgrade. A regular user does not understand the ethics behind closed and open source and will never choose a worse free option over a better proprietary one. That either means the free options must become true rivals, or - which is the easier goal for now - the proprietary apps have to run on Linux just as well as people are used to.

A “war” isn’t being won all at once instantly, but by winning several smaller battles after one another. Which takes time.

That doesn’t surprise me, and yes it was always because of anti-competitive practices, so I’m all for more neutrality, I’ll just add 2 shower thoughts:

1. Seeing that Brave is at the top of the browser list, I wonder how many selected Brave just because it’s at the top of the list and thought that this must be a good choice then, not because they actually like Brave.
2. It’s nice to have such a thing for browsers, but it would have to be expanded to other apps as well, e.g. mail client. Oh well, maybe in another 10 years or so.

“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary funding evidence.”

Check out SyncThing for a peer2peer (device to device) solution which doesn’t necessarily need a server, but having an always-on device like a server is still great for using Syncthing as well. It’s easy to use, only slightly more involved than setting up Nextcloud or Dropbox or whatever. But all done via a web-based GUI. It works surprisingly well, stable and conflict-free for the complex syncing it has to do all the time. Basically you install SyncThing on all devices you want to keep in sync, and they will find each other via their IDs when they are online, and automatically sync all their directories which should be synced. Of course it’s open source and cross-platform too.

OP is somewhat correct, but still “short-sighted” with a misleading conclusion. All these valid downsides should be mentioned, but as always there are pros and cons to everything, and in Valve’s case, the pros still outweigh the cons, and you always have to weigh pros and cons against each other.

Valve has done a lot in the last ~10 years to push desktop Linux for mainstream gaming viability and several other features as well (open source shader compiler, Direct3D-to-Vulkan translation stuff, HDR support in KDE Plasma, lots of improvements for the open source AMD GPU drivers, and much more stuff). You can’t simply disregard that. Sure, there are lots of companies involved in improving Linux - but it’s mostly for the server side or the enterprise desktop segment. Almost no big company invests meaningful amount of resources into improving the common Linux desktop significantly and challenging Windows’ dominance for home entertainment/gaming, read: the casual home user. Valve did just that, of course also mostly for their own reasons, but their own reasons still do benefit general desktop Linux massively, and they are almost alone in doing so. And I probably don’t have to mention that having a rich company investing lots of money into pushing stuff does really help development speed. The development pace of the Linux kernel for example is only so high because many big corps spend developers and resources on it to improve it for their own data center use cases. Almost no one (again, except Valve) pours any significant amount of resources/devs into the desktop Linux ecosystem and drivers so far.

Look at GOG - in theory a shining example of how to do several things better than Valve (no DRM, etc.), but they still do close to nothing for desktop Linux, probably because they lack the resources or see it as a wasted effort overall. Like many companies do – the typical chicken-egg-problem. Linux won’t be better supported by companies until its market share grows, but its market share won’t grow until it is better supported by companies. The GOG Galaxy client probably still has no Linux version. That’s just how things have been for a long time and I’m glad to have Valve really be serious about it and demonstrate it publicly that this can work and that this is an example for other companies to also look at it. Their exact reasons or methods don’t even matter - we need companies pushing desktop Linux, or otherwise you can still sit in a corner and cry about Windows’ dominance in 2050 still because nothing really changes on a fundamental level fast enough. Which is why I see it as important to be favorable to Valve for doing this when no one else is doing it. If you want things to change, then do support changes that meaningfully contribute to Windows losing exclusive market share in certain areas like gaming, and tons of people will migrate away from Windows over time because they will start seeing Linux as a viable, practical alternative, not just a theoretical thing. Sure, always be mindful of any disadvantages. But please don’t act as if there weren’t any major advantages as well.

Be glad for how things are developing currently. It could always be better, sure. But it could also be massively worse. And it has been massively worse for a long time. It’s high time to change, and desktop Linux needs all the help it can get to become mainstream. It’s on its way there, thankfully, but that way hasn’t been so clear all the time. Desktop Linux share has always been sub-1% for many, many years. Only very recently it made significant strides forward.

I don’t think so. Android has been marketshare leader for a long time. Maybe iOS is massively popular in USA, but outside of USA it isn’t. Also, as long as marketshare has a sort of “critical mass” it’s fine. Look at OSX for example, it has around 20% marketshare and that number is still high enough that it can’t be ignored. So I think both are here to stay whether they have 20% or 80%.

Not really relevant. The majority of teens isn’t able to make an informed decision about which is better anyway, and in fact none of the 2 is recommended anyway unless you count in AOSP-based distributions (based off of the open source Android without Google apps), then Android wins of course. But when you compare iOS vs. proprietary Android, it’s like comparing 2 different forms of diseases.

So yeah while statistics are interesting it’s important not to interpret too much into some. Like, “majority of teens dislikes Jazz music”. Well, it doesn’t really matter whether they dislike it or not. Popularity doesn’t represent quality necessarily. Sometimes, but certainly not always.

In Germany the mobile landscape is more “diverse”, I’d say closer to 40%/60% iOS/Android from my own observations. And since we “care” “more” about privacy in schools or public institutions (we still care plenty little but I guess Germany is on average at least known for being a country that does more for data protection than others, so maybe that counts as something?), it’s also probably less iOS infested, although I do know that some schools and public institutions do use iOS devices. But I don’t think everyone does.

Valve is doing this for strategic reasons and also because they wanted to start the handheld PC market (Steam Deck). Strategic reasons: Microsoft could at any point buy several important gaming studios or distributors, distribute a lot of games (maybe exclusively) via their own store (they even announced that several years ago, but they didn’t do it in the end). MS could even implement small things which make Steam perform worse on Windows, as its 100% controlled by MS. If you compete directly with Microsoft on the Windows platform, you will eventually lose because MS can do some very tiny tweaks which happen to make your product be more annoying or slower to use than Microsoft’s own. That way they’ll still fly under the radar for anti-competitive behavior. So Valve has to ensure that their main business model (selling/distributing games on Steam) remains future-proof, and that means more independent from Microsoft’s agenda. To do this, they need to push a fully neutral, but viable alternative to Windows for gaming. Which is Linux.

There seems to be a lack of good basic computer science education unfortunately. Schools and so on never caught up with the speed of technological advance. And back when I was in school, teachers taught things like “How do I use formulas in MS Excel” in computer science. It’s probably still that way, so it’s not neutral at all, instead you’re learning how to use specific software products (often, Microsoft’s). So relying on school education alone may be hopeless. But you can always learn for yourself or from others.

• Workspace Switch Wraparound

• Clipboard Indicator

• Date Menu Formatter

• AppIndicator and KStatusNotifierItem Support

• Auto Move Windows

• User Themes

• windowNavigator

• Workspace Indicator

Gnome. It just seems simple, elegant and smooth. It does what I need from a DE (not that much, I do a lot in terminal and Emacs). It has good keybindings out of the box and good virtual desktop mechanisms. It was also the first DE with good Wayland support. At first I was unsure if I liked Gnome’s concept and restrictions, but I’ve grown to like it fast.