Originally this was a reply to this article about a Windows feature called Recall, but there’s a good argument the author’s concerns resonate far beyond Windows and Meta to proprietary generally.
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“im a henchman for a bad guy…and lemme tell you…I think we might be starting to do bad stuff…not sure yet…”
Thanks bud
At some point we need to start welcoming people to the Light, instead of demonizing them for having been in the Dark. It’s pretty difficult for me not to dunk on people as they wake up to the nightmare that they voted for, but a lot them ARE actually otherwise decent folks. Making America Great is going to involve deprogramming a lot of people.
That’s all good and well and I agree with you, but I also believe if you have and are continuing to feed the machine, then you don’t get to be put on a pedestal or respected for recognizing how bad the machine is. This person is repeating something that is already very well known and accepted and is simultaneously adding to the alarm while causing it. I have extremely low patience for that particular brand of person. They are continuing to cause the problem they are rallying against.
If I were face to face with this person, I’d genuinely say “either quit working there or shut the fuck up.”
What about when it’s your family? I am estranged from a lot of people that I care deeply for because they refuse to engage with reason. I’m not trying to put anyone on a pedestal, good or bad.
I just want people to know that they are welcome to change their minds, nobody is going to mock them for doing so, or say I told you so. That’s what they expect, and pride is part of what holds many of them back from admitting that they were wrong. Because it’s what they would do. Unfortunately, we’re going to need to take the high road.
The predestal/respect bit in my comment was about this post as a whole. IMO, the screenshotted person does not deserve to be paid attention to. They are not revealing anything new by any means while choosing to make the problem worse.
I don’t know what anyone being in my family has to do with anything. My response is the same: if you are unhappy enough to complain out loud about something you are helping cause, either do something about it or shut the fuck up.
I just want people to know that they are welcome to change their minds, nobody is going to mock them for doing so, or say I told you so.
JSYK: I and many others are putting great effort into letting them know that they’re not welcome, because Nazis who voted for this wanted this, no excuses at campaign #3. They can either die or live in obscurity until they do, period. The time they were allowed back was pre-24 election, simple as
If you label every person who voted for Trump a Nazi, you might be a Nazi
If you label people a supporter of an ideology they voted for then you’re just like them
Homie, no
Agree that person would certainly be an over generalizer. What’s the Nazi part about it from your perspective?
Idk man I’m just upset about my family and jealous of people that don’t have to deal with writing off roughly half the people they care about.
Okay then. If you appreciate talking that way, then either delete your account or shut the fuck up.
I wonder if employees of evil corporations reading your comment are more likely to quit or chill their speech
I hope that at least one whistleblower stays employed at every evil corp
Unfortunately, not everyone has a choice in who they work for in end-stage-capitalism. Work is about survival, not ideology. The majority of Americans are not far-right capitalists, but the vast majority of CEOs are, and it’s not really possible to survive long enough to start a small business in most of the US without investment from a far-right capitalist or inheritance (usually also from a far-right capitalist family member).
If you have the skillset and CV to work at Meta, you have a choice to work somewhere slightly lower on the scale of exploitation.
Very big window between participating in society via capitalism vs working directly for, eg. FAANG or a military defense contractor. It’s leaping over every less shitty option to get to the end because that’s what pays best. How funny that I considered writing a pre-reply for this exact comic in my original comment.
Dude, look around. Most of us are way, WAY past the “We’re all in this together! We can do it if we try!” method of living and have been operating in survival mode for the past 5 years. And can you blame them? The flood waters are rising and people are wanting to make sure they have a life raft. If that means working for evil people/companies, then so be it. It’s not like working somewhere else will stop or slow the flood. Morals are nice, but they won’t keep you afloat.
Yes morals won’t keep you afloat. But FAANG, military defense contractors, and the other most terrible industries waaaay overpay on cost of living, and other industries are also looking to compensate well for expertise (minus some compensation for all the exploitation you wouldn’t be contributing to).
What you’re describing is the development of a paranoid conservative mindset in response to traumatic global events. This is how my conservative Fox News brainrot parents describe the world, and they are the type to own guns because they’re deathly afraid of home intruders even though their city’s crime index is among the best in the country.
“Are we the baddies?!”
“I’m only following orders!”
if they didnt know what they were signing up for, and they cant quit, you cant blame them
Yeah, just like the attorney’s who resigned when asked to drop the charges against Eric Adams.
if they didnt know what they were signing up for,
People knew meta (then FB) was evil in 2010, dude, cmon
Hey now, he didn’t say he was working close with Trump, he said he was working closing with Trump.
I’m sure there’s a distinct difference.
People gotta earn money to survive, I don’t blame the employees for this. And this is not just a case of Meta’s privacy being bad. This is close government involvement with potentially serious impacts and implications across all US based platforms.
It makes sense to continue working there but then leak everything to an independent journalist.
Dog, this Linux-Is-Best dipshit almost ruined and ran a local /r/massachusetts subreddit into the ground a couple years back. I remember it because I was there and had a role in getting them removed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JS7gw2h5n2o
There’s a bit more to it, someone found out who they were and I forget if they a) didn’t work for FB or b) was just a lowly content control employee or whatever.
If this is the same person, I think they’re legitimately unwell.
It’s funny how they’re saying “You need to use Linux” and not “You need to get off Facebook”. How’s Linux going to save you from Facebook spying on you?
They literally work for the Fediverse branch of meta, sure its an evil corp and zucks intentions aren’t exactly pure (more than likely an effort to lower server costs) but it is something likely to put more eyes onto the fediverse which I definitely think will benefit the fediverse in the long run.
I read the post like you at first, but I don’t think he works on the fediverse. I think it was just a poor/unclear sequence of clauses in his post.
Threads has fediverse integration, the fediverse like the internet is decentralised its not an entity.
My uncle works at the fediverse and gets all the games before they come out
They mentioned Microsoft updating privacy agreements at the same time as other companies, and OP mentioned that the context was a discussion of a Windows ultra-keylogger type of feature, the implication is they’re in on this shit too, and Linux is a way to not use Windows.
Back in 2020 when I took my class for my A+ cert I remember the instructor directing us to a Windows 10 debloating video tutorial to speed up a Win10 computer. If I recall correctly In that video the host point’s out that one of the Microsoft services that ran in the background of every standard distribution of Windows 10 was a keylogger. It was one of the many things that got permanently turned off in the in the tutorial.
If you can remember how to disable this, please let me know
In the renewed spirit of Screw Microsoft today I found that video “https://youtu.be/DwiHog2leMM?list=FL7oNgzhY82m2rFR_j5lW9vw&t=393”
I don’t know how much of the video is still relevant as I’ve long stopped using Windows again to the point that my Cert has expired. Anyways, sorry for the late response. Good Luck!
I think the be careful what you do on Facebook is implied. He’s highlighting something that’s less expected, where you may need to be careful what you do on Windows systems.
That first comma is a bit out of place - ‘why won’t you just try, Linux?’
‘seriously Linux, just try your vegetables’.It can’t. Its just a kernel. Maybe with the right gnu core utils…
I was thinking one of those bio powered military robots
Or maybe with busybox :3 (I use Alpine)
Switching from Windows to Linux isn’t going to block them from monitoring your use of online services. Facebook doesn’t even do anything in the OS space.
Know what linux doesn’t have? Your screen constantly recorded and sent to corporations who use this data to maximise shareholder value. Oh and the company is in a 3rd world dictatorial shithole with little to no user protection or regulations.
“But i disabled recall” Cool. They still use telemetry. You turned it off? Nice job, have you considered using linux so you don’t have to do the advanced user bullshit(and if you do, it’s way easier and more straightforward?)
I think what they are getting at is that Meta does this and they find it likely Microsoft might be doing something similar.
They have an agreement with MS, so they are definitely doing something there.
Yeah, this was a weird way for them to phrase this. You can use Meta stuff on Linux and Fediverse stuff on Windows.
I’ve done OSINT research and that alone converted me into a privacy advocate. Seeing how Alphabet, Meta, and MS have allowed creep to get training data… Whew. It’s breathtaking and complicated beyond the ability to explain in 114 characters.
Y’all, we are cooked. Currently. Present tense. If you aren’t freaked out already, you’re missing about 85% of reality.
Yeah OSINT existing is proof that no backdoor is secure, not even mentioning what you can buy from data brokers, something authorities wouldn’t need warrants for.
I didn’t care before ai as i was nobody and scams were easy to detect.
Now ai is running those scams and people are trying to use ai to target nobodies like me. All the while ai is stealing my creation and data that companies used to pay you, all while using it to generate money without compensating me.
Well, to be fair it’s also proof that people do not value privacy, and that the means by which actual privacy can be obtained are few and narrow.
It also really drives home the fact that our systems of IDs, licensure, taxes, property purchase, etc. are designed for an analog 20th century world. We need new systems based on modern technology, bit not in a way that simply contracts out to the very companies that put us here.
They’ll be forced to care when their freedom’s inevitably on the line (in the states)
US corporate “leadership” has a rapists mentality. Consent is not needed. They will do the crime either way. and daddy sam let’s them get away with it.
Look, Software shouldn’t be free and open Source. I really like that we probably have a decade left of it before it gets bundled with ad services which it should have been from the start. The more people that adopt it means that it’s only a matter of time as long as we all just passively watch it get usurped
Ok fed
It’s feRd
you should add a /s
Are you a not, a troll, or an idiot.
The fediverse isn’t ready for this level of sarcasm. Look at those downvotes, lmao.
It’s hard to tell sometimes. Especially when it’s such a sensitive issue where normies will parrot the same ignorant crap over and over again. I one went off on someone, not even considering it was in-jest, because is was so convincingly written.
The /s is important people. I know it slightly reduces the impact of the joke but some people believe that shit 110%.
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I switched from Fedora to openSUSE recently and it has been painless. Would recommend to anyone who are looking to get away from US companies and US jurisdiction.
Tumbleweed or Leap or something else?
Most likely Tumbleweed. As it is the most modern of them. Because it is rolling.
Correct, Tumbleweed is the one I started using.
As a long time debian user, I have my eyes on Leap. I value stability (in the unchanging functionality sense) over latest versions.
For me Tumbleweed is rock solid even though it is rolling. But if you don’t like subtle changes it might not be fore you.
No matter which OpenSuse people end up choosing, it’s a super solid decision. Even though it relies on infrastructure by SUSE S.A., a company that unfortunately has ties to the US (mostly hosting with offices and employees in the US) but got its HQ in Europe, it’s the most solid and user-friendly distro out there if you look for rather independent distros (the only user-friendly one that’s fully independent would be Mageia, but that one really isn’t where it would have to be imho). And the existence of bootable snapshots in case something happened is extremely useful. The biggest problems I’ve found are just 2: Problems with the Nvidia driver (especially if you use said snapshots), and Flathub not coming preconfigured (not a Problem in KDE since there’s a button new users can stumble over, but for Gnome you have to know something rather important is missing to look up the command to add it since there isn’t a GUI to add Flatpak repos yet).
Other than that the whole OpenSuse ecosystem is just great.
Flathub not coming preconfigured
Huh, that’s odd. I’ve been test driving different Linux distros lately for my move away from Windows, and Tumbleweed was one of the ones I tried. KDE Discover in Tumbleweed had Flatpak options for software, and I’m pretty sure it was tied to Flathub and not a different repo like Fedora does. Maybe I’m misremembering? Or did you mean that it doesn’t have the Flathub application itself?
Like I said it’s less of a problem with KDE, they even got a button to add Flathub specifically in Discover. It’s more of a thing with Gnome and Gnome Software where no “Add Flathub” button exists (and also no GUI to add repos -> they have to look up the whole CLI command), so newer users won’t necessarily be aware that something rather important is missing.
Mmm interesting. I have not hat any issues with rolling back and snapshots. Even though I do use nvidia. Configuring flathub shouldn’t be too difficult I think. But I don’t use a DE eather
Which Nvidia driver setup do you use? The problems arise with the proprietary driver; if you roll back or use a different kernel than the current default (as specified by the repo) both my brother and I had the unfortunate situation of the driver kernel module missing. Nouveau or NVK probably don’t cause such issues.
I don’t mind changes, but I want to be able to decide when they happen. Maybe I’m just traumatized from the last time I used a rolling release distro and suddenly Gnome 3 landed and replaced Gnome 2. I did not like that.
Can I ask which rolling distro that was. I presume arch?
I’ve been wondering about a similar change, or possibly to Arch. What I’m still wondering about is security: Fedora has Selinux enabled all over the system, and Opensuse and Arch do not. Anyone know what level of risk this mitigates?
I think OpenSUSE Tumbleweed has SELinux enabled now too. I’m not sure what you mean by all over the system, as I’m not that familiar with SELinux yet. I believe that Tumbleweed used to use AppArmor but recently switched to SELinux? I also believe that Leap (the stable version of OpenSUSE) still uses AppArmor.
Based on opensuse’s docs, it seems to be in permissive state, whereas on my Fedora by default:
$ selinuxenabled && echo yup yup $ getenforce EnforcingNot sure if the warm fuzzy feelings I get from this are justified (like what are the actual applied rules on apps? I have no idea), but it is a bit warmer and fuzzier.
https://distrosea.com/ this is amazing for previewing linux OS flavours right in your browser, no need for a USB stick or installation! Linux Mint, Zorin, Ubuntu and Fedora are the winners for me in terms of being normie friendly.
If your posting a message that has any importance at all, at least pretend to try to fix your before sending it.
“try, Linux”
“working closing”
I mean come on.
There’s more but you get the point.
“try to fix your before sending it.” uh huh
Also “if your”
Lmao
This isn’t meeting the level of importance for me.
Yore
(Also this won’t really help you because Linux is a mainstream system with big corporate input. Backdoors hidden in plain sight are a thing.
This will make you feel better though, Windows sucks.)
What does linux need to try?
To stop overachieving
To stop insisting upon itself for like, five fucking minutes.
Does that mean that fedora is not recommended?
Fedora is an international collaborative effort but Red Hat is the main sponsor and it is US based. We will have to be careful and observe
And the new leader (whatever the fuck it’s called) is going to be a Red Hat employee. It’s why I left Fedora despite liking it quite a lot. That’s way too close to IBM for my liking
What do you recommend thats as complete as Fedora out of the box ? I used to be on Arch but it was time consuming to tune everything up and Fedora was the bullseye between the flexibility of Arch and a complete solution without much tinkering needed.
I was in the same spot not too long ago. I would probably recommend CachyOS or Endeavour. They’re Arch-based but a lot of the preconfiguration has been done (e.g., you will have a browser, and printer support, out of the box. Try using Ventoy and just throwing some ISOs on it, makes it really easy to try different distros
Point out in the image file where this is relevant to the topic in the OP, please.
!agedlikemilk
“Nunclear Brickmanship” interesting way to describe the Russian invasion of Ukraine
You don’t know what either of those words mean, do you.
There is only country that regularly gets on teevee with nuclear threats and it ain’t the US
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A) what does this have to do with the post and B) im fairly sure the Israelis are committing as much or more atrocities if not more than before the election
One should be have been assuming since Windows 7 and automated online updates that the Microsoft key used to sign OS updates is in the hands of at least the NSA (and hence probably the Israeli equivalent) and they can push whatever they want to your computer as an OS update, bypassing all protections.
In fact the same applies to Linux updates of certain distros - if they’re maintained by a company based in the US they can be forced by FISA courts to provide the signing keys to the US Government.
More in general, just go read about FISA courts and their secret court orders - companies based in the US or hosting things in the US can be secretly forced to just “give the keys of the Realm” to parts of the US Government.
Since things like the Patriot act one should be treating companies based in the US as just as untrustworthy as companies based in China.
(By the way, some other supposed Democratic countries have similar or worse systems - for example the equivalent of FISA courts in the UK have things like secret court sessions were the side which is not the State is not authorized to have a legal representation, see most of the evidence or even know the decision of the court).
Have people already forgot most of what came out in the Snowden Revelations?!
Yep… Snowden, Charles Maning, Assange and an older whistleblower who died recently but I forgot his name… They also forgot what Cambridge Analytica was about. They just need to throw some bread and games at us and we go one living as nothing ever happend.
Chelsea* Manning
But, yeah, most people just do not care if they are spied on because they don’t think it will be used for anything besides advertising. Trump is going to wake a lot of people up to the immense power we’ve handed over to our tech overlords.
Yeah, sorry it seems I offende the LGBTQ community by typing it wrong… What ever ! As I said above, I really don’t care what you like or your sexual orientation.
However, I find it quite profound that this get out of jail card is used as good faith while it was just another piece of their game… People who think it was a personal choice are either blinded by the journalistic manipulation or LGBTQ partisans (again nothing against any community, gay, lesbian,queer,straight,hetero what ever !).
We are fooled again and again and again by the same lies over and over again… 🤔😮💨
Dude what are you even talking about? You literally sounds schizophrenic
Chelsea Manning
Fuck is wrong with you
Sorry I got It wrong on purpose… Would you ever accept to change your sex to get out of jail? I mean… Dafuck is wrong in our system ?!
But hang on a minute… THAT’S NOT an anti LGBTQ what ever thing I don’t care what you like or your sexual orientation… I just don’t give a fuck !
However, they must have laughed their asses off when he/she was proposed this get out of jail card…
What ever !
They just need to throw some bread and games at us and we go one living as nothing ever happend.
I mean, there’s not a whole lot of alternative. It seems like the only two “valid” avenues of resistance are retreating from society into a hermetically sealed bubble and starting a podcast.
Haha, yeah It seems so…
Another option and a more long term solution would be to go back to the roots and relearn the basics of living !
How to grow a garden, How to hunt, How to build a small wooden house, how to make fire and then rebuild the technology but only the needed ones.
If we grew things and dug together the rare ores to make solar panels together, build small wind turbines, waterwheels as a community hands by hands… We would probably profit more and enjoy ourselves way more than ever…
Regardless we prefer being held hostage by our own limitations and technology constraints… Not blaming anyone here except myself, It’s just a sad though we could all live happy in a more green state without this mass nonsense technology…
But hey… What’s better than living for ourselves and hard earned money? Huh? Our day to day routine on Netflix, YouTube, Lemmy, twitter Facebook… 7-16 day to day job we all hate thinking we are going to enjoy life when we are old and retired? Emotionally dead gifts bought on Amazon, eBay, temu…
Without saying… Life sucks ! And If you enjoy this kind of life, What can I say… :/ I either envy you for being a brainless sheep or hate you like I hate myself for not burning down this system all together !
Pick your poison !
/Rant off
Another option and a more long term solution would be to go back to the roots and relearn the basics of living !
That requires large plots of arable land.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_Valley
The valley, named after the Spanish Mission Santa Clara, was for a time known as the Valley of Heart’s Delight for its high concentration of orchards, flowering trees, and plants. Until the 1960s it was the largest fruit-producing and packing region in the world, with 39 canneries. The growing high-tech industry in the 1960s transformed the area from farmland to densely populated cities, and it became referred to as the Silicon Valley.
But we paved over paradise and put up a parking lot.
There’s no unfucking that chicken. We are living in a world that is substantially less arable than it was a century ago. We do not have an Eden to go back to.
Would stuff like Fedora be in danger, in this case? I couldn’t find if Red Hat was US based
In theory yes since they’re essentially sponsored by RedHat. (RedHat is owned by IBM)
Which is funny because the Snowden leaks actually showed the NSA likes using Fedora for their fancy spy tech lol.
I guess a good alternative would be OpenSUSE.
Shit I was just about to install PopOs! Which is developed by a US company. It’s maddening trying to find the right distro that fits all the requirements.
Edit: Opting for Mint.
A lot of people are going to recommend you mint, I honestly think mint is an outdated suggestion for beginners, I think immutability is extremely important for someone who is just starting out, as well as starting on KDE since it’s by far the most developed DE that isn’t gnome and their… design decisions are unfortunate for people coming from windows.
I don’t think we should be recommending mint to beginners anymore, if mint makes an immutable, up to date KDE distro, that’ll change, but until then, I think bazzite is objectively a better starting place for beginners.
The mere fact that bazzite and other immutables generate a new system for you on update and let you switch between and rollback automatically is enough for me to say it’s better, but it also has more up to date software, and tons of guides (fedora is one of the most popular distros, and bazzite is essentially identical except with some QoL upgrades).
How common is the story of “I was new to linux and completely broke it”? that’s not a good user experience for someone who’s just starting, it’s intimidating, scary, and I just don’t think it’s the best in the modern era. There’s something to be said about learning from these mistakes, but bazzite essentially makes these mistakes impossible.
Furthermore because of the way bazzite works, package management is completely graphical and requires essentially no intervention on the users part, flathub and immutability pair excellently for this reason.
Cinnamon (the default mint environment) doesn’t and won’t support HDR, the security/performance improvements from wayland, mixed refresh rate displays, mixed DPI displays, fractional scaling, and many other things for a very very long time if at all. I don’t understand the usecase for cinnamon tbh, xfce is great if you need performance but don’t want to make major sacrifices, lmde is great if you need A LOT of performance, cinnamon isn’t particularly performant and just a strictly worse version of kde in my eyes from the perspective of a beginner, anyway.
I have 15 years of linux experience and am willing to infinitely troubleshoot if you add me on matrix.
I 100% agree. Immutable is the way to go for beginners. Source: started on Mint and actually had a few problems. Now I’m on Bluefin (previously Aurora) and I have none.
You should be using OpenKylin or something like that.
How common is the story of “I was new to linux and completely broke it”?
Gee, it’s common even for ‘experienced’ folks. I just went to update to the 6.14 kernel this morning (everything that I use [and monitor for conflicts] was supposedly finally working with it), and apparently that didn’t play well with my desktop manager. Cue the tty at boot and trying different DMs until I finally said screw it and went back to the previous kernel.
I find it weird that there is this whole conversation about new/experienced users, and it’s perhaps a problematic thing with Linux. Many people, myself included, don’t give 2 shits about how their OS works. I don’t want to spend my time tending to it as if it were a fucking garden. I just need it to work, so I can get on with my own stuff. No matter how “experienced” I get, that’s always going to be the case. Maybe I’m just a little traumatized about this because the first Linux distro I used was Gentoo.
I think it’s overblown for the most part. Yes, the OS should just work… but it does, for 99% of users, on windows, and linux, and probably macos, which I haven’t used so can’t speak on.
The ones who blow up their systems are either techies who like futzing with stuff, or are using a ‘bad’ distro for their needs. If you’re switching over granny, you set her up with a long term stable kernel, a vanilla distro, and a browser. The few other stories are when people switch from windows and want something specialized to be the same. Those will need a customized solution, but it’s not much different than windows when something breaks. Whoever is playing IT gets to poke at a stupid amount of settings, registry edits, or esoteric drivers/dependencies.
I think immutability is extremely important for someone who is just starting out
It really isn’t, though
as well as starting on KDE since it’s by far the most developed DE that isn’t gnome and their… design decisions are unfortunate for people coming from windows.
Good thing Mint uses Cinnamon, which with the flip of one toggle on install changes between the Mac and Windows style environment. To the point my wife literally didn’t notice at first she was on Mint and not Win 10
Not gonna bother with the rest of your comment if the start is that weak, tbh
It really isn’t, though
Really? Being sure that your system is essentially unbreakable isn’t valuable to beginners? I can’t see how. It has massively helped the beginners I have given it to feel safe in tinkering with their system.
It was important to me, one day my arch just decided to not boot anymore, so, i switched to nixos.
Good thing Mint uses Cinnamon, which with the flip of one toggle on install changes between the Mac and Windows style environment. To the point my wife literally didn’t notice at first she was on Mint and not Win 10
I explained in my comment why cinnamon is a terrible choice for beginners, if you had read it you’d know, why even bother replying to a comment you won’t read with such a lazy response?
“Cinnamon (the default mint environment) doesn’t and won’t support HDR, the security/performance improvements from wayland, mixed refresh rate displays, mixed DPI displays, fractional scaling, and many other things for a very very long time if at all. I don’t understand the usecase for cinnamon tbh, xfce is great if you need performance but don’t want to make major sacrifices, lmde is great if you need A LOT of performance, cinnamon isn’t particularly performant and just a strictly worse version of kde in my eyes from the perspective of a beginner, anyway.”
There’s so many reasons to choose kde over cinnamon, there is a massive disparity in security between the two, KDE uses wayland by default, and as a result is SIGNIFICANTLY more secure, just off the top of my head, here’s some problems with cinnamon that will not be resolved anytime soon, that have all already been resolved by this transition KDE-side:
- Every single app can read your keyboard input without asking
- Every single app can see what every single other app is doing without asking
- Apps can fullscreen themselves and go over everything else, because they can control their own window placement to any degree they want, again, without asking.
and in the future the disparity will only go up, just as an example, look at the rate of development on KDE based distros vs cinnamon… cinnamon is entirely outclassed. The KDE team is massive, the cinnamon team is a few people with no real funding. ( if you don’t believe me, here are the stats for the last month cinnamon side: https://github.com/linuxmint/cinnamon/pulse/monthly vs https://github.com/KDE/plasma-desktop/pulse although you’ll note kde isn’t developed on github and that’s just a mirror. It’s not even close, cinnamon has less monthly than 1/10th of the weekly for kde. The KDE text editor alone outpaces all of cinnamon dramatically, https://github.com/KDE/kate/pulse ) The rate of code output and refinement is not even close. The level of customization you can do with KDE vs cinnamon isn’t even comparable. If you run into an issue with cinnamon, you’re SOL, whereas KDE can actually worry about your bugs, because they have so many more developers.
I have tried giving people cinnamon, it has gone disasterously, usually due to DPI problems. But I don’t think it’s a safe recommendation at all, just given the security issues. Also mixed dpi displays are extremely common, many people have 1 4k and 1 1080p screen, for example, or maybe they plug into a tv… it’s much more common than you think.
In short, i think the only reasonable recommendations for beginners in terms of desktop environments, are KDE or Gnome (if they’re mac users and are willing to learn something different), unless their hardware is TERRIBLE and old, in which case they might want lxqt or xfce, maybe.
As an XFCE user, I dislike the reputation that xfce is only useful for low end old hardware. It’s a fully complete desktop just like cinnamon, kde, or gnome. lxqt however, I would not wish on my worst enemy.
As an XFCE user, I dislike the reputation that xfce is only useful for low end old hardware.
We’re talking about specifically for beginners, it’s not nearly as good for beginners as KDE is. You like xfce because you’re used to it and it works for you, but KDE supports a vastly wider variety of usecases, for example, try having two-screen setup with one screen having a 4k display at 144hz, and the other a 1080p screen at 60hz
This will be impossible to get working properly on xfce. There’s not even a warning, it’ll just act very strangely without explaining itself.
there’s also the same issues with security that cinnamon have. XFCE does work, but there’s no reason to recommend it to someone who doesn’t already use/like it over KDE.
According to Distrowatch mint and Zorin are from Ireland, opensuse and manjaro are from Germany and more was lazy for more searching
Mandrake/Mandriva is from France
SUSE is now garbage. Not sure about open suse
What’s garbage about it?
When SLES 12 came out they made everything harder and forced everyone to migrate to 64 bit, even if you were doing legacy development
Canonical/Ubuntu is uk
Suddenly Ubuntu doesn’t seem so terrible now, does it??
Ubuntu gang represent.
Snaps still suck
I agree that the backend for snaps being proprietary sucks, but I actually think snaps themselves are pretty useful in server configurations because of the sandboxing and limiting access to system resources. I get the whole argument that it’s doing what flatpak already did yadda yadda, but like… competing standards happens. It’s part of life and always will be.
Well, their “customisation” of Gnome with that ugly bar on the left side is still ugly as hell.
And GCHQ isn’t also really trustworthy, with them being part of 5 Eyes
That’s part of why I use Xubuntu/Kubuntu mainly and Lubuntu for real low end stuff. Straight vanilla Ubuntu is… not super appealing. Ubuntu server that’s just CLI/headless though, that’s pretty tits, imho.
I think I will go for OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. But Kubuntu is also nice to keep in mind
Ubuntu server is okay, but I’ve come to really appreciate a minimal, stable Debian install instead.
That is just a customized version of Dash to Dock. You can move the dock on the bottom if you want or make it auto hide. The same functionality you can expect from Dash to dock but with the Ubuntu theme applied
I don’t want it at all.
But thanks for the Head Up that you can make this ugly thing go away
Try out CachyOS
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Stop worrying about the country of origin. It’s a FOSS project. The vast majority of Pop’s components are developed independently of the company, and by citizens of various nations. Applying the “USA bad, so product bad” rhetoric is a seriously shortsighted approach. Consider instead the amount of influence exerted by the company. Does Ubuntu still seem like the better choice just because the company is headquartered in the UK?
Besides, if you really want to cut American software out of your life, start with Linux and GNU. Torvalds was born in Finland, but he is a naturalized US citizen, and Linux is developed on American infrastructure and includes significant amount of work from American developers.
It’s not “USA bad, so product bad”, it’s the concern that the US government can do a lot more to US based projects and you probably wont know untill it’s too late.
That’s really not the case, there’s no proprietary parts to inject this into, and pop is one of the most heavily watched distros for a reason.
The minimal things they add to their particular distro are essentially just theming, and it’d be really obvious if they injected something malicious into it.
It would also NOT be too late because they’re a stable distro and have regular releases, it’d have to be a completely last minute unexpected change for that to be the case.
The code is open though, I don’t check it since I am an idiot but I assume pros would spot irregularities.
Do you have a specific vector of attack here in mind?
I guess most methods of attack on a FOSS projects are independent of the country of origin. But, I could still see them being forced to do things they don’t want in the US, without being able to tell anyone. Hopefully if that ever happened it wouldn’t be too hard to detect, but you never know.
People find vulnerabilities and malware even in closed source projects. Us regime is as malicious as it is incompetent. They trust anyone who can throw a sig heil and prompt a LLM to completely dismantle and rebuild major infrastructure.
They can still sanction your country and then you can’t get updates anymore over official ways, like Fedora and Iran.
It’s just peace of mind to not deal with anything US Based right now
