I think regulation would be the proper course of action, here. I mean neither do we ban American cars in Europe. We just say they have to play by our rules or they can’t do business here. So I wouldn’t support a ban based on country of origin. But regulation what they can and can not do.

I found it’s often not that difficult for me. I have different profiles for different material types. But I pretty much print all of the same type (PLA or PETG) at the same temperature that works well with my printer. In my experience (in the cases I tinkered around with the settings and compared the results) that works better than choosing the manufacturers specific recommended temperature. Idk. But I just use generic filament. Nothing special or with stuff added to it. So YMMV. But I just didn’t find filament configurations very helpful for generic filament and for what I do.

I think history books are meant to be the reference for later. And I think it’s two separate jobs to report something that’s currently happening. And analyzing it with hindsight and judging the impact and importance of the events. That’s kind of impossible while we don’t know the consequences yet.

I don’t get it either. I can see how you’re getting confused if you end up in section 2 or 3 of the manpages or with the kernel calls. But that’s not what a beginner is looking for. The manpages for the user commands are pretty alright. Sometimes even excellent.

Did you subscribe to news and politics communities? I’d recommend to unsubscribe, then. The more you tailor your feed to your interests, the more you’re going to get what you’re looking for.

I’d recommend to buy marzipan instead. It’s cheaper, tasty, and comes with less consequence.

Hehe, yeah my experience with Linux doesn’t reflect the beginners perspective anyways. So I sometimes struggle to empathize. But I’m trying to keep up to date.

I don’t think I really agree with the graph and it’s implications on the real world. I’ve recently switched from Debian to NixOS on my private VPS. And while I now have access to NixOS unstable… I must say the number of services I had to package on my own and had to mess with… hasn’t really gone down substantially. I mean it certainly has a lot of packages. But you end up doing a lot of packaging and installing anyways. At least in my experience. So I think that graph is a bit misleading if you try to infer how easy it is to install some random software.

And yeah, if something like a printer/scanner combo is supported in Linux, it’s usually easy to get it going on any Linux distro. Issues start to arise once it’s some old device from 2010 with bad drivers. Up until now my relatives either threw them away after some Windows update made them unusable. Or I convinced them to use Linux and that has support. Or you need to mess around with some old driver packages that depend on old and conflicting libraries, libc versions etc. I think it’s a shame to waste some good printer/scanner. And usually if you replace a device that has done a good job for 10+ years, and your relatives replace that with a recent consumer printer, they’re not always better off. These things have been enshittified constantly and the new printer will just have random quirks, refuse to print or scan or do other shenanigans. I’d rather not make this call. And instead keep using the printer that has proven to do it’s job very well.

But as I said, I’ll have to try. Not using a traditional distro should offer some advantages for those use cases. Maybe it’ll get easier to install conflicting (old) library versions for some half proprietary crap. Because that’s something Debian based distributions aren’t really made for…

I think I’d be fine with that. I’m using lots of Free Software projects, have Linux on my computers, wifi router, use random projects and Fediverse platforms … So far every time one of my passwords got leaked it was some breach of a proprietary platform (last.fm, Facebook, …) while the Free Software has served me extraordinary well. Usually it even limits the insatiable hunger for private data those commercial platforms have…

WhatsApp disconnects you if you don’t open the official app every 14 days or so. So you definitely need it. I run it on an old tablet. It’s supposed to run in a virtual machine (running Android) as well.

Those are certainly valid points. But do I want to care about that? Honest question… Discord also doesn’t care about my privacy. Or making the internet a better place. So I think -in turn- I feel quite alright to ignore whatever client they like me to use. And their exact ToS.

What’s with the “taxing for large and active Discord servers”? Does it lead to issues if I’m not using their Electron app or website? I can’t imagine where this additional strain on their servers would come from?! I run my own homeserver, by the way. So I shouldn’t weigh down on anyone else’s server…

Fair enough. Thanks for the nuanced perspective. I’ll try it. Though I occasionally really get support requests for old printers, scanners and whatever people have around. Or they have their accustomed workflow and they don’t really want to change a lot and also migrate their data to several different programs… I’d like to accomodate for that. I’ll see how it is today. I think one thing won’t change though and that is the big selling point of Linux having a big package repository. That just has a lot of advantages, also for the beginners. And the maintainers invest a lot of time so everything works smoothly. And it makes it stupidly easy to do a lot of things.

I mean ultimately the details don’t matter. My mom doesn’t need the latest Firefox or some specific operating system design. She just needs something that gets the job done and is maintainable and maybe not a hassle to operate and maintain…

Thank you very much. I’m going to set it up then.

Thx. So far the mautirx ones have worked flawlessly for me. I got blocked once, years ago by WhatsApp when I first set it up. No issues after that, so I’m not really afraid of getting banned. And I’m not planning to use the apps or website much after I got the bridge running. That is if it offers all the features and I don’t have a reason anymore to log in myself…

I was thinking of mautrix/discord. Is that the one you use?

Would you recommend the Discord bridge? I’ve always wanted to install that as well. Is there anything I want to know before putting in the effort to install and configure it?

Well, you’ve alrady been “nothing”. And that was before you were born or better, conceived. You’ll return to that state of not existing, after you died.

And I think the point of living is what you make of it. There are nice things out there. You can do things, learn things. Experience everything, Love someone… Leave something memorable behind…

Thanks for the input. I’ll have a look at it. I’m usually a bit hesitant about immutable distros. Since they work a bit differently. And someone starting out with Linux, administering their own machine and following a general tutorial will inevitably run into issues. They often have to follow special procedures, learn about the differences and it’s just a steep learning curve. A lot of that will be blamed on Linux, and it’s an additional hurdle we put in their path. Even if they’re willing to learn and try to get their esoteric document scanner working on their own. I think we’re better off with something like Mint. Even if that’s not completely indestructible, I think it’s better in some aspects that are important to a newcomer. It’s a trade-off.

Plus we have a few issues with Flatpaks, like themes not applying and Linux looks like it’s stuck in the early 2000s when all your desktop is in dark mode and one application will be bright white with completely different look. Or the password manager not working due to the sandboxing of the browser Flatpak…

All of those issues add up and they’re not trivial to solve. And kind of unnecessary in my opinion.

And I really like the concept of traditional distributions, where people get maintained packages by the distribution’s team. With updates pretty much guaranteed, everything tied into the system and desktop and tested to work there. In case of Debian also with tracking libraries removed etc… I think that’s what beginners want instead of pulling Flatpaks directly from upstream, whatever that project does behind the scenes.

I’m really not sure if I want to recommend immutable distros to beginners at this point. They’re a valid thing, but come with downsides. But I’m willing to have a closer look. I’ve yet to try most of them, including the one you mentioned.

[…] and while X has added some features, like job listings and a new video tab, there’s little sign of the service he’d said would be able to “someone’s entire financial life” by the end of 2024.

Yeah, wasn’t his dream to create some unified platform with X, a “super-app” that does everything? I guess if he was able to follow up on his promises, that’d generate some revenue… Instead, it’s always been some moderately toxic platform (albeit well used) and then just took a turn for the worse. I think “uninspiring” is a good word for this. But it’s definitely not his employees who are at fault, here.

Right. OP didn’t specify it has to be a technical shortcoming… or easy to solve. So I just said what I think is the biggest issue. Because I really think the platform itself, and the software are great. And still constantly improving.

I think this is really difficult to impossible to overcome. Other for-profit platforms have failed at this. Even the big players like Youtube, TikTok etc needed a huge pile of money, investors and an unethical business model to succeed. And I’m pretty sure we don’t want that with PeerTube.

I think what we currectly, realistically can do is have a few big content creators do it for fun. And host their stuff on PeerTube. But that needs some other motivation than making money.

Ultimately, the majority of the worth or value of a platform like this isn’t in the program code. But in the content and userbase. And I think that’s where the focus needs to be when we want to grow or improve it for the potential users.

It’s an easy excuse for pretty much anything. Most likely an excuse to be lazy, because that’s where it comforts someone… Doesn’t mean it has to be untrue… Just that it’s easy to use it as an excuse for the wrong things.