China’s top diplomat Wang Yi to visit Italy, Switzerland this week
China’s top diplomat Wang Yi to visit Italy and Switzerland this week
Foreign minister’s second trip to Europe in two months comes as Beijing and Rome seek closer cooperation after Sinochem case dismissed.William Zheng (South China Morning Post)
"Anti-ai arguments literally support eugenics"
Reminds me of this:
I think atproto is a good protocol, but god bluesky-the-company is dogshit.
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There's any way to flag and filter AI contents?
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Why?
Why did you switch to Linux? I'd like to hear your story.
Btw I switched (from win11 to arch) because I got bored and wanted a challenge. Thx :3
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Primarily, they're both gaming-focused.
I found out about Pop!_OS when doing research for gaming on Linux. It's maintained by a private company, and they invest a lot of time into keeping their drivers up-to-date. AFAIK it's still one of the best choices if you have Nvidia cards, because they have a separate ISO just for Nvidia machines.
For a short time, I used Kubuntu because I love KDE Plasma. I had been wanting to use Plasma again, and I kinda wanted to try a non-Debian/Ubuntu-based distro. That's when I stumbled upon CachyOS, and I don't think I'm switching to another distro for a while.
CachyOS is Arch-based, with a super-easy install. They have their own version of the kernel, optimized for gaming. It really is fast, too. Not only does it beat Windows in most speed tests, but it beats pretty much every other distro as well. If you like Arch, I highly recommend CachyOS to keep some of the basic stuff optimized while you tinker with your system.
Thanks for the comprehensive reply. Agree on KDE being great. Idk if it is because it has more of a windows feel, or because it isn't as flashy as GNOME.
If my current Bazzite instance doesn't work out, maybe I'll try Cachy.
I've heard great things about Bazzite, so I'm sure you'll be fine there.
I just wanted something new, and Fedora was too similar to Ubuntu under the hood. I don't know if I'm going to look back from Arch-based. Maybe when I break my install lol.
My first experience with Linux was as a kid, when the family PC that was handed down to us breathed its last. Quite a bit of malware was on that machine, and it got left to sit in the garage.
I found Ubuntu and revived the Compaq, although the experience was limited, and me as a 10 year old didn't really know what all could be done with a PC anyway.
Since then, it's been a slow burn. 2022 had me dual booting Linux and Windows, and learning how to migrate everything over.
2025 and Windows 11 recall, AI everywhere, intrusive Big Tech had me pull the trigger and nuke the Windows boot from my machine.
Now I'm here. Enjoying a peaceful time on my hardware just like it used to be when I was a kid. The internet and the computer have the capacity to be wonderful again.
Well yes, but actually no.
On a more serious note, most things are available, some things are behind on updates unless you compile everything yourself (even when using the ports collection).
I haven't used it as a desktop environment, I was just maintaining a FreeBSD server, so no idea on that end
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I have been tinkering with Linux before, but some software needed Windows.
I tried switching those apps.
* Corel to InkScape went well, I instantly liked it better.
* MS Office to LibreOffice: I just don't need Excel that much, so it's OK.
* Corel laser engraving to K40Whisperer: a breath of fresh air, simple and efficient.
Then, free from all those chains I installed EndeavourOS, and it's been great.
I’ve used it since the 90s, but windows was always my daily driver. Linux always worked, but games could be spotty and there always seemed to be to be the random breakage for no reason.
But that changed a few years ago. Games “just worked”, device support became really good, and if I’m being honest - I became a gnome guy. That interface is very very productive, especially on a laptop with a trackpad.
And then windows just, started sucking. They break machines with every single update, it’s like there’s zero qa anymore. And the little things became more and more annoying - the pop ups “upgrade to 11, try copilot, OneDrive isn’t working omfg let me help you fix that” the “where is that setting moved to now” game, the extra clicks everywhere.
My dual boot setup found a windows drive that was never being used anymore. I didn’t switch, I just stopped using. Eventually I just deleted the partition and use it for extra space and playing around with other OSs.
During this process I distro hopped quite a bit and eventually settled on fedora workstation. It’s been good to me on three PCs.
on my main laptop for whatever reason Windows 11, about twice a year or so, would insist on killing my wifi. Just out right disable it and not even uninstalling and reinstalling drivers would work. It would simply just kill it and pretend it never existed. the ONLY fix was to completely reinstall the OS. so almost like clockwork twice a year I'd have to reinstall the OS. It was also absolutely destroying the battery on my laptop. I would get MAYBE 30min out of it.
So after reading some threads I decided to give Linux a go. I went nuclear winter on it and didn't even bother dual booting, just wiped the computer completely and started with Mint. Stayed on that for a couple weeks until I completely messed up the install by trying to modify cinnemon a bit too much so then I switched to CachyOS and fell in love with it.
Since then I distro hopped a few times and I'm currently using NixOS. As far as the battery issue? I get about 4 hours out of it now instead of 30min.
My old desktop couldnt update to 11. But for my newer computer, Windows recall was a deciding factor. Fuck that shit. Also fuck their "ai" nonsense.
It's nice that it's free and doing little to nothing contrary to my interests.
About 20 years ago, I wanted to add recording studio capabilities to my gaming PC but I was a broke high schooler, so I installed Ubuntu Studio as a dual boot option alongside Windows XP.
Anyway, I installed Arch on my laptop about 3 years later in college using the Arch Book, which was essentially the same as the wiki's install guide at the time.
I had a dual boot system with Windows and Mac (it was a hackintosh) as my home recording studio Pro Tools/gaming PC for about a decade, then my Windows install had to be wiped due to an issue I had, so I decided to just wipe the whole thing and go single boot with Linux Mint, so now I use Reaper for recording and Steam + Heroic + emulators are meeting all my gaming needs. I use the Xanmod kernel and the kisak-mesa PPA, and since making the switch I've upgraded essentially all of the parts in my PC, which is good because I first built it in 2013
Probably the same reason many people use it:
Heard about it from someone/online --> tried it in a VM --> Tried it on real hardware --> Liked it enough to keep it/ditch windows partition if they dual-booted.
In my case, I started with Mint in 2023 and eventually distro-hopped to ArcoLinux (RIP) then Arch (BTW). Trying out Endeavour now as my Arch-Arco install is a mess and I'd like something similar to Arco.
Oh as for the reason why: Sick of Microsoft's shit and didn't want to downgrade from Windows 10 to 11.
Microsoft released Windows Vista, which was absolute dogshit on every PC at the time it was released.
This also just happened to be not long after Ubuntu was released, making it easier than ever to install Linux.
Installed it, quickly found out everything was easier to configure and tinker with in Linux...
Never saw a reason to go back. Used Windows 7 for a little bit, and it was better than Vista, but it still wasn't anywhere near as easy to use as Linux
I switched because Linux is obviously way better in so many ways. No brainer.
I use Windows at work and it's a joke. It's security theater. Microsoft and similar capitalist entities are paid not for actual security but for liability protection.
About 2 years ago I started the process of moving away from big tech, slowly, starting with transitioning from gmail to Protonmail. Ramped up on Jan 20 after seeing big tech CEOs at Trump's inauguration. Windows was the last thing I switched. I had kicked it down the list because I freelance with an audio focus, and Linux is sorely less equipped for audio than Windows or Mac. Said screw it about 2 months ago and made the switch, and I'm now completely free from walled gardens and big tech.
It hasn't been an easy switch, but I've made it work, and in fact have improved my audio quality with Linux. There certainly are limitations, and some things take more effort, but I've come to realize a bit of extra work in exchange for freedom is far superior than convenience in a walled garden covered in surveillance.
I installed and ran gentoo in 2005 on a home server that hosted a file sharing repository and php forum for my friends.
In college I ran Ubuntu on my netbook for programming and internet browsing on.
Then in 2021 Windows 11 came out and refused to install on my 2017 laptop. So I threw my hands up and installed EndeavorOS in a dual boot configuration. After a few months, EndeavorOS broke my boot with an update. Threw up my hands again and installed Fedora and haven't had an issue in years.
Well, "why" is just curiosity and wanting to explore new things. I had been learning some programming on Windows, but had heard rumblings about linux. I explored Red Hat, wasn't wowed. It was fine, but not enough to lure me away.
That was 26 yrs ago.
14 yrs ago, I created a dual boot on my laptop, with Ubuntu/Gnome. After about 2 yrs, I made Ubuntu my daily. A windows auto update tried to wipe linux off my drive, so I put Windows in jail, shrunk the partition as small as I could, and removed it from the boot sequence.
I don't distro hop, I used Ubuntu until earlier this year. It was always good enough, never awesome, but i learned things and felt a whole lote more secure than on windows.
About 6 months ago, I switched to Fedora/KDE. I'm sure I could find lots of benefits to other distros, but I never felt much need to shop around.
BTW, I absolutely love Fedora /KDE in a way I never felt about Ubuntu. Maybe it's just KDE vs Gnome. It just feels so much more comfortable.
I've always gave Linux a try for a week or so over many years but then crawled back to Windows. First time I've actually found it somewhat viable and I stuck to it for over a month was with Proton release but at that point there were still too many pain points while using it.
Then when Windows started pushing Recall I went to Fedora 38 and it lasted me for almost 6 months before I went back to W11 due to many issues related to just basic use on desktop due to buggy nature of KDE 5 with which I've lost patience.
Starting with Fedora 40 and with GNOME starting supporting VRR I've been on Linux since and had no real desire to go back since. So it seems that for my use case Linux finally got to the point where Windows is not a necessary thing for me, in fact I dread going back whenever I think about it as now there are things I would miss by switching back to Windows.
Also I use Windows 11 at my job and I really hate it, multi-tasking is so much better even with just single monitor on Linux vs Dual monitor on Windows... Also I just really like GNOME, even before I've even tried GNOME I've customized my KDE to be GNOME like before even realizing it. And yes, I've tried KDE 6 but it's not for me. I plan to try Hyprland though as that seems more interesting but I dread moving on from Fedora as it works well for me so I don't really have any need to disto hop.
Similar story to a lot of others here
Around a year ago I got fed up with Microsoft forcefully pushing unwanted and privacy-invading "features" on their users. It scared me to continue using it. I wanted more control and more protection for my privacy. So I decided to install Mint.
I've dabbled with Linux in the past and use it extensively in my job, but hadn't switched significantly to it in the past. One of the biggest blockers being games. I bought a Steam Deck a couple of years ago so I was needing increasingly confident that Linux would work for gaming to some extent. It ended up working very smoothly and I haven't looked back.
I still have my dual boot, partially because I haven't bothered to remove windows fully. At this point there's very little reason for me to not into windows. I've only encountered one game I've wanted to play that didn't work in Linux and that was an old game with mods. I might be able to get it working if I really troubleshooted it, but it's not that important.
Originally? To play with image AI models when they first came out.
Then I got that taste of freedom and Windows felt icky. Haven’t touched that side of my dual boot for non-work purposes in years. Even for work it’s a last resort.
Grew up on it. My dad set up a Ubuntu 4.10 PC for my brother and I when we were 3/5 (no internet, obv), and it stuck.
Used Windows for a brief time in highschool to be able to play online with friends.
Went right back to Linux when going to university. Will never change back, both for ideological reasons and because Linux is just better.
Next step: NixOS on a phone
My desktop PC ran Windows 10 and didn’t have the magic Windows 11 chip. I tried to do some easy things to get it to recognise my PC as having that chip anyway, but it didn’t work, and I was a bit afraid it’d run like shit with 11 anyway.
So I just decided to try something different and install Linux. First on an old little laptop I had lying around. I tried Mint first, then OpenSUSE - the first because it was supposed to be easy to newcomers, the latter because it’s German (and I liked the way it felt when I tried it on my laptop).
After trying it for a bit, I just decided I’d install it on my desktop as I didn’t want to use Windows 10 without security updates anyway. I’ve now been using OpenSUSE Leap for about half a year, and I’m quite happy.
Computers were either Windows or Mac, they couldn't be anything else, that was a fact. Then I saw someone using Linux and had so many questions. How? I was given a Knoppix live CD, went home, and booted my home PC into Knoppix and it changed my perception of computers.
I didn't change over immediately but eventually Ubuntu was handing out install CDs and YouTube was full of wobbly windows and desktop cubes. It wasn't useful but it looked cool.
I still needed Windows for gaming, but for day to day it was so much easier to use Linux.
Eventually my gaming was exclusively on the Switch and then was I was looking to play certain PC games the Steam Deck was available, so I bought that.
I think Windows 8 was the last one I used and I've never had any desire to go back. Linux is just easier.
Because
- it works (pretty fundamental!),
- popular alternatives are pretty much evil.
So, I know you think the 2nd point is a hyperbole. That truly I'm exaggerating. Well, actually no, I'm not. I genuinely believe that closed source OSes are one of the biggest epistemological trauma Mankind ever experienced. It's right behind fake as an organized political tool. Sure troll farms and political advertising take the cake... but honestly a locked down OS is very very close. Why? Well because it forces people who use a computer to assume the computer is a black box. It's a thing they can use a certain way. That certain way might be good, lucky them, or bad but regardless they must find a way to make their entire life, professional and private, fit within that very small black box. They are trained, day after day, interaction after interaction, as a lifetime of servitude. The personal computer was supposed to be a "bicycle for the mind" but truly, between closed source OS and the "cloud" (someone else computer, for profit) Mankind has been trained to accept and use a computer as they have been told.
This is an absolute disgrace and should never be accepted. This was bad in the 70s... but nowadays everything around you is a computer. Your computer is a computer (duh) but your phone is a computer, your console is a computer, your headphones are tiny computers, your e-bike is a computer, your doorbell is a computer, your printer is a computer, your washing machine is a computer, heck a light bulb or a button on your wall might be computers!
So... when your entire life is surrounded by small black boxes you are taught never to challenge, your life is miserable.
That's why I switched to Linux.
Why did you switch to Linux? I'd like to hear your story.
I had to do a job (translations) using MS Word 6.0, on a Win 3.11 PC . It was nearly a month of work and I and my gf urgently needed the money. But MS Word kept crashing and nearly obliterated all our work the day before our deadline. It was the most stressful day of my life.
After that, I installed LaTeX for DOS on that 386 PC, and wrote my university lab reports and later my bachelor thesis on it. It was running like a charm. We printed our own christmas cards using LaTeX's beautiful old German Schwabacher font.
At uni, at that time I was working with a software called Matlab on Windows 95, and Windows always crashed after a day or two - it later became known there was an integer overflow bug in the driver for an Ethernet card. Well shit, my computations needed to run more than three days. So, I switched to a SUNOS Unix workstation which ran much better and had lots of high quality software, including a powerful text editor program called "Emacs“. I could not buy such a SUN computer for myself because its price was, in todays money, over 50,000 EUR and we did often not know how to pay 350 EUR of monthly rent.
The other day, a friendly colleague which was already doing his PhD showed me his PC, a cheap newish Pentium machine. He had installed a system on it called Linux, which I had never heard of. I logged on and started Emacs on it and I thought it must be broken: Emacs was running within less than half a second whereas on the SUN OS workstation, it would have taken five or ten seconds to start. All the computers software was free. I realized that this computer had a value of over 50,000 EUR of software for a hardware price of 800 EUR. I got an own Linux PC as soon as possible.
Yes that was in 1998. I am now almost exclusively using Linux since 27 years.
The exact shortcomings of proprietary software have changed since, and keep changing. But what is always the same is: Proprietary software does not work on behalf of you, the user and owner of the computer. Who writes the instructions for the computers CPU, controls it, and will use this power to favour their own interests, not yours. Only if you control the software, and use software written by other users, your computer will ultimately work in favour of you.
ElementaryOS was my gateway drug cuz it was so pretty, I switched to have an OS that made me happy instead of miserable. Dual booted for a while for gaming until I got an hdr monitor and ended up stuck on my (modded for privacy and performance) windows partition more and more, but followed Wayland’s development religiously until plasma finally launched HDR in beta.
I chose arch (btw) cuz I was tired of running Debian-based distros with custom kernels and I generally just don’t like apt, and I don’t see myself ever really wanting to switch again.
(Other than compulsively reinstalling arch to try whatever new shit catches my eye, that doesn’t count)
I'd just built my first PC and had no love for Win 3.1 which was rapidly becoming the default. I wanted to keep codíng having come from from Atari STs and had no desire to learn the windows APIs. An OS that came with C compilers by default was higher level than I was used to as I'd been doing 68000 assembler on the ST, but it was still low level enough.
IIt was also similar enough to the Sun IPCs and IPXs that I was using at university.
I switched because Windows increasingly feels like it is not mine to use control and configure as I see fit. Functions and "features" are intrusive things that Microsoft wants, not me. They make it harder and harder to strip their bullshit out. Apparently I'm not the customer anymore but they still want me to pay for it.
Linux only ever does exactly what I want with total control, for free. It's damn near perfect.
Starting of with some history… I have run Microsoft operating systems since MS-DOS 3.22 and Windows 2.11 (not a typo). I was one of the first in our high school to install Windows 3.0 on one of the school lab machines off of floppy disks when it launched. I have been an early adopter on almost all the Windows OS’s and had a powerful enough PC at the time not to be too bothered about Vista even. I work with Microsoft based development (Windows Server and nowadays Azure) so Windows has always been what worked in my career. That hasn’t changed.
That being said, my computing history started off on a Apple IIc, followed by the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 and Amiga later on. I installed Linux the first time on my 486sx with 4MB of RAM using Slackware with a pre 1.0 kernel. Linux never stuck then as I couldn’t run the applications i needed and games I wanted. I came back to Linux every 5 or so years but it never stuck for the same reasons.
This changes about 5 or so years ago. A chain of things happened over time and it started at home.
- I installed Ubuntu 20.04 on an old laptop and it seemed to have what I needed on it. Mainly browsing and so on - no high demands. The web had moved away from client side plugins and the web just worked.
- Windows 10 nagging to install Windows 11 on my HTPC, when the hardware was too old. Ubuntu 20.04 replaced that install, and the software just worked (browser + Kodi)
- Broadcom purchasing VMWare meant moving away from ESXi in my HomeLab - Proxmox turned out to be mature for what I wanted. I now have a 3 node Proxmox cluster.
- A hard drive crash in one of my Synology NAS boxes led me down a rabbit hole resulting in adopting TrueNAS Scale and ZFS.
- Windows 11 was getting on my nerves for the last couple of years at work. Last year I did the research and took the leap to install Ubuntu 24.04 on my new work laptop. A lot of tools I use are open source - they have reached a decent level of maturity. Microsoft tech such as Dotnet, VSCode, PowerShell and Azure CLI just work for what I need. LibreOffice does a good enough job replacing MS Office. A VM with Visual Studio and MS Office fills the gap - I boot the VM a couple of times a week as needed.
- I installed Ubuntu 24.04 on a secondary desktop last year at home to see if it would fill my needs at home amid the launch of Recall. This resulted in me wiping my main gaming rig a couple of months ago, installing Ubuntu 25.04 as main and a smaller partition with Windows to mainly support flight sims (MSFS and X-Plane - an area where software and hardware support is still lacking on Linux).
- The old laptop that started off with Ubuntu back in 2020 is now distro hopping - Fedora, Debian, OpenSUSE and currently running EndeavourOS. They are fun playing around with and familiarizing myself with but haven’t quite been work adopting fully so far.
The end result today is that I have one VM in Proxmox running Windows Server and a dual boot on my gaming rig running Windows 11 LTSC. Everything else is either Linux or FreeBSD.
It took a couple of months to get completely comfortable with the changes in workflow of daily driving Linux as my main OS, but it settled and it feel almost nostalgic to boot into Windows now.
After using win 11 for about a year I got tired of that shit. Every version since 98made the settings menu harder and harder to find whatever I was looking for and this is true for everything in that OS. Save a file? 5 clicks at least just to be able to pick WHERE I want it. Wtf.
It was driving me insane. Bazzite, easiest OS for what I use my computer for and not looking back.
I was a Windows user as a kid in the 80s & 90s doing pirate installs of 3.11 and later 95 for friends and family. I got into "computers" early and was pretty dedicated to the "Windows is the best!" camp from a young age. I had a friend who was a dedicated Mac user though, and she was bringing me around. The idea of a more-stable, virus-free desktop experience was pretty compelling.
That all changed when I went to school and had access to a proper "Mac lab" though. Those motherfuckers crashed multiple times an hour, and took the whole OS with them when they did it. What really got to me though was the little "DAAAAAAAAAAA!" noise it would make when you had to hard reboot it. It was as if it was celebrating its inadequacy and expected you to participate... every time it fucked you over and erased your work.
So yeah, Macs were out.
I hadn't even heard of Linux in 2000 when I first discovered the GPL, which (for some reason) I conflated with GNOME. I guess I thought that GNOME was a new OS based on what I could only describe as communist licensing. I loved the idea, but was intimidated by the "ix" in the name. "Ix" meant "Unix" to me, and Unix was using Pine to check email, so not a real computer as far as I was concerned.
It wasn't until 2000 that I joined a video game company called "Moshpit Entertainment" that I tried it. You see, the CEO, CTO, and majority of tech people at Moshpit were huge Linux nerds and they indoctrinated me into their cult. I started with SuSe (their favourite), then RedHat, then used Gentoo for 10 years before switching to Arch for another 10+.
TL;DR: Anticapitalism and FOSS cultists lead me into the light.
Windows 95/98 sucked shit. I liked the games, but the kernels were terrible.
I dual booted or ran two machines Linux (RedHat 5.2 to 6.2, wtf was up with 7?), then whatever worked (usually Debian based) for a while. Mostly used Linux alone for years, but used Win7 for a bit. That one was okay, but Microsoft can't build dev tools on their own OS to save their lives.
It's been Linux Mint for a long time now on desktops and Debian/Armbian on servers.
Basically, I've been mainlining Linux since about '97 and it's doing me just fine. Works great for my kids and wife. We're a mostly Linux household. It saves me a ton of headaches. Easy to install, patch, and almost no other maintenance.
Same here, I heard about the reliability of Unix while enduring Windows 95's appalling crashes.
Last month I finally moved my wife's Windows 10 laptop to Endeavor OS. She recognizes that her unusable laptop is now snappy and stable.
My house is now officially Microsoft-free.
For me, Microsoft's original sin was removing the Start menu and the Classic and Aero themes in Windows 8. I wanted something better than questionable UxTheme patches that broke with every major update, and it was during that search that I learned there is more to the world than macOS and Windows.
But it was the invasive telemetry and bloatware that finally made me take action. I'm sure the spike in blood pressure and heart rate whenever I had to undo the asinine default settings on every new install and major update was not good for my health. All of the debloat utilities felt like I was just putting lipstick on a pig.
The ability to customize the interface to my heart's content also got me to learn about and appreciate the inner workings of Linux. I now have a couple setups on Chicago95 XFCE and a couple on AeroThemePlasma KDE. Despite how much I like the familiar UI of Windows, I wouldn't ever look back to using Windows itself.
I switched to Linux because of Linux gaming. Yes, I am completely serious!
Back in 2015 I had Lenovo laptop with only 2GB of RAM. Windows 7 consumed more than half of that and DotA 2 took over 2 minutes to load the map. The game was laggy. FPS was terrible even on low settings.
On another hand Ubuntu 14.04 consumed only ~350 MB of RAM. DotA on Linux loaded map in seconds. FPS was slightly better, but the game itself didn't feel so laggy anymore.
Linux was (and still is) my only viable solution for gaming on low spec hardware.
Why would you assume I switched?
-edit-
It appears my comment wasn’t clear… I never used anything else than Linux on my working systems…
Because you should.
It's free, it works everywhere windows does and has a tool for all your needs.
Purely to record / watch TV, films, etc.
I tried Windows Media Center (XP with some tweaks) and it was dire...
Found MythTV and decided I needed to "learn Linux" to get it done.
Now everything (except my work's laptop) is Linux (Arch btw)
Commodore's bankruptcy in 1994 was the end of the Amiga, which forced me to switch to something else.
At the time, the choice of hardware I could afford and operating systems that didn't suck was extremely limited, a PC with Linux was pretty much the only practical choice and I've stuck with that ever since.
Because Linux had a choice of desktop environments to try out. What a playground.
My first peek was with Wubi. >2008 ish? Then Knoppix had a live boot. Then all the other live boots followed. Very important easy first step.
I'm now on Plasma, tweaked to suit me.
Now I can never use anything but Linux.
I switched January this year.
- Windows 10 end of life was on the horizon
- Programing on windows was a lot of hoops to jump through and i had heard Linux would be better
- Didn't want windows 11/copilot.
Tried dual booting Ubuntu and XP back around 2006, didn't really see the point because gaming on Windows.
2020 got a Raspberry Pi and set up Retropie which gave me a good intro to Linux. Tried to get away from big tech in 2021 and was dual booting Mint and Windows 10. Ended up spending more time in 10 because gaming.
Got an old laptop from work and it was perfect to throw Mint on because no way it was going to handle gaming. Then I set up a media server, initially with the the Pi and then bought a cheap mini for it - and ran it on Mint. I'm primarily a console gamer now so gaming is far less of a concern for me on PC. Mint everything now.
I could distro hop or at least try something else, and maybe I will at some stage. But I'm too happy with Mint/Cinnamon to bother.
Back when I was a freshman in college, I had a regular laptop (Sony Vaio) and at the time netbooks were popular and my girlfriend (now wife) had got me one for Christmas.
Win 7 starter was garbage, XP was fine, but not ideal. I ended up trying out Ubuntu netbook remix since it was supposed to be lighter on resources. At the time I was a pre med student and wanted something for knocking out documents, and reading papers with enough battery to get me until I had to go to work. The iPad wasn’t out yet so that wasn’t an option.
I had a ton of fun getting it working, even the Broadcom chip was a fun challenge. Once it was working, I just really liked the look and feel. I preferred the Unix file structure to windows as well as the terminal experience, using bash vs powershell.
I ended up writing a few programs and apps for myself specifically for that netbook, and it quickly became my primary way of interacting with a computer. I eventually ported my Sony over which had the challenge of writing a couple drivers to get some things working with minimal compatibility.
Following this, I switched from pre med to software engineering and eventually graduated with a degree and I have now been working with software and using Linux ever since. Even now, I am the sole Linux system administrator in the company I work for and manage a handful of servers and deployments.
My first contact with Linux was via amateur radio. I didn't want to hook my radio up to my main PC in case I wired something wrong, so I got one of those newfangled Raspberry Pis, circa 2013. Raspbian Wheezy was my first distro.
Not long after, my old laptop died and I needed a new one. Bought a Dell, it came with WIndows 8.1. Holy shit what an unusable pile. I hated that OS a lot. And then the laptop outright died. I was going back to school, I needed a PC to do school work on, and I've had flesh wounds I was satisfied with more than Dell's warranty support. It took them pretty much an entire semester of "We'll fix it in three weeks or so, when the one guy who does field repairs in your state will look at it", "it's fixed" it breaks almost instantly, before I finally demanded they replace the entire machine. Which they did, with a different, lesser, model. I am no longer a customer of Dell.
This left me doing all of my school work on a Raspberry Pi 1B, and then a Pi 2, for about 3 months. So I got a bit of a crash course in managing a Linux system.
Once I finally got a working laptop, Windows 8.1 felt more alien to me than Linux Mint did. It would actually have been more work to learn Windows 8.1 than Mint Cinnamon. So I became a full time Linux user.
- fun, I like trying out new software
- I love the philosophy of free software.
- fuck Microsoft and windows.
- It's actually just better
(I switched last year)
I started dabbling in around 2000, getting sick of the instability of Windows, and it seeming like the next logical step of geekdom.
I tried a LOT of distros. Mandrake, Connectiva, Red Hat to Fedora Core, Slackware, Debian Woody, Crux, etc etc. I drifted in a Debian-centric circle until I finally landed on Arch. Lost my way for a bit during my IT career, supporting Windows I ended up just using that. But I'm back to Arch now as my daily, Debian for some networking projects, and a bit of Fedora from time to time when I need to spin something up quick.
- I'm a lifelong contrarian.
- I refuse to overpay into the locked-down Apple ecosystem.
- Windows has become worse with every release.
- I use Arch btw.
"Home"
Kerala Actually. I use ubuntu in schools and universities
I heard two talks around 2001 or so. one by Wolfram, after which I swore never to use mathematica again. and one by stallman after which I switched completely to Linux and never went back to windows.
still on Linux 25y later. went from days when getting sound working was a challenge , to today when even obscure tablets work out of the box.
started with red hat. used Gentoo for about 5y. then debian for 10, and now arch.
went from the old "crux" and metacity, to openbox to fvwm to gnome to kde plasma
i remember the old days I was envious of Mac users for transparency and the present windows features, and I ran this utility called Skippy that would screenshot windows and present them... all these features are now built in to the wm now, so no tweaking needed
Same as most people. OSs have just evolved to become systems made to serve their creators rather than their "customers".
Windows wants to steal all your data and then use it to shove ads in your face.
Apple also constantly tries to push their own products and services through the OS, not to mention continually pushing the boundaries of irrepairability and locking you in an ecosystem. And just being extremely expensive.
During early high school years I heard about this thing called linux and there's something that's ubuntu, and said, why not? downloaded the ISO, installed on my USB with rufus, had panic attacks installing the dual boot myself for the first time, and done. After 2 months I switched to Arch (best thing I did) and ever since I'm deep diving in this Programming-Linux-Cybersecurity rabbit hole that I'm quite enjoying.
Fast forward to now, I'm using LFS and compiling my own kernel. My main desktop is a T440p with 4 OSes installed (maybe adding Plan9 to the mix if it supports my system)
I'm planing to mess more with "my own" distro thing maybe installing a Linux system without GNU: Linux + sinit + sbase + ubase + musl
When Microsoft announced the sunset of Windows 10.
I was still in uni at that time. Started with Ubuntu, disliked snaps and moved to Pop. Stayed there for last 5-ish (?) years. It does what I want it to do, I don't care about switching distros now.
Post subject:
Why?
Post content:
Why did you switch to Linux? I’d like to hear your story.
I feel like I've been click-baited.
I used Linux for a good while 20 something years ago. Mostly for recording music and some gaming (you can say what you want, cube/sauerbraten/openarena/… I had a great time that I look back to fondly).
Then got back on windows around vista all the way to w11
7/8/10 all “ok” OS experiences imo.
11… man, this thing frustrates me so much. Everything you try to do is like getting gaslighted. Updates/reboots whenever it feels like, regardless of what you have going on. (My setup requires a few keystrokes at boot, if not the fan goes nuts)
Coming back to Linux feels like a breath of fresh air. Especially now that installing/using it has become a breeze compared to back then. It does what you ask. Why doesn’t big tech corp get that through its thick skull?
Also, my data is mine.
When I first tried it out in a VM, it was just a pinch of curiosity. Some people argue for Linux, so, maybe there's some merit to that? And, unlike MacOS, you can install it anywhere without all the hackery.
When I actually tried it (my first one was Manjaro KDE, and that's what I stuck with for my first 1,5 years later when I decided to go for a real install), I was amazed at how smooth and frictionless everything is.
The system is blazing fast, even on a limited VM, there's no bloat anywhere, no ads, no design choices to trick you into doing something you don't want to. The interface is way more ergonomic and out of the way at the same time. Seriously, Microsoft, do learn from KDE, pretty please.
So, when I moved to a new home, I decided that my virtual home needs an upgrade as well. I installed Linux alongside Windows (on two different physical drives), and ran it as dual-boot ever since. Not that I address Windows that much (normally about once in two to three months), but it's handy to keep around.
Later, I went into some distro-hopping and also got a laptop, which has become my testing grounds. After trying various options, namely Mint, Arch/EndeavourOS, Debian, Fedora, and OpenSUSE, I gravitated towards the latter, and I use it as my regular daily driver on both my desktop (Tumbleweed) and laptop (Slowroll). I love how it manages to keep the system both up-to-date and extremely stable, and has everything set up just right (except KDE defaults, what the hell is wrong with SUSE folks on that end? Luckily, it takes 5 minutes to change). So, there it is!
I heard that the Playstation 3 would be able to run something called Linux and I wanted to become some kind of Neo😅
Then I went on and off between Windows and Ubuntu until fully switching to Linux around 2020.
Running Fedora with Gnome these last few years.
I don’t remember how I did it but I guess it wasb’t so difficult since I had no previous experience.
But I think I only used it once and then moced to something else.
I've used Windows since version 95. I even learned how to use version 3.1 back in the day (people actually used to take classes for using the PC!). Every new version after 98 was a pain in the ass, they'd get rid of a lot of functionality, change menus, and add crap no one asked for. XP might be a nostalgic memory now, but I thought the UI was horrible at first. Same with 7 and 10.
I first learned about Linux through forums, and then I found out about Canonical sending CDs with Ubuntu for free. So I gave it a try and I liked it. There was a lot of tinkering to do unfortunately. Stuff like the cheap ADSL modem I was given by my ISP weren't recognized, so I had to dual boot. Eventually I found some file from one dude who had the exact same modem and knew what to do, and so I was able to go online in Ubuntu. (All of that ended up being very useful knowledge, though. If something happens on my computer, I don't panic anymore, I roll up my sleeves and try to figure out how to fix it.)
I've been alternating between Windows and Ubuntu ever since. I switched permanently to Windows 10 a few years ago for some reason I don't remember. And last year I switched to Pop! OS after finding out about Recall. I was pleasantly surprised by how far gaming has come in Linux, so the switch is permanent this time. I will switch distros, however, once I switch my hardware to AMD.
22.04 currently uses X11, yeah. But the COSMIC DE, as far as I'm aware is Wayland-only. I think they use XWayland or something for some stuff... but I'm not 100% sure about it. All I know is that Wayland kills stuff like xprop and xdotool, and there are no real alternatives. Now it's up to each DE to figure it out, I think. Supposedly KDE was going to work on mouse gestures, but it's one of those sponsored works people say they'll take and then they go AWOL.
Eventually I'll have to rethink how to place my keyboard and mouse, so I can be comfortable without mouse gestures. I have some physical limitations, so easystroke was helping me a lot, but it's one of those things most people don't care about, especially in the Linux community which tends to be more reliant on keyboard. 🤷🏻♂️
I'd dabbled with Linux and multiple distros in the past and while I liked what I saw I had my frustrations. Various distros had their pros and cons and I wasn't as technically capable back then.
After Windows 11's unnecessary launch I gave Windows 10 LTSC a try. I don't think it was LTSC specific but my experience was buggy as hell and would BSOD every other day. So I thought I'd force myself to use Linux and have used Arch or other flavors of Arch ever since. No sink or swim, I was just going to live with it and not deal with Microsoft's bullshit anymore.
I had a not-very-computer-savvy friend with Windows 7 who didn't want to upgrade to 11 but Steam and some other programs stopped working for him, so I tried out Mint as a dual boot option and told myself that I'd switch back to Windows when I needed to.
I ended up never booting to Windows again; everything I needed to run worked just fine in Linux, either natively, or with Wine, or with alternatives that were actually better than what I was using in Windows.
I bought my son a cheap little computer, basically a windows version of a Chromebook. When windows needed an update there wasn't enough memory to perform it, and the computer would no longer connect to WiFi. I thought this was very dumb so I figured out how to remove windows and install Mint. Was impressed by how well it worked.
When I needed a new computer I bought a $150 thinkpad and installed Fedora. Been a fedora main ever since
I was not about to put up with windows co-pilot or recall and had already put up with enough ads and bugs.
I had been running Debian on my laptop for a year without a problem and then finally Windows 11 started doing this when I was trying to update:
Click check for updates? Same result. Wait a week and try again? Same result.
I could no longer trust that the OS was secure from even 3rd parties, so I pulled the trigger and installed Debian 12 - later upgrading to Debian 13 when it released.
There just is never any going back now - Linux is just waaaaaaay too good.
Now I just need something similar to happen with phones.
Had a 6-year old Macbook Pro that was increasingly difficult to use due to the small SSD-drive (I think only 128GB?). Coudn't really update the OS without uninstalling most stuff due to this. In addition, I had started to get the urge to tinker with stuff again, but ran into roadblocks often (often following a guide to do something in the terminal only to get stuck at inatalling something from apt). Same time I got more and more fed up with Big Tech, so when I was buying a new laptop to replace it, the choice to avoid Apple and Microsoft was obvious. Having used a terminal on macOS, doing work on HPC-clusters (which obviously ran Linux) and moving an increasing amount of my workflow to Got Bash on Windows on my work machine (all three of which reinforced my level of comfortability with the terminal and desire to use it), the prospects of the terminal was more enticing than frightening.
Now I have been a full-time Linux user for three years, my partner, brother and mother have since switched, I manage some bare metal Linux servers for work and IT has finally agreed to allow me to ditch Windows for Linux (although they are taking their sweet time setting it up, so I am still waiting to actually get it).
I saw fvwm in a magazine and it had a really cool 3D look to it and I wanted that. I had never seen anything like that. We were very poor and I only had an old computer, a 486, so it was either pirate software (and there was no version of Windows in our language) or use Linux.
I ended up on Red Hat from a magazine and then later Slackware. I liked Window Maker so I stayed on that for two decades. Learning Linux gave me a constructive hobby, introduced me to free software philosophy, and gave me technology skills. We moved to the United States. When I was 15 or 16, I helped a college math professor install hardware on Linux. When he found out that I was dropping out of a very racist high school, he provided support and I ended up graduating from their college. Those Linux skills came in handy and helped start a career.
I have only ever used Windows to upgrade firmware on a laptop or to download an ISO so I could replace Windows. Like everyone else, I was enamoured with macOS back in the 2000's but couldn't afford one and when I finally could, it couldn't do sloppy focus and that was a pet peeve of mine so I just returned it and got a used ThinkPad.
I moved back to Asia. Now I use sway on Debian and get to ride my bicycle to work and my kids grow up better than I did, so life is good.
It was a challenge I wanted to conquer too but also I increasingly felt like I didn't own my computer. The software was increasingly cutting me out of the ability to modify and use it the way I wanted.
I spent a lot of time in Gentoo early on where patching software was an overlay and recompile away and it was great testing early amd64 bugs and pushing the limits with gaim and reverse engineering chat protocols.
I was doing some dual booting then but as i built a career in web development, it became more and more my solo driver. Running the same platform you're developing for is incredibly convenient and Linux runs the web.
Now I can't imagine running windows. Using it and helping people on it is just a miserable experience for me.
seriously hate modern implementations of AI and am willing to make concessions in my life to avoid using it
Props for standing on business and actually taking the steps to make a change
I got a job writing software for Linux servers.
After spending my workday on a mature stable operating system, going home to Windows or Mac became frustrating, to me.
Various challenges required paid-but-still-kind-of-buggy software on Windows or Mac, that I had mature stable solutions for on Linux.
I spent many years installing free software recompiled for Windows (in cases where it was available) so that I would have the same quality of tools at home as I had at work.
Eventually Ubuntu and Linux Mint hit an ease of use that made me feel silly last time I went through the effort that comes with activating Windows.
When Commodore went bankrupt and my Amiga started to fade away I was forced to buy a PC. And because I didn’t want to have Windows 95, I bought S.uS.E. Linux and that’s the way I am now. And I’m happy to be Linux user all these years.
Switch implies I only have one computer .... I have many, including several servers.
Ever since I have memory I've been a tinkerer and linux being OS enables you to do amazing things ... along with open source software.
I (dont) use arch BTW ... Windows on my gaming PC (because of antichieat amongst other compatibility foes) Mint on my personal tablet and Proxmox on my servers
Homework.
College used linux because I did computer science.
Topic: concurrency.
College then gave us a programming assignment that required adding a code library, which I had never done before or even heard of, and thus did not understand.
Since this was a library that was platform-specific, they had made one library for linux and one for windows.
Way too late I got the gist of it but still couldn't install the library.
Since the question contained the linux directory structure I was convinced that the windows library was broken and every other college student finished this task in Linux.
Thus I installed Linux.
Ten years later I understood and finished the assignment.
My heat was out and I needed a way to warm my apartment so installed Gentoo on my Dell XPS. /s
That was around the time Windows 2000 was coming out and I couldn't afford a copy. I'd been dabbling for a year or two before. That was my first and last dual boot computer. MythTV really sold me on linux.
I was tired of Windows 95.
Plus I was in grad school and was trying to avoid studying.
gcc hello.c. And since then I've fallen in love
Tired of the constant pop ups in windows 10. The constant upselling of their product.
An OS shouldn't get in the way of what you are doing and Windows was always popping up some bullshit.
Simple. Windows caused a lot of Problems I simply could Not solve.
Besides that Microsoft became Something I do Not want to Support much longer or willing to giveaway my privacy.
And yeah. Linux Runs better.
I learned to use linux decently in school. Used it for servers, etc at home.
Windows had its auto updatee, and eventually drove me mad enough to dual boot. When the updates started crash boot loops and I literally couldn't use it anymore... I finally swore off Windows.
Its not all sunshine and rainbows, but i have had a much better time woth Lonux, and feel much better about it.
Looking at all the sheisty things theyve talked about and/or attempted, such as screen recording everything for AI, contemplating ads in file explorer, forced one drive integration slowing basic operations down... I have no desire whatsoever to return.
Because Windows XP was a hot pile of garbage.
One day, my network driver broke. None of the discs worked. None of those incoherent "wizards" Windows loves to use worked. Reinstalling Windows broke more things. I couldn't get online for about 2 months.
One day I was at the bookstore and saw a Fedora Core book with an OS disc. I thought it was cool so I convinced mom to get it. Went home, blundered my way through the install and everything just worked.
I cannot for the life of me understand how XP is routinely loved by everyone. It looked like a muddy fisher-price toybox.
I had used 95, 98, and 2000 at that point. All of which I mostly enjoyed. Me I used in my grandmothers computer and yeah...it was rubbish.
However I'd say it was less of a "Big leap" and more of a "Quick give us something that's almost as good as 9x!"
We had a fundamental disagreement regarding the role of technology in business operations. In my view, technological change in an enterprise exists in tension between the business desiring a solution that perfectly fits their process and the flexibility of a technology package to approximate the business requirements in a cost-effective way. Ideally, technology should fade into the background so that you don't even notice or think about it as it facilitates your work.
Microsoft seemingly disagrees.
My specialty is telephony, a space that Microsoft has only recently ventured into with a competitive and cost-effective, if feature-poor, offering in Teams. Telephony is a complex topic and the way telephones are used in business today is varied from people who barely use their phone (but want it when they need it), to people who depend on specific telephony functionality to do their work.
The meeting I had was in a beta-user group for new tech in that space, it was me and about 40 other admins from a variety of large businesses and a team-lead in Microsoft product house. Basically, it was a group of customers becoming increasingly exasperated at the arrogant ignorance of someone in charge of developing telephone technology at Microsoft who didn't only have limited experience with enterprise-level telephony, but insisted that business units conform their processes to fit what Microsoft was willing to develop, and I want to emphasize here, that the audience was more than willing to meet the vendor halfway here, it was Microsoft insisting that people didn't really need basic things like busy-indicators.
I spent about an hour getting more and more angry to the point where I just wanted to get rid of everything Microsoft, but I couldn't torpedo Teams at work, so I went home and installed Mint on all my PCs (and later switched to Garuda).
Back in 2002 it was eye candy.
Compiz compositor. The 3D cube and wobly windows.
And still Linux can be the most beautiful UI of all OSes out there.
Always tinkered with Linux, since eeeearly Red Hat days, but took the first full move when I set up my home lab and needed to host some docker containers with hardware pass-through.
Turned out my hardware was a bit too new for the kernel I had to install so ended up teaching myself a lot in terms trying to get everything to work.
Because of that I got quite comfortable on the terminal and from then, the UI suddenly made sense, because I understood better the concepts underneath.
Run three boxes with various versions of Linux now, a couple more if you count dual booting, a couple more if you count Mac as some kind of Frankenstein UNIX.
I tried many times before, mostly pushed by friends nerdier than me. Always failed.
Now I am on Mint since a few months pushed just by myself not accepting AI slop force fed to me by my computer and having become very protective of my privacy since GDPR (I am the DPO at my company).
I must say it has become incredibly user-friendly (at least on Mint CE) and as a gamer, I am very satisfied with both performance and variety (I would have said GabeN be praised one month ago, but I am slowly moving my library to GOG/Heroic, for similar reasons, so the praise has to be shared).
Went to Linux when I was a teenager, went back to Windows.
My return however is a lot more bittersweet. One of my cats died. The other cat went into mourning. Wanted to keep him company while doing my shit, so I took my old laptop and installed Xubuntu on it. While I was using it I realised that Linux had come a long, long way since I last used it and I could use it as a daily driver. Got a new laptop soon after and installed Mint on it.
Then Windows on my main PC started demanding I update. Realised I couldn't afford to, both software and hardware wise, so I decided to go full Linux. Never looked back. Typing this on my Laptop running Fedora while I try kill time before an interview.
TL;DR: I came back to Linux because I wanted to hang out with my cat while he mourned.
My dad was a software developer so growing up, there were Linux textbooks in the bookcases. Sorry if was inspired by my dad to try Linux in and off in my teens. Was fun a kid failing and then succeeding to install Linux and distrohop through the various flavors of Ubuntu and what not.
Then in university my cheap laptop was running poorly on Windows 10 say I started experimenting again with Arch, Mankato since I didn't really need any fancy proprietary software.
Finally, now in 2025, just pissed off with Windows and decided I'd go all in with Linux on my desktop gaming PC. It worked well enough or my laptop and my home server, and really considered that it was not games that required anti cheat that I really loved, so I just dove in with Bazzite.
Because open source, like the right to privacy and the diversity it can offer, always has something for everyone.
In the end, W*'s recent choices, such as ReCall, and the intrusions into our privacy, finally convinced me to begin my transition.
Until now, I had been observing opinions for the past five years.
The fact is that I am not a programmer or a specialist in these subjects, just a very small amateur, and Linux has long been off-putting.
Having the time and a computer to experiment is not that easy. But with an old computer, I finally have the opportunity to test Linux Mint... Others will undoubtedly follow.
I always say that to change operating systems, you first have to figure out how to replace proprietary software or applications with open source ones, because most of them are also available on Linux.
That's what I did on my mobile, and now the next step is to choose a custom ROM such as Lineage or /e/OS, etc.
I don't like corprofascism.
Mint rules so far. Been enjoying it for several months now!
I woke up one day, and copilot had been installed on my PC overnight. I didn't like that lack of control. This was, coincidentally, a weekend that my wife, kid, and dog were all gone. Since I knew Win10 only had a year left, and I had the time, I figured it was as good a time as any.
I downloaded Fedora and Kubuntu. Spent a bit of time with each, and went with Kubuntu. For a few days. It had issues waking from sleep, and I had to do some kind of tweaking with every one of my games to get them to work.
I don't mind tinkering with stuff, but i just don't have the time to make my computer my hobby. So, I switched to Mint. Everything just works. So, I put it on everything else. I guess the one time I really had to dig into terminal stuff was getting a wifi driver for my living room PC off git. Other than that, super easy.
Now, I'm coming up on a year of Mint. Couldn't be happier.
Réunion d'accueil des nouvelles et nouveaux à Paris par XR Paris-Nord
À propos de cet événement
Tu souhaites découvrir le mouvement et savoir comment t’engager ? Nous organisons une réunion d’accueil des nouveaux et nouvelles en présentiel. Le RDV sera à l'adresse suivante : La ressourcerie Le Poulpe - 4B Rue d'Oran, 75018 Paris. La salle est accessible via l'escalier en entrant à gauche, monter les escaliers et juste à la sortie des escaliers à droite il y a la porte de la salle.
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Palestinian film-makers on their favorite Palestinian movies: ‘I felt like I was watching my own story’
A ‘magic pill’ made Israeli violence invisible. We need to stop swallowing it | Diana Buttu
Signal Protocol and Post-Quantum Ratchets
Signal Protocol and Post-Quantum Ratchets
We are excited to announce a significant advancement in the security of the Signal Protocol: the introduction of the Sparse Post Quantum Ratchet (SPQR).Signal Messenger
Asking Lemmy for a concise write up about why Corporate Social Media can't work ?
What makes a social network “work”?
Typically, we say that a social networking service works when it achieves some of these:
- Community – gives users the ability to create communities they can feel a sense of belonging to.
- Freedom of expression – expands people's ability to speak their mind in a .. umm... meaningful way ? (looking at 4chan's /pol/).
- Rich expression – actually offers tools to express yourself (presence of features like markup, formatting, embeds).
- Constructive culture – becomes an environment where people learn and participate in constructive and fun activities — like university clubs. (Sorry for the example, but Reddit’s r/anime comes to mind.)
- Privacy & safety – respects users’ privacy and safety.
- Developer support – provides good developer tools.
- Example: In Numbers: The Best Anime of the Decade from MyAnimeList — a huge data-driven article made possible by open tools and APIs. (also a huge web page, might take forever to load all figures)
Feel free to add more points, or challenge the ones I’ve listed.
It seems like a general consensus here on Lemmy that — no matter how many times you try — Reddit will always slip from Aaron Swartz to u/spez.
Why do you think that is?
Disclaimer: I wrote the post by myself, but used AI to refine my bad English and markdown,
In Numbers: The Best Anime of the Decade
What's the #1 anime of the 2010s? Which year was the best? What studio had the most hits? We have the answers to all these questions and more!MyAnimeList.net
Public forums should be publicly owned. These are essential social tools that allow us to have discussions with each other and shape our views and opinions. These forums must be operated in an open and transparent manner in a way that’s accountable to the public.
Privately owned platforms are neither neutral or unbiased. The content on these sites is carefully curated. Views and opinions that are unpalatable to the owners of these platforms are often suppressed, and sometimes outright banned. When the content that a user produces does not fit with the interests of the platform it gets removed and communities end up being destroyed.
Another problem is that user data constitutes a significant source of revenue for corporate social media platforms. The information collected about the users can reveal a lot more about the individual than most people realize. It’s possible for the owners of the platforms to identify users based on the address of the device they’re using, see their location, who they interact with, and so on. This creates a comprehensive profile of the person along with the network of individuals whom they interact with.
This information is shared with the affiliates of the platform as well as government entities. It’s clear that commercial platforms do not respect user privacy, nor are the users in control of their content. While it can be useful to participate on such platforms in order to agitate, educate, and recruit comrades, they should not be seen as open forums.
Open source platforms provide a viable alternative to corporate social media. These platforms are developed on a non-profit basis and are hosted by volunteers across the globe. A growing number of such platforms are available today and millions of people are using them already.
From that perspective I think that open and federated platforms. Instead of all users having accounts on the same server, federated platforms have many servers that all talk to each other to create the network. If you have the technical expertise, it’s even possible to run your own.
One important aspect of the Fediverse is that it’s much harder to censor and manipulate content than it is with centralized networks such as Reddit and BlueSky. There is no single company deciding what content can go on the network, and servers are hosted by regular people across many different countries and jurisdictions.
Open platforms explicitly avoid tracking users and collecting their data. It's also more difficult for third parties to collect data since it doesn't all conveniently live on the same server that some company owns. Not only are these platforms better at respecting user privacy, they also tend to provide a better user experience without annoying ads and tracker bloat.
Another interesting aspect of the Fediverse is that it promotes collaboration. Traditional commercial platforms like Facebook or Youtube have no incentive to allow users to move data between them. They directly compete for users in a zero sum game and go out of their way to make it difficult to share content across them. This is the reason we often see screenshots from one site being posted on another.
On the other hand, a federated network that’s developed in the open and largely hosted non-profit results in a positive-sum game environment. Users joining any of the platforms on the network help grow the entire network. More users joining Mastodon is a net positive for Lemmy because we get more content and more people to have discussions with.
Having many different sites hosted by individuals was the way the internet was intended to work in the first place, it’s actually quite impressive how corporations took the open network of the internet and managed to turn it into a series of walled gardens.
Marxist theory states that in order to be free, the workers must own the means of production. This idea is directly applicable in the context of social media. Only when we own the platforms that we use will we be free to post our thoughts and ideas without having to worry about them being censored by corporate interests.
No matter how great a commercial platform might be, sooner or later it’s going to either disappear or change in a way that doesn’t suit you because companies must constantly chase profit in order to survive. This is a bad situation to be in as a user since you have little control over the evolution of a platform.
On the other hand, open source has a very different dynamic. Projects can survive with little or no commercial incentive because they’re developed by people who themselves benefit from their work. Projects can also be easily forked and taken in different directions by different groups of users if there is a disagreement regarding the direction of the platform. Even when projects become abandoned, they can be picked up again by new teams as long as there is an interested community of users around them.
It’s time for us to get serious about owning our tools and start using communication platforms built by the people and for the people.
But after reading, Seems like your answer argues that open source federated alternatives are better than corporate social media. While I personally agree, the main subject of this thread is why the phenomena: "privately owned social media that seems to embrace us at first turns against us eventually", actually more like "stops working eventually". the subject is why this is inevitable, this paragraph is the main subject:
No matter how great a commercial platform might be, sooner or later it’s going to either disappear or change in a way that doesn’t suit you because companies must constantly chase profit in order to survive. This is a bad situation to be in as a user since you have little control over the evolution of a platform.
You mentioned Marxist theory. From what I understand, Marx or some other commie argued that the good capitalist who plays with the rules is left behind in the race ("If I don't lobby someone else lobbies") and the winners use all kinds of ways to create monopoly and destroy the ones slacking. Thus Capitalism leads to monopoly and kills competition and fairness inevitably.
I kinda get the impression that corporate social media turning against its' users is inevitable in the same fashion for some similar argument. That's what Lemmy seems to think like.
But, I don't see it happening when I'm using Telegram, or when observing Valve's behavior.
Enshittification
*** Longlisted for the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year 2025 ***Misogyny, conspiratorialism, surveillance, manipulation, fraud, and AI slop are drowning the internet.Verso
WYR Eat the same mediocre meal or a random meal every day?
You have a chef prepare the meal for you. The mediocre meal is just like a very okay 5/10 whatever of your pick, but you have to eat the same thing every day.
For the random meals you must consume the 500 calorie meal in full each timenyou choose to have a meal. No skipping once a meal is there.
Inedible or rotten stuff is not included. Just food that might be alien to you. Like it could be balut one day and a schnitzel the next. Maybe haggis.
Nothing completely unreasonable.
Allergies will be compensated for ig. Choice based dietary preferences will not. If you're vegan you're fucked.
Nutrient needs will be met in both cases. No health issues will arise due to an unbalanced diet.
adhocfungus likes this.
Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come
If you're a regular internet user the Personal Data Storage paradigm won't move your data from the cloud to your personal computer. Most people will still rely on an institutional cloud service, but instead of data-banking with a shareholder-controlled corporation people’s data can be entrusted to the equivalent of member-owned credit unions for data storage.
Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come
Data Ownership as a conversation changes when data resides primarily with people-governed institutions rather than corporations.Erlend Sogge Heggen (Muni Blog)
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Got a friend or family member willing to let you drop a miniPC at their place?
You could also go the offline route - buy two identical external drive setups, plug one into your machine and make regular backups to it, drop the other one in a drawer in your office at work. Then once a month or so swap them to keep the off-site one fresh.
Also there’s really nothing wrong with cloud storage as long as you encrypt before uploading so they never have access to your data.
Personally I do both. The off-site offline drive is for full backups of everything because space is cheap, while cloud storage is use for more of a “delta” style backup, just the stuff the changes frequently, because of the price. If the worst were to happen, I’d use the offsite drive to get the bulk infrastructure back up and running, and then the latest cloud copy for any recently added/modified files.
file:// with a local path attached to access it. I also seriously doubt that klicking "Save as..." really is some secret and complex ritual known only to immortals and the priest caste, nowadays. (I might be wrong here. I just do not have anything to do with mortals or godfood in my daily life.)
Police Used Flock Cameras To Track One Driver Over 500 Times. Now They're Being Sued - Jalopnik
Police Used Flock Cameras To Track One Driver Over 500 Times. Now They're Being Sued
The cameras that catch drivers who speed or ignore red lights don't just snap you when you're breaking the law. They can shoot you hundreds of times a month.Paul Stadden (Jalopnik)
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Because Trump supporters will say, "I don't do anything wrong so it doesn't matter, it'll only catch libruls"
And Trump administration people will say, "Well they won't use it on me ever and we can use it to inflict maximum suffering on our enemies"
There is good traction on the federal lawsuit in Norfolk. Your absolutely right this is a bipartisan issue. It will set huge precident if IJ wins the case. At the very least, LEO needs warrants to use the system. Right now it's the wild west.
IJ posts updates of the case here. They have already tried to derail the lawsuit multiple times but they have been able to push through all the appeals thus far so it can actual go to a jury trial.
several reasons:
they both think they're in control of it... but mostly because the people funding most of them (same people) are telling them not to.. often in the form of police unions and relevant organizations
any party large enough to win anything is going to be mostly co-opted... you gotta vote for individuals... not parties.
The city I work in installed Flock cameras. City Council was clear they were only to be used to flag license plates for active felony warrants, silver alerts, and Amber alerts.
In less than 48 hours they were using them to give out tickets and track people who had turned in Open Records requests regarding the police department.
A. C. R. A. B.
All Crabs Really Are Brilliant
this is the first time I've seen someone use that term
I like it. keep it up
track people who had turned in Open Records requests regarding the police department.
I am not surprised at all. Fucking fascist bastards.
Damn there are a couple in my tiny rural town, they appear to be high up though.
Anyone have tips or ideas about how to disable or destroy them?
Neat map that compiles how many weekly contributions are made around the US to the deflock map
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The facial recognition would be done by whoever they send footage to.
Wouldn't be shocked about the hardware addresses though.
I'm so glad this is slowly getting more solid traction. For more viewing and reading pleasures on the topic,
Videos:
Breaks down the technology and deployment of the systems. Builds his own and shows strategies to beat the analysis of your data.
Citizens address Austin Mayor on AI Surveillence cameras; AS EXPECTED on September 25th part 1
Louis Rossmann attempted to address the surveillance systems in his local town, couple of other videos on his channel showing the hurdles and bureaucracy that's making it harder to address these situations.
- The Majority Report w/ Sam Seder
Another video detailing ALRP's (automatic license plate readers/flock safety systems) and their uses in local and interstate areas
EFF Members' Speakeasy: Police Surveillance and ALPR - The Electronic Frontier Foundation
Articles:
Data Driven: What Is ALPR? - The Electronic Frontier Foundation
Lots of articles listed in here, one of the major groups trying to spread information on these programs.
Data Driven: What Is ALPR?
This text was adapted from EFF's Street-Level Surveillance project. For a deeper explanation, please visit this page.Electronic Frontier Foundation
Domenica In, Corinne Cléry e Kekko dei Modà tra gli ospiti. Nel talk su Ballando arrivano Rosa Chemical e Fialdini: anticipazioni del 5 ottobre 2025
Mara Venier torna domenica 5 ottobre 2025, alle 14.00 su Rai 1, con il terzo appuntamento stagionale di Domenica In. In scaletta interviste, musica, talk di attualità e un focus sul mondo di Ballando con le Stelle.
OSPITI E ANTICIPAZIONI: Domenica In, Corinne Cléry e Kekko dei Modà tra gli ospiti. Nel talk su Ballando arrivano Rosa Chemical e Fialdini: anticipazioni del 5 ottobre 2025
Domenica In, 5 ottobre 2025: ospiti e anticipazioni
Domenica In, anticipazioni del 5 ottobre su Rai 1: Corinne Cléry, Kekko dei Mod, Rosa Chemical e Francesca Fialdini. C’è anche Aldo Cazzullo.Redazione (Atom Heart Magazine)
La Verità Scomoda: Dalla Scienza alla Sanità, Tutti Ci Vogliono Malati?
Il punto non è solo l'immunità dei produttori di vaccini o le ombre su figure come Anthony Fauci; il dramma è che ogni livello del sistema guadagna se restiamo malati. Le carriere degli scienziati sono legate alle aziende, le riviste sono diventate "contenitori di propaganda" e i bonus dei medici dipendono dai profitti.
Non è forse questa la vera pandemia? Quella di un sistema finanziario che, in nome del profitto, mette a rischio la nostra salute? Dobbiamo esercitare il nostro obbligo di cittadinanza: fare le nostre ricerche e resistere al pensiero unico imposto.
La Scienza, la Democrazia e gli Incentivi Perversi: Le Riflessioni di Kennedy JR che Fanno Tremare il Sistema
Oggi voglio parlarvi di un'intervista che mi ha profondamente colpito, quella a Robert F. Kennedy JR. È una voce che che non ha paura ...Giuliano (Blogger)
How the US got left behind in the global electric car race
How the US got left behind in the global electric car race
Despite a recent surge in demand, the US is a laggard in EV sales compared to much of the rest of the world.Natalie Sherman (BBC News)
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[RESOLVED] GDM Issues (Fedora 42)
I've recently been unable to use my computer running Fedora 42 with gnome. It boots up, and GDM starts running, however it shows a flat grey screen with no login option. I can pull up a tty and login as normal (although using gnome-session to start a GUI session from there doesn't work). I have tried to use systemctl to restart GDM from the tty, but that l brings me back to square one.
What can I do from here to resolve this issue?
GPU: Radeon 7800xt, Open Source Drivers
Window System: Wayland.
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Last time I had a similar-ish issue it was some graphic card drivers failing. Ones I didn't even need nor could use but somehow ended installed. Check the log from the boot sequance. Generally its Linux - you'll find answers in some log.
Or just purge and reinstall GDM. (your expiriance may vary)
Also, when you suggest purging and reinstalling gdm, what issues are you saying I might run into?
Resolved, it was an issue caused by a faulty display port cable. Different issues from this cable had happened recently, I just initially assumed it was a software issue due to the fact that only GDM was affected.
Talk about choosing "a community", not "a server"
It stroke me that saying things like "First, you have to choose a comunity to join the fediverse" might be a better way to ease onboarding nwecommers than "First, you have to choose a server".
Although the latter might be technically more accurate, the former is what people might
* understand better;
* ends up being what they're really doing;
* frighten them less;
* reinforce the "community" contribution aspect;
* lead them to better understand the federated aspect as they realize that communities are not isolated and can talk to eachother.
What do you think?
"Let me know in the comments bellow..." - just kidding!
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An immediate problem is that "community" is a term in the threadiverse, where !fediverse@lemmy.ml is a community. It also might make it sound like an exclusive space with a specific topic, whereas in reality when you join a server you can still interact with the wider network.
IMO this is a concept that can't be expressed in one word when someone is unfamiliar with the concept. We put together this guide a while back to try and explain it: fedecan.ca/en/guide/get-starte…
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We could call it a home, shortened from home server. I didn't pick a server over another. I keep using other server's communities. What I did was that I called one server my home on the fediverse while you called lemmy.ca your home.
It's not perfect but it would solve the term conflict.
I feel like that's getting there, though 'home' doesn't sit right with me somehow; too many other connotations (after all it's still somebody else's server, unless you're self-hosting it, you're still using it on their terms so it's not a 'home' in a typical sense).
Maybe 'gateway' or something like that?
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I personally don't like the idea if calling servers communities. Mainly because they are not.
Maybe call it a home and that you can access other communities from your home.
That said it is not clear enough that not all communities in a "home" can be accessed from all homes. Or is it me that hasn't understood it well? I was part of a local national server where only a few if their communities were federated
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You are right. We get lost in the technicalities and forget how difficult it is for non technical users to understand the technology.
Speaking about community and the "Benefits" would be better for everyone.
A "community" is identified by a romaine name. And communities still speak to other compatible communities.
At work, seeing how the marketing team keeps changing wordings to fond the one with better conversion rate, I find what we do here is just bare bones.
That's what I was thinking about.
I have to acknowledge the point @otter@lemmy.ca makes about there being a collision with the term "community" in the threadiverse perspective. Maybe "home" or even "tribe" or "people" would be a better fit. But I still do think that "community" encompasses the feeling best, and that collision will be promptly resolved once the user understands what communities really are on that narrower scope.
That's maybe a compromise we will (have to | want to) make.
Once again - that's my feeling, but I could be wrong.
Even setting aside the fact that the term community if already in use in the context of Lemmy or the fediverse in general: I really don't agree that you're choosing a community. For the vast majority of things it makes no difference what instance you're on. That's the whole point. While I made a conscious choice for my instance, the selection was almost completely irrelevant for 99.9% of my interactions.
You probably shouldn't pick one whose ideology goes completely against yours, and you probably shouldn't pick one that's heavily defederated (for whatever reason), but that's about it.
They being said, if they have "special interests" and are coming here to mostly talk abouta specific topic, choosing a fitting instance is at least a good idea and may have more impact.
You might be right about being able to do almost anything whatever the instance you choose, as long as you already figured it all out, but having an account at a lemmy server, and two at two different mastodon servers, I do have the feeling that the presence on any of them is a different experience.
Don't forget that what most people's experience on the fediverse comes probably via mastodon and that they start by getting most of their content via home and local feeds. Federated comes third, i guess.
I am still struggling to find content on some of my preferred topics...
i read the guide posted fedecan.ca/en/guide/get-starte…
and finally figured out what the fediverse is...
i always thought it was like another social media platform
Re: Talk about choosing "a community", not "a server"
Emphasizing moderation differences and such are things best left to discover after the user successfully lands onto the fediverse.
At the start they shouldn't even have to think about what instance they want to land on. We're approaching it with the mindset that they "want to join Lemmy/Piefed" — that's not right!
They should want to join a specific community, and the server just happens to be whatever they find first.
Let's say I like Star Trek. I shouldn't have to be redirected to startrek.website. I should be able to see the community, think "cool I want to participate", and sign up, even if where I landed happens to be feddit, db0, or a random NodeBB instance.
That's another issue I have: Maybe that could be resolved by implementing something similar to (or exactly) openid.
I feel the software we choose might limits us on the kind of thing we're interested in, that's why I have to have a lemmy account - I wouldn't have a discussion like this one on mastodon, for example - and a mastodon account. Maybe a pixelfed account, a peertube account... what a mess! But that's a subject for another discussion (this discussion was "Permanently Deleted"?!).
Went ahead and watched it. It's great. Thanks.
It's a good analogy as well. Others have suggested "home" - it's a good alternative.
Except you don't have to interact with other users on your server, so why label them as "communities". Communities on Lemmy or subreddits are already more deserving of the term "community" because that's where you actually go to interact with other people.
Edit: Typo
Except you have to interact with other users on your server
Says who? I don't know the server of anyone I'm interacting with. I think "gateway" would be a better choice, but that isn't any less confusing.
FEDiverse lol
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Napoli, al via il bando per l’EcoVillaggio dell’Accoglienza: sei beni confiscati alla camorra tornano alla città
Napoli, al via il bando per l’EcoVillaggio dell’Accoglienza: sei beni confiscati alla camorra tornano alla città
I beni confiscati: quattro case di semi autonomia, un centro di accoglienza con HUB dei Servizi e delle Culture, un Giardino Solidale; Il C...Redazione Caserta24ore (Blogger)
think about the children
being bourgueois democrazycomplaining falsely about those evul commies gathering all your data
proceed to gather your data to get big profit from ads
have an important data breach
F-Droid and Google's Developer Registration Decree
Recently Google decided that in the future for an app to be installable on an Android device, the developer of this app needs to be ID'd and registered at Google. They claim this is in order to "to better protect users". However, I think, this is a move to get more control over the Android ecosystem, and the data they can collect with it. If anyone who wants to develop an app for Android devices has to be registered with Google, this puts all the power of who to allow distributing an app to Google.
Furthermore F-Droid shows, that safe app stores can exist without registration, neither of users nor of developers. There is zero malware or spyware on the F-Droid store. What there is on F-Droid is thousands of beautiful, useful and, most importantly, safe apps. And this entire ecosystem is at risk, because Google wants to gain more control over its users and over the Android operating system.
F-Droid and Google's Developer Registration Decree | F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository
For the past 15 years, F-Droidhas provided a safe and secure haven for Android users around the world tofind and install free and open source apps. When cont...f-droid.org
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Way past its prime: how did Amazon get so rubbish?
Way past its prime: how did Amazon get so rubbish?
Sick of scrolling through junk results, AI-generated ads and links to lookalike products? The author and activist behind the term ‘enshittification’ explains what’s gone wrong with the internet – and what we can do about itCory Doctorow (The Guardian)
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Discord customer service data breach leaks user info and scanned photo IDs
Discord customer service data breach leaks user info and scanned photo IDs
One of Discord’s third-party customer service providers was compromised by an “unauthorized party” that may have accessed things like names, usernames, and emails.Jay Peters (The Verge)
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Fucked my computer trying to upgrade processor, please help me unfuck it
Installed a Ryzen 7 5700G processor to a Gigabyte GA-AB350M-HD3 motherboard. Plugged computer back in, hit power button. Computer powered on but no video output. Double-checked cables, then started Googling. Apparently this is commonly a result of an out-of-date BIOS. Got the latest BIOS update on a flash drive with my roommate's assistance, then went to put the old processor (a Ryzen 5 1500X) back in so that I could run the system BIOS and flash the update, at which point I learned that I accidentally bent several of the pins when removing it. Tried to seat the processor out of a sense of wishful thinking, and sure enough, no number of attempts would get the computer to turn on with it inside.
So, in short: I have a new processor my motherboard doesn't recognize, an old processor it does recognize but is now broken, and a BIOS update that would presumably let it recognize the new processor but that I can't install without a working processor. I've read that some Gigabyte motherboards support loading BIOS updates from a flash drive without a processor, but as far as I can tell, the GA-AB350M-HD3 isn't one of them. Not sure what I'm supposed to do here. I could order another Ryzen 5 1500X, but 1) that costs money and 2) I'd have to wait for it to arrive.
Trump administration moves to relax rules on climate super pollutants
Trump administration moves to relax rules on climate super pollutants
The rule required some places to reduce greenhouse gases used in cooling equipment. Read more at straitstimes.com.ST
The Trump administration, everyone in it and everyone that supports it are never going to be a net positive or, arguably, ever do anything positive for anyone, anywhere, ever. They are self-proclaimed terrorists, racists, misogynists, pro-war, anti-life, pro-suffering, pro-pedophile.
This is where we are now and we either need to fight it or accept it. I would hope the former.
The instance chooser is filling up nicely
It took a few days for instances to be upgraded and admins to fill in their profiles but it's looking much healthier now!
piefed.social/auth/instance_ch…
Which server do you want to join?
[Join us on chat.piefed.social!](https://piefed.social/post/970751)piefed.social
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Sunrise Movement, Founded to Fight Climate Change, Pivots to Fighting Trump | As Trump targets his critics on the left, Sunrise says it needs to battle authoritarianism to protect the climate.
Sunrise Movement, Founded to Fight Climate Change, Pivots to Fighting Trump
While Trump targets his critics on the left, Sunrise has decided that it can’t fight climate change without fighting authoritarianism.Matt Sledge (The Intercept)
The prosecution’s case against dozens of Stop Cop City protesters collapsed last month when a judge dismissed most of the charges against them
Well that's great news
Populist billionaire Andrej Babiš wins Czech parliamentary election
Populist billionaire Andrej Babiš wins Czech parliamentary election
With Babiš’s victory the Czech Republic looks set to join Hungary and Slovakia in refusing support for UkraineGuardian staff reporter (The Guardian)
Rachel Corrie, The American Activist Who Was Crushed By An Israeli Bulldozer While Protesting In Gaza
On March 16, 2003, 23-year-old Rachel Corrie and several others were protesting against the demolition of Palestinian homes in the Gaza Strip city of Rafah. The Israeli government claimed that militants were using the structures to fire on soldiers, but Corrie and her fellow members of the International Solidarity Movement wanted to protect the families who lived in Rafah. When a bulldozer started to approach the home of a family Corrie was staying with, she stepped in front of the machine and began shouting through a bullhorn so it would stop — but the driver continued forward, crushing Corrie to death.
The operators claimed they didn't see Corrie because she was concealed behind a pile of debris. However, others there said Corrie was wearing a neon orange jacket and was clearly visible. One man later recalled, "Her head and upper torso were above the bulldozer's blade, and the bulldozer operator and co-operator could clearly see her. Despite this, the operator continued forward, which caused her to fall back, and out of view of the driver… she tried to scoot back, but she was quickly pulled underneath the bulldozer." Israeli officials ultimately ruled Corrie's death an accident.
Go inside the untimely killing of an American peace activist by Israel: allthatsinteresting.com/rachel…
How American Activist Rachel Corrie Died While Protesting In Gaza
Rachel Corrie was killed on March 16, 2003, by an Israeli bulldozer while protesting the demolition of homes in the Gaza Strip city of Rafah.Kaleena Fraga (All That's Interesting)
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US war secretary tells military to commit war crimes, as Trump threatens 'enemy within' USA
- YouTube
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.www.youtube.com
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