This is just how I felt when I first switched, also to Mint. I’ve experienced it a couple other times too when switching from some proprietary application to the FOSS option.
I like to describe it as feeling the different priorities of the teams working on each project. When one is made by passionate users who care about it being good software for its purpose, and the other is designed by a committee to hit as many different corporate metrics as possible, it shows.
And let’s be honest, this is one of those many contexts where giving a shit and putting forth ANY amount of effort puts you ahead of 80% of the population anyway.
Sober is awesome, and I can actually have Roblox LAN parties with my son thanks to it.
Big wisdom in this.
Don’t assume it is “checking out” from society or taking the easy way out. The news will find you, don’t worry. Plus maintaining focus on your thing is something that can take significant effort.
I have noticed that the smaller I make my world, the happier I am. My free time goes into my family, friends, hobbies, and pets (which I guess is a big subset of the hobbies). I think a big part of the benefit is not just focusing on the people who can have the biggest effect on my life, but focusing on the people whose life I can improve the most with my involvement.
Our brains evolved to keep tabs on our clan or our village, not to monitor the events of the entire Earth in near real time, as if we’re going to do anything with that information. In fact, I think that “need” to be informed is often just an addiction manufactured by the need to drive engagement to validate 24/7 news as a business model.
I mean, that’s how most people seem to be about most things.
But when you put them in a context that makes people get tribal like choice of phone, game console, political party, or religion, it goes into turbo-dumb.
Yeah, I’m an old software engineer who uses linux on all of my actual computers, but I still have an old iphone for doing phone shit.
In the real world, most outspoken anti-apple people aren’t super techy and use some nightmare of corporate bloat phone they bought at the Verizon store.
Here on Lemmy though, you have a WAY higher proportion of people who are running devices they actually control.
You are correct!
But you know what isn’t as easy or basic as that? Convincing Product Managers and others on up the chain that you should be able to take some time to code and test to fix an issue they don’t give a fuck about because it doesn’t affect their metrics.
I’m not sure there is a go-to, which is good. There are some gaming-focused ones to be sure, but i’m using Mint which is super mainstream focused and user friendly (and based on ubuntu and debian) and I’ve had a great experience.
It’s funny you mention the office side of things in addition to gaming, because I have remarked about the same thing.
Using Librewolf(firefox) on Linux, all of the M365 applications work fine in the browser. Probably even better, since I can actually close them when I want to. I use Teams the most, which is obviously a very connected thing. But for a word processor, which seems like the most local thing ever, the web app lets me share in MS format and accept comments and all that.
I could absolutely see Microsoft’s execs planning out the most efficient way to grind every bit of value out of the windows brand on their path to subscription everything.
So, I don’t know off the top of my head, but I need to figure it out as well because I have plenty of game installers that I’ll want to use eventually. Lots in my GOG account, others from 20 years ago with sources lost to time, lol.
I would expect that Steam could be used as a launcher, but I know there is also an app called Lutris for managing games and compatibility layers and such.
I’m thinking about it, and yeah I may have not yet installed a windows version of a game outside of Steam at all. Honestly I have most often installed Linux native versions via steam.
Games work great in Linux!
And that’s not like “oh, about 3/4 of my favorite old games work without too much trouble.” It’s more like opening steam and “holy crap, half of my old favorites have native Linux versions and everything else just works using proton.”
Remember, the Steam Deck and the general shittiness of Microsoft has directed a lot of Valve’s resources towards gaming on Linux.
If you want to play some brand new AAA multiplayer thing with rootkit type anti cheat, then maybe you’d be stuck dual booting into windows.
I’d argue that those games could be abandoned, because there is SO much choice out there that I am certain I already own copies of dozens of games that I will never play. But if it’s a matter of playing what your friends are into, then yeah make the computer adapt to the human needs and not the other way around.
I think installing Linux exposes you to higher severity issues, like “now it won’t boot”. Once you get over that initial setup, it’s not much different than windows or apple.
I think that’s also the case any time you are the OS installer and administrator for your own system. I haven’t purchased an off the shelf PC for myself since the '90s, and in the years since then I’ve had many more basic “this shit won’t boot” issues with Windows, though granted I used Windows much more during that time.
And even if you ARE setting up your pen system from scratch, I would submit that the install process for Linux Mint is an order of magnitude simpler than Windows these days.
Being simple to use out of the box is NOT a bad thing on its own. We are simply used to seeing the proprietary profit-driven version, which is the path to enshittification. When something works great out of the box but you still own your machine and have access to any damn thing you want that’s hidden from view by default, that is just a good product.
I’ve been an engineer in electronics and software for over 20 years. I have a masters in software engineering. I currently work on C and C++ code every day for embedded systems, including one that’s embedded linux. The terminal is my comfort zone. Screens full of super-legible monospaced text please my eyes.
I run Linux Mint Cinnamon (btw) on every computer of mine, even my work machine, and I don’t care who knows it!
I recommend it to anybody of any skill level who will listen.
Oh I didn’t mean that it couldn’t be done. Just that it wouldn’t be. The people who control such things are actively moving our system in the opposite direction.
Making it so corporations cannot directly own some random valuable thing?
It’s a nice thing to think about, but it has 0% chance of happening in our current system.
Absolutely, plus since index funds are cap weighted, ordinary retirement fund investing folks are very much vulnerable to it.
If I pull up VTSAX (vanguard total stock market index fund) what I find is…
Sectors: Technology is 38% of the fund and I see 11 sectors listed.
Top 10equity holdings, in order from the top:
NVDA MSFT AAPL AMZN META AVGO (Broadcom) GOOGL TSLA GOOG BRK.B (Almost like its own index fund)
This is fine!!
Jellyfin doesn’t require client fuckery. Just URL, login, password.
It takes a little more work on the server side though, particularly to use https connections while self hosting.
And I’m not sure what robust subtitle support you’re looking for, but jellyfin will show them when I enable them afaik.
I can’t wait to hear more. Please just make a phone that I’ll want to buy. My phone is 4 years old and there’s just nothing I want to replace it with yet.
It has become less and less of an issue over time though. Not only have I gotten used to using my phone FAR less with positive health results, but I have set myself up to have access to my Linux PC during the “chill with the family on the couch” times in the evening when one might zone out on their phone for a bit. That’s what I’m using right now!
Ooh yeah let’s get a 6" 2025 take on the OG Motorola Droid with the slide out keyboard, to make it more linux-phone-y.
Well yeah their business isn’t to “serve users.” It’s to “farm consumers.”
That’s why I’m glad I do embedded systems in a niche industry. I’m not trying to drive engagement across the globe. I’m just making a device that serves the needs of a user who has other important work to worry about.