Microsoft products are always so hit or miss. I find Outlook to be a lot better than Gmail, but at the same time it lacks in so many places.

I’m not sure exactly. But I personally don’t like GNU because I think they have been embedded in a form of wishful thinking for far too long. Expecting that developers and manufacturers willingly relinquish their rights to their copyright for the benefit of others, regardless if they want to or not. And expecting that end users only seek out those kinds of systems as well. In total, providing everyone with free reign with minimal regard to consequences. And pushing away those that simply want to try and make the things only a little better.

For an organization primarily devoted to ensuring that software remains open, accessible, and modifiable, they sure do seem to like to bend over backwards. Looking directly at GrapheneOS, my personal thought would be the fact the goals of GNU tend to conflict with the goals of security (the FSF has actively spoken against the concept of Tivoization, or systems that use free software but are locked down by hardware restrictions)

They’re also horribly out of touch with the general public. And in some cases, simply too radical to be taken seriously. To name a few examples:

• They have very little understanding of the actual public or anyone else outside of the tech field. Their Gift Guide is an absolute joke, suggesting adapters and old ThinkPads as gifts. With their most appetizing gift (a Vikings D8 Desktop computer) is literally mentioned as being out of stock. Suggesting you instead give, once again, a ThinkPad with Free software. Their only reasons for not using an actively manufactured and relatively modern (as in 3 generations ago) computer that are because of “restrictions to users freedoms” and “spyware” without very much definition aside from a few links (they’ve got much more to say about the computer than they what they believe in).

• Their “preferred terminology”, lists a bunch of jargon they don’t like and their alternatives, making a lot of automatic presumptions of guilt. My personal favorite is “Internet of Stings”. As if projects like Home Assistant aren’t trying to improve the scene (though they’re presumably ignored because they’re also willing to connect with proprietary services)

TL;DR the GNU foundation is made up of a bunch of nerds who care more about messing with their computers than actually trying to do important things with them.

The polls are completely idiotic but I personally find info cards to be quite helpful.

Mainly Firefox. It has quite a good extensions engine, but the overall UX just still isn’t there compared to other browsers. I really don’t care about all the ethical or moral reasons people try to come up with for using it, I just want a browser that has a lot of good functionality in comparison with Edge or Vivaldi.

And while I am aware of some of the forks like Floorp and Librewolf, I find the latter to be too hardened, and the former to be behind compared to upstream.

My emails seemed to go through pretty well. It’s been blocked by Discord and steam. But other than that, emails seem to go through pretty well.

Based on what the article says:

Many people now use ChatGPT like they might use Google: to ask important questions, sort through issues, and so on. Often, sensitive personal data could be shared in those conversations.

I feel like another part of it too is just that Linux users also just have higher expectations in areas around privacy, security, and flexibility, and lower expectations of elements like UX and Minimum Viable Product, the latter especially being that they don’t even view the software as a “product”.

A lot of AI features are powered by data collection in some way. And given that most Linux users don’t even like small amounts of telemetry being sent without their explicit permission, I couldn’t imagine how libre AI models could be built, especially on a shoestring budget, to produce something that would be capable of producing acceptable results. All without avoiding the heat that current AI companies are facing with plagiarism accusations and copyright infringement.

I’m not really saying it can’t happen, But it would require a larger organization like Mozilla, who’s actively working on building open source AI that could then be later incorporated by someone else (similar to the soon to be dead Mozilla location services being integrated through daemons used by desktop environments). Or, by a much more random guess, by a corporation with a profit incentive to incorporate Linux like Valve and the Steam Deck with its inclusion of the plasma Desktop via an Arch fork. And in the long run, the FOSS community building a larger developer base that actually could, And one day upstream it all once it’s in a good enough format.

I imagine it might happen one day. But at present, I don’t really think that most computers are at a point where they can utilize it without the use of proprietary cloud technologies that aren’t considered to be ethical nor financially sustainable. And even if people’s computers could fully handle things themselves, there would still need to be a group of developers with enough knowledge to actually implement it.

Consumer AI has always been pretty limited in most Linux desktops. Heck, I’m still waiting for a Desktop Environment to one day have a nice implementation of Speech-to-text like Windows and macOS.

That. Is the goofiest system I have ever seen

I’ve personally moved to Bing from Google. Partly because it’s annoyingly the only way to do web searches from the start menu, But also because it’s much more flexible with AI compared to Google’s new AI Overviews (The engines vice president actually tweeted about being able to disable Copilot in response to Google’s new AI).

I personally like how Bing presents information better, but it still has quite a few problems. Especially around relevancy, and it’s image search isn’t the best if you’re looking for anything that isn’t a photograph.

Yay the torment Nexus is now faster

deleted by creator

Why YOU should write a Wayland compositor

I don’t really know how to do that

I personally think you should just allow cookies indefinitely. There are honestly so many bigger risks from phishing and other forms of social engineering that as long as your family isn’t leaving their computer unlocked in a public place, I wouldn’t say there’s really too much of a risk in leaving cookies enabled.

I apologize that this doesn’t exactly answer your question, but I’d like to suggest an alternative. I’d like to also ask, is your family using a password manager by any chance? And if so, are they making use of passkeys on supported websites. Many modern websites, including Google and Facebook, support them. And they require virtually no interaction aside from unlocking the password manager. It’s still a form of two-factor authentication, but it’s far more convenient than anything out there.

I also don’t really think you should try to force Linux on people who aren’t particularly comfortable or familiar using it.

I worry they’ll get frustrated to the point that they’ll go out and splurge on new macbook air when they already have a perfectly functional laptop with functional OS.

If you’re worried that they’re going to go and do that, then Linux might not serve their needs. Linux might be a fully functional desktop system, but it’s also one that isn’t an out of the box experience either. There’s certainly been a lot of improvements, But I don’t think that any Linux Desktop Environment is ever going to reach the same level of intuitiveness as something like Windows or macOS. I would certainly love to see it that way. But I think it’s just an issue of the people who actually use it.

I understand looking out for family and ensuring they don’t spend excess amounts of money. But you also shouldn’t take it upon yourself to try and dictate how your family uses the computer either. Linux wasn’t built as a commercially supported desktop operating system with years of full-time researchers studying topics surrounding human computer interaction with a multi-million dollar budget. It was built to be a free as in freedom alternative to the mainstream systems that are available (I personally call it “The problem solving platform” for this reason) by a loose knit group of volunteers who love computers and know a lot about them. Most people who use a computer use them to do work, and not really for promoting a personal agenda.

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t try to get your family members to use Linux, I’m just saying that you shouldn’t force them. You should put their best interests first that can help them.

I’m sorry to go on such a long rant about this. I just see a lot of people who I believe to vastly overestimate the willingness of others in certain places. And the whole part of “worrying about someone spending their own money” just kind of struck a red flag to me.

Aside from the fact that it’s owned by alphabet, what’s so bad about .xyz?

I don’t hate copilot but I seldom use it enough to justify having a taskbar button for it

Stick to the walled garden. There are monsters out there.

Okay, have fun inside!

I hope Mastodon will incorporate this

Almost all of those are developed part time as hobby or side projects. They aren’t built on the same scale as other commercial browsers, and a few of them aren’t even trying to.

Also, these are all browsers that are deliberately privacy focused, and are made towards a different audience than Vivaldi. Not to mention that advertising isn’t always inherently privacy invasive. It’s just intrusive.

Their ads are still far less invasive than Edge or Firefox (and especially the latter). As far as I know the default links are all just typical paid defaults. And yeah, it’s irritating that the ad blocker has those defaults and that they won’t open source more of their stuff. But I still think it’s far better than what other browsers have going currently