Nice! Thanks for sharing this analysis.

I thought our primary way of producing new Linux users was sexual reproduction and then indoctrination from birth…

Interesting. I would have guessed that Mint gave ChromeOS a run for it’s money, by now.

Yes. By the porn stats, Linux already crushes ChromeOs. Let’s not take any advice from it.

I’m not sure Grandma and Grandpa would want a steam machine as a replacement for their aging Windows 7 home computer.

Fair. But for my gram, it would have been a slam dunk day one buy. She loved her playstation and only tolerated her PC. She would have called a Steam Machine “my game console that can check email” and would have adored it.

Good info, thanks!

I route my email through my domain names, and so I can reroute emails at the DNS level, but I can see this being important to some folks.

Tuta deletes free accounts that have not been logged into for 6 months.

This, and I heard that some legitimate newly registered free accounts have been wiped a couple days later by anti-bot automation. So I guess one would want to age their Tuta account (or you know, just pay for it) before they trust it with too much.

I’ve had a free Tuta account for some time without any issues.

I see Proton and Tuta recommended here, often.

I also see complaints about both (Proton’s politics and Tuta’s tendency to lock and clean free accounts).

Both seem better than Google, who seem to be tightening their grip on those unable to walk away.

I find that con artists don’t like to communicate slowly. It makes them uncomfortable.

I grew to love Linux because I was hating Windows, I don’t hate Windows because I love Linux. And I don’t want to hate Windows, I wish they were slowly becoming anti-user, but they keep adding (forcing) features that are so unfriendly to the user.

Yes. If Windows was still like Windows XP, I don’t know if I would have ever switched. It used to be fun, not soul sucking.

There’s lots of other reasons I’m glad I switched, of course.

I find the windows update and Linux graphical updater processes identical. They only diverge at the end when the Windows one fails with a mysterious error message and offers to retry or open a troubleshooter that won’t work.

Windows arguably is, indeed, two or three different systems stapled together. There’s the C code kernal bits, the .Net runtime higher level bits, and the Electron “this didn’t need to be fast anyway and we only knew how to write JavaScript” bits.

until it came time to install new software.

That is the big giveaway. I used the term “It’s free” too many times when setting up software for them. “I used to have to pay for all of that.”

I always hard code IPv4 addresses. Load balancing and DNS resolution are an admission of weakness.

(This is sarcasm. WTF Steam?)

Linux Mint is so nice.

I would turn off “Secure Boot” in BIOS before doing the upgrade.

It officially works, but can throw in unnecessary challenges - and Mom probably isn’t traveling with national secrets next week anyway.

Pen and paper is great for whenever I can’t get my hands on a chisel and rock wall.

This is the way.

Be sure to take a moment to reboot into desktop, and search the built in Linux app store for free games. There’s some absolute gems.

Edit: And after installing, right click the game on the desktop or menu, and choose “Add To Steam”, to make it show up in the usual Steam interface.

Immutable distros can usually be set to mutable with the correct privileged command.

It’s essentially security by obscurity. But I disagree with “no benefit”. An infection miss through dumb luck is still a miss, after all.

I’m with you.

Thankfully, corporate bullahit isn’t the only way to create a discovery algorithm.

I expect that we will have a diverse set of discovery algorithms available to opt into here, in a few years.