Until we have affordable fully open phone hardware specifications, the current phone hardware oligopolies will continue to gate keep with brittle proprietary drivers to ensure that people stay inside their walled surveillance garden.

Well, my current distro reading this, and current socks worn happen to be an exact match.

So confirmed, I guess.

Slackware

It’ll be interesting to see how the Steam Machine in January affects this.

It might not be a huge immediate boost. I have friends who want to buy a Steam Machine on day one - but they already use a SteamDeck as their primary gaming rig.

I expect the Steam Machine to catch on the same way the SteamDeck seems to have - word of mouth.

I know I bought my SteamDeck after a friend demoed theirs to me, and it kind of sold itself.

“I don’t have time to learn it.”

Although it’s weird now, because we usually have this conversation while they wait for Windows to crash, restart, search up a patch, apply it, and reboot.

It’s awkward. But I still kind of get it. Who has time to try something new when the current thing barely works.

I screw up my own system way more often than that lol

Same! But the ones I cause don’t count.

It does feel like the major outages are growing closer together.

I want to blame plugging AI where it doesn’t belong, but I suppose that putting everything into the same couple of server closets could be the primary root cause.

but I guess the actual cause of the outage was a config file generated in response exceeded the max size

So it was automation, but that automation might have been stupid the normal computer way, rather than stupid in the new LLM enhanced computer way.

I’m sure it was, and I’m sure they will not admit it.

So I’ll throw this into the “conspiracy theory, but probably true” pile; and I’ll try to remember to check snopes.com in 20 years to see if I was somehow wrong.

“Did Vibe coding really routinely break half the Internet is the 2020s?” …assuming the Internet and I are still both around by then…

Edit: I’m already wrong. It sounds like it was computers being stupid is old tried and true ways; not computers being stupid in new trendy ways.

It would be funny if it was because of some AI coding

It is. Sometimes the big secret turns out to just be what we all thought was happening.

Dang. I had to look it up, but CrowdStike taking down a huge percentage of Windows PCs was so last year, I guess.

How did they squander being the name in autonomous vacuum devices…?

Letting a picture of a customer using the bathroom leak onto Facebook cannot have helped.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/12/19/1065306/roomba-irobot-robot-vacuums-artificial-intelligence-training-data-privacy/

I think that there is a somewhat decent chance that there will be an ARM Steam Deck Mini at some point.

Damn. I hope so. I play many indie retro style games, and my favorites are all on my Steam account. I would get so much use out of a truly pocket device with good retro controls and my Steam account signed in.

Edit: Alternately, somebody needs to release a dedicated pocket device with “Donut Dodo” pre-installed, and we can call it good enough for an few months.

Yes. So say we all.

I’ve seen more people discuss Hannah Montana Linux than proposing a single distro…

<a href=“https://imgflip.com/i/ac7k8y”><img src=“https://i.imgflip.com/ac7k8y.jpg” title=“made at imgflip.com”/></a><div><a href=“https://imgflip.com/memegenerator”>from Imgflip Meme Generator</a></div>

So… Does anyone know how likely this is too get/run beat saber? That’s most of what my VR having friends seem to really use VR for.

I have absolutely no idea why Ubuntu is seemingly hated by everyone on lemmy.

It’s Snaps.

I mentioned somewhere else that my reason for using Linux is that, when I have a problem, no one designed that problem to extract money from me.

Snaps feel designed to extract money.

The funny part is, I’ve bought Ubuntu CDs just to support Canonical. I like giving them money.

But Snaps feel like more of the kind of bullshit that I left Windows over, to me.

Snaps redirect some of my software requests from fully free community packages into a partially paid app store. They’re not (yet) ripping me off, they just appear to be getting ready to rip me off.

Seems to work fine, Installation was easy.

Yes. Ubuntu is a fine place to start. It was the first Linux distro that really worked for me.

Eventually, down the line, Snap may cause you some headaches, so we generally recommend Mint, which is effectively Ubuntu without Snap.

The anger is just that Canonical keeps claiming to be an ally while appearing to prepare to rip people off by selling other people’s work that they gave away for free, for a fee.

For context, many companies that have joined FOSS community have gone in this direction. People can be trustworthy. Corporations cannot, because they get sold or their CEO changes.

Is there a good progression for my “next distro after Ubuntu?”.

Yes. Linux Mint has got your back.

This thread is largely just basic computer skills advice that is necessary on Windows and Mac as well. (And that is great!)

So I’ll add the ones we skipped that have nothing to do with OS at all, but are the usual issues for new PC users:

• Give a quick overview of what the mouse is for.
• Talk about or just disable the CAPSLOCK key.
• Show them where to find and how to read the “do I have Internet?” icon (usually in the lower right, regardless of OS)
• (If not a laptop) Teach them that the monitor and the PC have separate power buttons. Maybe leave a sign out that says “Push both buttons to turn on.”

And as others have said:

• Show them how to search for and add software using the software center, (rather than download from random websites)

That it is another OS. It’s not Windows.

I used to feel that mattered, but today websites will detect your OS when it matters and just pick the right page (i.e. downloading something).

Then I double click the download to install it.

I, a tech nerd, forget what distro I’m running and eventually have to look it up, when I’m doing something weird enough that it matters.

For day to day stuff, I’m not sure that knowing my OS comes up anymore.