After quite a bit of agonizing, I eventually landed on openSUSE Tumbleweed. I chose a rolling release distro because on my desktop I want to be up-to-date. Having used Gentoo a long time ago, I didn’t want a distro that takes effort to install and set up. openSUSE is somewhat popular with an active community and decent documentation in case I run in to issues. I also considered the fact it’s based in Germany, because EU has at least some decent privacy laws. I was put off by the fact its backed by SUSE, but that’s a two-edged sword.

Right now I’m content with Tumbleweed, but I’m keeping an eye on OpenMandriva Lx if I feel like switching.

openSUSE Tumbleweed has served me well for some time now. Maybe give it a look-see?

I like Posteo. Affordable (1€/month) and with focus on privacy and FOSS.

Looks great! Where can I download this theme?

[Richard Stallman] usually does not browse the web directly from his personal computer. Instead, he uses GNU Womb’s grab-url-from-mail utility, an email-based proxy which downloads the webpage content and then emails it to the user.

If you’re not doing this you’re not properly paranoid.

Aw yeah, I also love browsing the internet on meth!

I haven’t been able to solve CAPTHCAs in years.

Corporate backing is a two-edged sword, unfortunately.

I refuse to accept that there is nothing we can do about it.

I don’t think you quite understand just how stupendous the amount of data Google processes from YouTube alone is. There is basically no way for hobbyists to provide an equivalent service. Very few companies have those kinds of resources. If you want, you can of course try running a PeerTube instance, but you rather quickly run in to problems with scaling.

I find it almost miraculous YouTube exists to begin with. It is no accident Google has very few competitors on that front, and I don’t think YouTube is even profitable for them. Without Google’s deep pockets and interest in monopolizing the market, YouTube would have withered a long time ago.

Trust me, I want a solution too. But 500 hours of content are uploaded to YouTube every minute. All of that is processed, re-encoded, and saved with multiple bitrates. You can’t compete with that. YouTube might eventually keel over from Enshittification and its own impossibility, but replacing it with anything meaningful will be a challenge.

I had Windows 8.1 but as the end of its maintenance was approaching I saw the writing on the wall with Windows 10 and especially 11 and I wanted no part of that. When 8.1 was put to pasture I returned to Linux and I have been content ever since. Seeing where Microsoft is taking Windows I’m more and more convinced that Stallman Was Right. I control my software, not the other way around.

!stallmanwasright@lemmy.ml

After Thunderbird’s UI overhaul I jumped around a bit and landed on Claws Mail. It’s fairly old fashioned, but I personally prefer that and find it clear and logical. It’s a good client.

It’s ok, I prefer my colon without Open Sores.

If you want Debian with more frequent updates, consider going Debian sid. Base Debian is also fine, maybe with Flatpaks for more up-to-date applications where needed.

You can install it on any machine. It’s just a terminal IRC client. I run it on a small home server with screen so that it’s always on.

I run irssi on a Raspberry Pi. It has everything I need.

They were, but as I understand they are once again independent. I’d still rather stick with Librewolf, but I’m glad there are options.

Seriously.

Well yeah, the recent xz vulnerability was not present in the source code at all. Any amount of code reading would not have caught that one.

Always check the package list when updating. Tumbleweed for some reason occasionally wants to install Patterns even if they were not included to begin with. I’ve taken to updating with the command:

sudo zypper dup --no-recommends

to avoid installing packages/patterns I’m trying to avoid. You could probably also mask some packages so they are never installed, but I haven’t looked in to that.

Hope that helps.

Disappoint is a sober word here. I am actually pissed at the casual arrogance of Ubuntu and its parent company Canonical.

I’m actually baffled that this would come as a surprise to people. Canonical has been like this for a long time and you’d have to have blinders on to not see it. They are hell-bent on doing things their way and ignoring the wider Linux community and even their users. That is, of course, their prerogative and to some degree I even welcome their attempts at differentiating their distro from others. As a user though you should be aware of their history and the apparent direction they’re heading.

I just wish they’d stop stalling and went all-in on snaps already, since that’s pretty obviously where they’re headed.