I was so happy about this! Been using it on my work MacBook and have been excited to use it on my main laptop!

Windows 10 before I used Linux full-time, though I did try out Windows 11.

My only major complaint is their free-tier is a bit lacking compared to what Skiff had (or I guess has, but not for much longer.) I think their platform is great, and definitely worth paying for, but given I’m a broke college student that’s not much of an option. Also their support for third party clients (or lack thereof) isn’t great, though I don’t use those as much. Otherwise I like it quite a bit!

For something with fitness tracking, I’ve been using the Garmin Forerunner series for years. Recently though, I’ve been using the Pine64 PineTime as my main smartwatch. It doesn’t have much for fitness tracking, but if you’re looking for a basic smartwatch it’s pretty nice!

I name mine after different places or ships from anime shows I watch. My laptop is Bebop from Cowboy Bebop, my desktop is goingmerry from One Piece, my Kali VM is senku1 from Dr. Stone, and my NAS server is amaterasu from Fire Force.

This is awesome! Definitely going to be something I play with a lot when I’m bored at work

I would love it if there was a smaller company like Framework or System76 that made printers that weren’t enshittified. Something with open firmware and hardware that also could be easily repaired. Or at the very least an open standard that existed for printers to use. I know companies like HP or Epson wouldn’t buy in, but maybe some smaller players could join in with that if there was.

I haven’t, but I’ve seen it in my Spotify recommendations. I also subscribed to the newsletter, though I haven’t had much time to read it much.

My understanding is that it’s just not as secure. Any open port can be considered a potential way for a hacker to get in. Of course, that doesn’t mean it will 100% happen and you will get hacked, but at least in the case of Tailscale, it does it in a secure way that makes it so you don’t have those open ports. Basically, it’s not bad to just expose them to the internet, it’s just not as secure as using tools like Tailscale.

Some favorites of mine are The WAN Show, Command Line Heroes, Darknet Diaries, Linux Unplugged, Destination Linux and Surveillance Report All of these cover a lot of cool areas in tech, and I have never heard any right-wing views (or really any political views) voiced in any of these.

So I still technically use Windows, but only because I need it because of some software for school, but I still use Linux most of the time. It’s mainly the small yet super annoying things in Windows that caused me to switch. Like how everything has to automatically try and back up to OneDrive until you dig into the settings and disable it, or how it constantly badgers you to use insert Microsoft product here instead of what you want to use. Plus as a computer science student, and someone who spends a lot of time in the terminal, Powershell and the Windows command line feel so old and incapable compared to the Linux terminal (WSL has helped with some of that, but not all of it.) It’s just small issues that cause big issues when you run into them, because it just makes simple things harder to do than they need to be, usually for the sake of pushing their products.

You can definitely harden operating systems like Windows and Android to be better for privacy and security. I’ve used some of Techlore’s videos to make my Windows system a bit more secure and private, and he’s made one for Android and other OSes too. Of course, this isn’t perfect, but it’s something if you don’t want to install a different OS, it’s better than nothing.

I’m not entirely a fan the idea of having my OS run somewhere other than my own computer, unless it’s like a remote lab I use for specific tasks. Like if I could use Linux, and just use this for my classes that run Windows exclusive software, then I’d maybe use it. Otherwise I think it’s a bit weird to have your whole computer basically be in the cloud.

Totally get it! Windows 7 looked/looks amazing! Personally I have an XP themed setup on my Ubuntu install. There’s just something great about old UI design.

I agree, and those lessons have helped us build something that is immune to EEE and other forms of enshitification. I wholeheartedly believe if we let them join the Fediverse, there isn’t really anything they could do to ruin it.

EEE wouldn’t be effective, they can’t collect any more data than they could by just scraping the public posts on the Fediverse, and if it becomes a cesspool like Twitter, then we handle it the same way we would a Mastodon instance that becomes a cesspool and defederate (those are the only valid things I could think of, but if you have any more I’m not considering, let me know.)

But since all we can do is speculate around what they MIGHT do, we shouldn’t immediately decide to defederate a bunch of new people just because of said speculation.

While I understand that sentiment, I don’t think we should be thinking of this from the standpoint of accepting or rejecting corporations, but rather from the standpoint of accepting or rejecting the people using the platform in question. Yeah, Meta sucks, but in defederating preemptively, we would basically be denying people from the Fediverse just because of which platform they choose to use, which I think goes against it’s open nature.

As for the bit about Embrace Extend Extinguish, I believe the Fediverse is too strong for that to work. Worst case, Threads becomes the de-facto, and we’re just back to where we are now with Threads taking the place of Twitter, and the Fediverse being the option for those looking for something better. Except I think people would actually be more willing to jump to the Fediverse since they would have more exposure to it through Threads.

I personally like Mate, especially with i3 as the window manager.

I mainly listen to Linux Unplugged, Destination Linux and Linux For Everyone and really like them.

Haha fair, I guess that is a pretty objective statement. In my opinion, compared to some other distros and operating systems, it’s pretty bloat free, but I guess if you’re used to something else that is even more bloat free that you would probably disagree.

I think a house isn’t the best comparison here, as a house isn’t a public space, whereas the Fediverse is. A better comparison might be a town square or a park. Anyone is welcome to be there, but if they do something bad, or it becomes obvious that they are going to do something bad, then they can be removed from that space. Otherwise they should be allowed to exist in that space.