But at the end of the day, there’s only one program in control of all the hardware. They’re all getting the kernel from the same place, the distros aren’t writing their own kernels except for a few tweaks here and there.

How does this happen? Do not most major desktop Linux distros more or less run almost the same kernel with the same driver modules? (Except in the case of Debian being several years behind the rest).

as a man, I ain’t rocking thigh-high socks

Is this because you actively choose to not wear them as a man, or because society will try to make you feel wrong for doing it?

If the latter, then fuck everyone else.

Problem is there same one that plagues most open source software. Who enforces or organizes the desktop theming standard that every desktop environment will use? You’re going to have to come up with a universally acceptable method. Are we going to use CSS? Or just some kind of config file? There are many different ways to do what you want, how do we choose one?

The oldest millennials are in their 40s. They’ve moved on to talking shit about zoomers. It’s kind of weird seeing everything repeat itself like that as I get older.

I was, when I was younger. I kind of don’t want to spend the rest of my life I have left tweaking some stupid theme that doesn’t matter in the long run. Whenever I reinstall, I pretty much just use it as is and probably only change the wallpaper and turn the theme to dark mode and that’s it.

I’m at the far end of the desktop tweaking inverted U curve and have achieved nirvana, with the new users at the beginning and you in the middle.

Who is?

My ex wife for one, who would like to play Steam games but is not experienced enough to build and fiddle with a gaming PC, much less Linux, and just wants a box she can just plug in and turn on without calling all the IT folks in her family.

Don’t forget about our nerd bias. Most people here have a different perspective than 95% of normies. Remember how clueless the average person is about the inner workings of modern tech.

One-handed locking my PC as I leave my desk with Windows-L.

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If you weren’t checking tech news regularly, shit like this just passes right over your head as a regular Linux user sometimes. I keep forgetting about the EoL thing.

Also having a clean frame of reference, if you have been a user for a long time now, you are definitely able to remember occasionally using a Windows machine and seeing the downhill slide literally happen before your eyes as everyone else is unaware of the growing pile of shit and getting slowly boiled like the frog in the pot.

The last version of Windows I’d consider clean of all this modern horseshit that’s in those OSes now would be Windows 2000. Even XP started pushing the telemetry shit hard and started getting sketchy towards the end.

:3

Yeah, I used to install those a couple years ago as a security tech.

Unless they are at the register, those screens don’t even record back to a central DVR. Just a local SD card inside the screen itself. The only wire running to them is low voltage DC power, no video or network. Those things aren’t really an issue in the grand scheme, they are less intrusive than a regular security camera since you can’t even view them live at the head end.

Now the bigger ones hanging from a pole in the ceiling, yes those ARE being centrally recorded.

I see it as anybody too young to remember a world that wasn’t connected 24/7, somebody who in their child/teen years that didn’t make heavy use of the phone attached to the kitchen wall to contact friends. Someone who’s never had to seriously use dialup Internet or an 8/16 bit computer.

This will be the (fifth?) time Microsoft has tried to implement virtual assistants. And they are still exceedingly inefficient at it.

There’s an entire step between trying to figure it out yourself and resorting to an LLM which is probably likely to tell you to shove cheese into the USB ports. Regular web searching. Forum and social media posts. The distro’s wiki itself or other such resources. You know, the stuff the AI originally sucked up, mashed together, mixed around, and spat back out.

The acronym kinda sounds like an STD.

Congratulations. It’s come a loooong way. Long live Konqi the cyberdragon.

It’s okay, you can find alternative install media here: https://distrochooser.de/en/

There was an idea I read about, sorta along the same crazy track, (might have been Popular Science or something like 25 years ago) where they came up with an idea for a jet that didn’t use traditional control surfaces like ailerons, but rather line the wings and fuselage in thousands of tiny flaps that would all be precisely computer controlled. It would be able to basically mold and shape the airstream around itself to make precise movements.

Okay, so, this place IS filled with furries. Cool.