MonkeMischief

Let's watch how hard gun control gets pushed when the barrels are aimed at the puppet masters.

Fellow lefties: If it's safe for you to do so, acquire, train, and responsibly store. That is all.

I agree with you somewhat and I don't like how much downvote spam you're getting. You bring up some good points we ought to be mindful of.

Right now it seems very clear who the oppressors are, but the scary thing about reactive movements is that even if they accomplish their goal, they tend to seek to justify themselves indefinitely before everyone gets bored and it dissolves.

Everybody wants a revolution on paper, but things get messy and blurry once the powder keg goes off, and people en masse would be looking for the next enemy, the next oppressor, that must be hunted down to finally secure Utopia.

While I'm an anarchist and want the "ownership class" to answer for their wicked ways, I also don't think a bunch of independent actors picking targets and gunning them down based solely on their own justification is an ideal solution. Even if I understand why it happens and don't defend the perpetrators that push people to such extremes in the first place.

And the occasional lenses for my eyeballs.

I know I'm asking for a lot because adequate vision is positively absolutely a luxury, and not at all necessary for doing the vast majority of work or existing in society...but y'know.

I actually like helping people a lot, too.

I don't think IT folks are naturally misanthropic or antisocial, but I personally got beat down so much by wanting to help and realizing they didn't care to listen, or weren't willing to learn anything. At all. Even though they came to me with the problem, it seemed they mostly just wanted me to fix it for them with zero understanding required, or to "be emotional at someone" or were lonely.

I also got so tired of being friendly and enthusiastically educational with advising my relatives or friends, only to then watch them completely disregard 100% of my advice they came to me for.

In the former job I'm still putting myself back together from, most of the public peoples who visited me would have been better served by visiting a psychologist / therapist first, but I was cheaper (free). :(

Often when it's something I do specialize in and I get all excited, that's when they choose to gloss over and I can tell they just want me to stop talking.

I hate having biases against people, but there very much are definitely "normies" who are threatened by the prospect of having to activate their neurons for the first time since they stumbled out of their highest level of education, and only learned to think when it was forced upon them.

Makes a guy feel pretty crappy. So I'm not as forthcoming with my skillset as I used to be in casual company. Lol

"Hey remember that weird time everyone saw an augmented reality hallucination of Max Headroom for like 10 seconds?"

Holy crap. I hope he Labor Board fixes on them like freakin' Sauron.

That's one thing I really enjoy about Plasma. I never even considered things like "focus stealing" or when to raise windows, but there's options to tweak.

Heck you can even change what RMB does. (Yeah my brain doesn't need THAT radical of a change lmao)

The defaults are perfectly sane, but I like that there's buttons or toggles to see if something else works better.

And that right-click menu can take a long walk off a short pier

Seriously. Why?! Who does this serve? It confuses newbies and just ticks off everybody else.

Also this google-apple-esque trend of trying to glyphize (is that a word? Lol) everything just for its own sake is kinda maddening too. (We don't want literacy to be a bar to clicking ads! /s)

/rant lol.

Wow that's irritating!

That's what bothers me too: It's so opinionated. I guess so their "support" can suggest the same solution to every problem.

But geeze, things like fastboot, Cortana, Edge, Onedrive, or this eco-mode, or secureboot, or other features tied to deals they strike especially with laptop hardware vendors that simply assume THIS Windows is the only thing that will ever be run on this device.

That's the worst.

At least I haven't heard of them clobbering your bootloader with an update recently but I probably jinxed it now LOL.

I try not to just be a *nix-cultist. I grew up with Windows and had a lot of fond experiences with it. It just feels like it serves shareholders over users anymore.

I feel like it's trying to make its users even dumber, while I feel like we learn things while using Linux.

We ended up with an HP all in one years ago because Costco had a pretty good deal and my wife had a lot of stuff to print for school.

...I...I think we're still on fhe initial toner cartridges. Or maybe we replaced black once...

Yeah, Linux support is a bit frustrating but it's there. And the scanner components feel a bit cheap.

Laser printers aren't even THAT bad for photos. You're not getting that sweet glossy "developed in my home darkroom" look, but pictures come out fine for general purposes.

Working in a public library before, it kinda blew my mind how long cartridges would last when flocks of people were printing out Wikipedia pages and photos and law documents and crap all day.

Can be expensive to service though...

I feel this. KDE has done an incredible job making Plasma gorgeous and usable.

Now I feel like with Plasma 6 there's everything to gain and nothing to lose, aesthetically and usably.

On my old fun-and-games laptop I made everything look Aero-esque like my favorite aspects of XP and 7 haha. It's not practical but I'm experimenting with different toolbar layouts and stuff.

But the biggest improvement coming from Windows? Not having a "fake fisher-price control panel" and an obfuscated "actual control panel" somewhere else. Plasma does a really good job of putting everything easily within reach.

That's a really cool story about the Athlon still kickin in 2024! I love the spreading awareness of using existing equipment instead of mindless consumption! :D

You're right, like with any system, the user needs to want to understand it. I think the install will always be a hurdle for anyone as long as "computers with Linux pre-installed" stays a niche thing.

Although, I'd also argue that a pre-formatted install media with a little "How to start" card would do wonders. For something like Mint and many other distros there's just "Install this distro only" or "Alongside Windows" if no fancy partitioning needs to be done.

That's pretty snazzy for a fresh start!

As far as initial hand-holding though, Mint/Cinnamon or KDE are especially friendly for Windows users. With people being used to smartphones now, the repository being an "app store" makes a boatload more sense too.

Those beginner-aimed OSs also have that little "Welcome" window to familiarize users with what to use for office apps, how to get more software, how to update, and where to ask for help.

In my experience, I had to do barely if any support that couldn't be gained by the user just poking around a bit, and nothing that required any "fixing" under normal use. Two people I helped was in a position at my local library, so being bugged with simple questions was part of the job haha.

But my sister's experience with Mint was really smooth. She was nervous at first because it was different, but quickly got the hang of things. I don't get any questions, really. She uses the apps, gets online, plays Steam occasionally, and keeps it updated.

And to be fair, an install of Windows I think is way more intimidating these days LOL. (Had to do that for her, too for a dual boot...it was a huge headache, especially with their "Microsoft account" shenanigans and a million dubious opt-outs.)

Minus really specialized niche software that depends on Windows, I've noticed the beauty of these distros are that they can grow with the user, and if the user wants to get more advanced, the OS won't stop them.

I don't necessarily think a learning curve is a bad thing as long as it's a smooth ramp. I think if there's a learning curve, it means you're using a tool rather than an appliance. :)

(Example: Mobile OSs tend to be super intuitive...but they're mostly aimed at consuming content over any other purpose.)