stinerman

Yes and it's likely that they will not be allowed to any longer after Google lost their anti-trust case.

sex-women

Someone who repackages/patches free software has different incentives than upstream. So generally speaking, derivative browsers are more privacy friendly, have better features, etc.

That's not to say that upstream isn't important. It absolutely is! It's just that derivatives are generally better.

There's a guy who works as a product owner at my employer. He has a PharmD. He got fed up with the metrics for how many prescriptions he had to fill. Now he does software.

It's crazy to think that someone has a terminal degree in a really technical field and he nope'd out because of how bad it got.

Glad I could be of service.

Ahh the halcyon days of downloading one song from a private FTP server with upload ratios, found by Lycos FTP search. Over a modem, natch, so it took about 50 minutes...and that's when your mom didn't kick you off the internet so she could make a call.

Sent this to my wife and we talked a bit about how I don't like lights on.

I realized that even when I'm home alone at night (and not taking care so that she doesn't wake up), I will use the flashlight/torch on my cell phone rather than turn on lights in the house.

He (Linus Torvalds) made Linux as a hobby during his time in college/university to teach him about operating system design. Because it was the part of the operating system called the kernel that the GNU project didn't have yet (more on this in a moment), it became very popular. Richard Stallman created the GNU project because he believed that every person should have the right to study and share the software that runs on their computer.

There is nothing specifically anti-corporate in either of their motivations.

the only viable alternative, for 99% of the population, is Apple

This is largely because Windows and MacOS come preinstalled and that's how the vast majority of people interact with operating systems. If you had to choose your OS, I'm sure there'd be more choice in the market. Not necessarily Linux, but just more choice in general.

I've been using some Linux flavor for about 15 years. The biggest thing about switching (at least back then) was I knew how to configure Windows just to my liking. With Linux it was a lot more difficult because I had to google everything. Like "how do I change the wallpaper?" How do I get the login screen to appear on the correct monitor, etc. It was just frustrating because I knew how to do this in Windows, but I felt like a major noob again with Linux.

Yes.