How new is your computer?

I found Pop!_OS worked out of the box fine on my new desktop.

Mint had problems, but worked fine on my older computers.

Back up any important software (like, on a separate drive or online). Get a couple flash drives. Try out mint, popos, bazzite. They’re all free so it doesn’t matter that much if you don’t like one.

I don’t recommend trying to dual boot on one drive because windows is a rude room mate.

Sometimes I feel like everyone who would care already knows , and everyone who doesn’t care won’t care no matter what the facts say.

You could prove definitively that LLMs summon demons that eat live babies, and they’d shrug and dismiss it.

I think installing Linux exposes you to higher severity issues, like “now it won’t boot”. Once you get over that initial setup, it’s not much different than windows or apple.

If more computers came with it pre installed, it would be even easier for folks.

I think about half the time I’ve installed Linux it was fine. The other half were problems with esoteric solutions.

Still glad I made the switch.

Linux doesn’t really have the profit motives that lead to enshittification.

I guess a bigger entity could try to start charging for… something… Support, maybe, but that seems unlikely to take off.

I think most people don’t have much impulse control or long term planning. They’ll buy it at full price despite having a backlog of other games

I think there’s a certain kind of user who doesn’t really learn concepts, but rote actions. They click the start menu and then excel to open excel, but they don’t really understand that the start menu is an application launcher and Excel is an application that can be opened in other ways. It’s very one dimensional.

Then when something changes, like the application launcher is moved, they freak out. They don’t have a mental model.

That’s how my mother is, anyway. It’s all magic with no underlying coherent anything. Not sure how to fix that, because it usually comes up when they’re mad or scared, and that’s not a time anyone will learn.

None of the guys at my old job liked lae’zel. I think because she’s kind of mean. I’m like that’s what I’m here for. I don’t want some pushover passive aggression like shadow heart, and karlach is fine I guess, but lae’zel making people lick her boots is the shit. I’m not even into being dominated but I do like women with agency.

I don’t think Microsoft makes great decisions. They’re not as bad as Google, but it doesn’t seem like they deliver what users want.

They’ll probably spend billions on AI when users would rather just have a cheaper longer lasting device. But they gotta make maximum money, I guess.

Fed up with Microsoft. I had a windows 10 computer they said couldn’t update to windows 11, and they said Recall was coming, so I said fuck it. Switched to mint, and now I’m trying pop!_os.

Way back like 10+ years ago I ran Ubuntu for a while, but I play a lot of video games and support was lacking. Wine, proton, and other tools have come a long way since then.

My old desktop couldnt update to 11. But for my newer computer, Windows recall was a deciding factor. Fuck that shit. Also fuck their “ai” nonsense.

It’s nice that it’s free and doing little to nothing contrary to my interests.

I keep forgetting borderlands 4 even came out. I guess I block most ads, but none of my friends have even talked about it.

You can turn that one on desktop off, btw

It was always going to end like this. If you’re surprised, I hope you learned a valuable lesson.

I know plenty of adults who are really bad at money and paying bills.

I feel like the average video game player has really poor media and political literacy, but maybe it’s just the ones who make noise online who fit that profile.

One of the many things that’s infuriating about this is that these people are so profoundly stupid, but they keep getting all the money and power. If there was any justice in the world, people like the decision makers in your stories would be living a very spartan life somewhere, reflecting on how they are so fucking senseless.

And yet people continue to worship these “job creators” and “visionaries”.

It’s a pun and one of the prominent meanings is “old people like boomers like them”, while the other is “rockets go boom”. You know this.

Switched to Linux. Don’t miss windows. Shit like this does not entice me.

No… no that’s impossible… fuck. 14 years, huh? I remember it was 11/11/11 and there were ads for it on city buses, and I thought “wow i guess video games are mainstream now”

I feel like they’d make more money if they targeted lower end machines. My friend has a potato laptop and would enjoy borderlands, so they’re out of luck. They’re not going to spend any money on a new gaming toy because it’s not that big a hobby for them. I imagine there are many such people.