Removed by mod

Well said. Then there is the entire ecosystem of programs and apps for which there is no real ability to install on Linux (and for which tools like Wine will either be buggy or even nonfunctional), and whose absence will just piss users off.

As much as I love Linux and BSD, it is really only for people who are either mentally geared to shift off of Windows or whose minimal needs won’t notice the difference; it is not a drop-in replacement for Windows.

For example, my octogenarian father has exactly such minimal needs except for one program: Quicken. Any bugs or issues running that as an installed desktop program on Linux would have him enraged and throwing the PC out the window. So he is still on Windows, and I am keeping my eyes open on how to properly neuter/excise Copilot once it drops.

So far tools like Win10Privacy have been exemplary in allowing me to rip all manner of spyware, adware, and annoyances out of Windows.

I’m sure that Copilot will meet the same fate with one external debloating utility of another. Even if I need to replace the Explorer-based shell with a third-party one.

For Photoshop alternatives, I’d start with GIMP for photo editing

I have always felt that GIMP was the ultimate software Camel. As in, designed by a committee to include everything and the kitchen sink without any coherent UI/UX.

It’s the software industry’s 1965 Lada masquerading as a 2024 model.

If it wasn’t for Paint.NET still missing vectorized/sprite-based text (it instantly rasterizes text the moment focus leaves it), I don’t think I could ever use GIMP.

I still don’t properly grok Selinux at a fundamental and instinctual level. I understand the need for it, and I work with it to the best of my ability, but I wish there was a resource that could explain it from several different positions.

Irony: my main Linux workstation is OpenSuse

I would hardly consider that pricing insane. Consumer TVs are massively subsidized by the smart tech built into them, in some cases by up to 60%. Plus, they are often fragile with cheaper components because they are expected to be mounted in “safe” places away from unusual conditions or extreme temperatures.

Considering the more robust construction (for commercial use) and lack of subsidization, I would consider those prices to be spot-on and rather reasonable.

Plenty of companies make display TVs that only display commercial content. You see them all the time displaying menus in fast food restaurants.

These can also have all smart tech turned off because some companies also use them as digital whiteboards to display proprietary or confidential information.

That’s why I put that term in quotes, and was specific about default networking interfaces. I didn’t go into detail because that confuses a lot of people.

Source: working with wireless networks professionally for pretty much the last quarter century.

Sailors on the ship then began finding the STINKY network and asking questions about it.

Oh, c’mon. it is trivial to make an SSID “hidden” for any networking tech that you have administrative control over. That way, only those “in the know” will know the SSID name to type in, in order to access said wireless network. It would not be “discoverable” by standard wireless-connectivity gear such as the default wifi interface in mobile phones.

We don’t have anyone actively working on Windows support, and there are considerable changes required to make it work well outside a Unix-like environment.

We would like to do Windows eventually, but it’s not a priority at the moment.

This is how you make “critical mass” adoption that much more difficult.

As much as I love Linux, if you are creating a program to be used by everyone and anyone, you achieve adoption inertia and public consciousness penetration by focusing on the largest platform first. And at 72% market share, that would be Windows.

I hope this initiative works. I really do. But intentionally ignoring three-quarters of the market is tantamount to breaking at least one leg before the starting gate even opens. This browser is likely to be relegated to being a highly niche and special-interest-only browser with minuscule adoption numbers, which means it will be virtually ignored by web developers and web policy makers.

Any brands protected by American law must be independently-owned, with full transfer of all branding, patents, trade secrets, intellectual assets and physical assets.

So, for example, for even a single bottle of Perrier to be sold in America, it needs to have been made by a company registered with the brand name of Perrier, with exclusive use of that name within the country, independently owned and under zero control by Nestle, being manufactured using the exact same process with the exact same ingredients, and having control of the exact same patents and American-side infrastructure.

America is such a large marketplace that it would be impossible to split a company like this. Patents alone would prevent this, forcing Nestle to divest themselves of each individual subsidiary.

Separate the search engine from anything that stinks of advertising so it can return to what it’s supposed to do: return the most relevant results.

Because even appending udm=14 only gets rid of promoted links and in-page advertising, it does f**k-all to correct manipulated search results.

I only ever used Authy as a single-item TOTP vault for BitWarden, but I moved off of it long before they ever mentioned the Windows app shutdown due to dissatisfaction with the UI. I just didn’t like their “card-like” interface, and they never offered a super-compact list-like interface. The card interface just wasted too much screen real estate, even on a desktop, and it just got immeasurably worse under mobile.

What makes the built-in database easier to attack than a separate one?

For performance reasons, early versions weren’t even encrypted, and later versions were encrypted with easily-cracked encryption. Most malware broke the encryption on the password DB using the user’s own hardware resources before it was even uploaded to the mothership. And not everyone has skookum GPUs, so that bit was particularly damning.

Plus, the built-in password managers operated within the context of the browser to do things like auto-fill, which meant only the browser needed to be compromised in order to expose the password DB.

Modern password managers like BitWarden can be configured with truly crazy levels of encryption, such that it would be very difficult for even nation-states to break into a backed-up or offline vault.

Use ButWarden myself for a login-only subset of my KeePass content. I absolutely recommend it every chance I get, but some people prefer 1Password because reasons. And 1Password is pretty much the best closed-source option out there, which is why I do so… anything to give people options that keep them away from clusterf**ks like LastPass.

I have that as an offline DB. Holds 100% of all creds that can go offline (no 2FA, unfortunately) and a bunch of extra stuff that most other managers aren’t flexible enough to do.

No-one should be using any password manager built into any browser, neither Chromium-based nor Firefox-based. Browser password databases are almost trivially easy for malware to harvest.

Go with something external, BitWarden or 1Password, or if you are entirely within the Apple ecosystem their new password system built into iOS 18 is apparently really good.

running it in an ssd is it can speed it up

Let me be absolutely clear: due to the finite write capabilities of solid-state technology, using SpinRite on an SSD is materially harmful to that SSD, and WILL shorten it’s operational lifespan by a non-trivial amount.

This is why SSDs have wear-levelling technology: to limit the number of writes that any one data cell will receive. By using a program that conducts intensive read/write operations on sectors, you are wearing your SSD out at a much higher rate than normal, dramatically speeding up any failures in the future.

I don’t care about living longer. I see no point in doing so when beset with dementia or unable to even walk, much less run.

Give me full vitality in body and mind until my last day, and I’ll be satisfied even if it’s only 80 or 75 years.

SpinRite is only meant for traditional “spinning-rust” mechanical drives.

SpinRite IS NOT meant for SSDs. The existence of TRIM makes SpinRite useless on any sort of solid state storage.

And since almost all laptops sold within the last half a decade use SSDs almost exclusively, it is highly unlikely your advice will be useful.