This is neither new nor surprising. They casually break EU-US personal data transfer agreements like they’re nothing. They know perfectly well they will be fined, but they profit infinitely more from breaking EU law than they have to pay up in fines. It’s a simple business decision. The EU Comission is being very lenient here, like they’ve been for years.
From my experience, it’s almost always “Chrome doesn’t have feature x”. It’s the most feature poor browser currently in wide use. The only advantage that comes to mind is web dev tools, which: a) 99% of people don’t care about, because they aren’t web devs. b) Chromium also has, and it’s like the considerably less infuriating twin.
Some people really will desparately do whatever it takes to cling onto Microsoft’s slop, just so they don’t have to spend an hour or two learning something new.
And if you do actually need Windows for a very specific piece of software or one of those 5 online games - okay, fair enough. But we all know the vast majority are just lazy and ignorant.
That doesn’t make much sense to me. The games part okay, kinda, since Nintendo games aren’t easily available on the Deck.
But tinkering? I’ve had a Steam Deck since it first launched, and the only tinkering I’ve done is because I could, and wanted to. Never because I needed to. All games I’ve played work perfectly out of the box. Even games marked as ‘unsupported’. All of my tinkering was completely unnecessary and done for additional fun, e.g. modding, which is one of the best things about PC gaming, and will most certainly never be a thing on Nintendo’s platforms.
As far as I can tell, “Nintendo people” don’t really ‘reason’. More like, they follow their uninformed preconceptions, and reject anything that doesn’t fit with them. My gf has been a Nintendo fan for a long time, and she was convinced other platforms aren’t that simple and offer a worse experience. I introduced her to PC gaming, and showed her how the Deck works. Now she’s forgotten about her Switch and isn’t going to buy Switch 2. It seems to me that all these people need is somebody to show them what gaming really is. Because whatever Nintendo is, it certainly isn’t gaming. Just a small glimpse into gaming, maybe.
As for Zelda, Mario or whatever fans - guess they’ll have to stick with Nintendo. Personally their games never appealed to me enough to buy a console specifically to play them. I’d like to play the new Zelda games, but I have a lot of other games to finish first. And then again, Switch emulation is incredibly easy. Took me like 10 or 15 minutes to get BotW working last time.
It doesn’t mean they “have to abide by GDPR” or that they “are GDPR compliant”. All it means is they appear to be GDPR compliant and pretend to respect user privacy. The sole fact that the AI chatbots are run in US-based data centres is against GDPR. The EU has had many different personal data transfer agreements with the US, all of which were canceled shortly after signing due to US corporations breaking them repeatedly (Facebook usually being the main culprit).
Facebook used to have a team dedicated to analyzing their apps’ risks to children’s and teenagers’ health. The team concluded that there are indeed many serious health risks for both children and teenagers, especially teenage girls. Shortly after, it got disbanded, and all its recommendations completely ignored.
The problem here is: the EU currently works quite well overall for its citizens, precisely because there isn’t really one big player. It is considerably more difficult to commit crimes and atrocities on the scale of the US, Russia and China when you’re small, weak, and all your close allies are watching you. I don’t have any doubts that a united EU, a federation perhaps, like it was originally intended, would be the greatest power the world has ever seen. But it would come at a great cost to all of its citizens. In anywhere between 50-250 years it would most likely develop into an empire similar to the ones we have right now. Unless we could figure out some sort of new structure to combat these challenges, which in itself is a major undertaking.
So essentially the same thing as the US 50 years ago? And in some ways, kind of like Russia 200 years ago? Except it’s progressively getting more civil.
Dealing with superpowers and empires is always unpleasant, and everyone would rather stay as far away from them as possible, but it’s not always and option. Well, it seems we either continue the cycle, and swap US partnership for China partnership (then probably same thing again in a couple decades), or we break the cycle somehow.
Personally I’d prefer if ‘memes’, if you can call it that, like this one were kept to politics-centered communities.
In any case, I think the message is true for most if not all countries on the planet. No politician from any major party is a good person, and they most definitely don’t care about you enough to do anything for you. You will probably have a hard time finding any politician that isn’t a liar, or worse, but the major parties are the worst of the worst.
I think you’re bringing up good points about important issues. However, what the current US administration is doing doesn’t seem to solve any of those problems in any capacity. In fact, the previous administration did a lot more on that front, without collapsing the entire global economy at the same time. Also, as some other comments pointed out, almost nobody on the planet is ‘caving in’ to the tariffs. The vast majority of the world is simply cutting trade with the US wherever possible, resulting in Americans paying several times more for various goods, for no apparent reason or benefit.
It is indeed not true anymore. In the year 2025 Linux is easier to use than Windows, and even not too tech savvy 60-year-olds manage just fine. Though you should know ‘Linux’ is not an operating system. When saying ‘Linux’, people most often refer to it as a family of operating systems. Many of which are incredibly user friendly and ready out of the box. And many of which aren’t.
Short answer: no.
Long answer: only for a handful of online games, e.g. League. If using Steam, there’s virtually nothing you have to do. Epic and GOG are easy to use, but theough third party launchers. Other storefronts/launchers are harder to set up, but all of them work. It should be noted Steam is the only platform with official Linux support. Here is a database of Steam games with info on Linux and Steam Deck compatibility.
Depends on the game. Overall definitely not ‘as freely and as easily’ as on Windows. For Steam Workshop games, it works just as it does on Windows. For the rest sometimes you need to do a little work, sometimes a lot. Bethesda titles seem to be the most problematic on Linux when it comes to modding.
Most of the time it is fairly straightforward and works nicely. Some are particularly difficult to get working on Linux, e.g. MS Office, so you might as well forget that.
Yes. There is software specifically for compatibility with Windows’ libraries. While .NET framework you can simply install like you would on Windows. This is in fact needed in order to mod some games.
As mentioned at the start, Linux isn’t a single OS, so it highly depends on the specific distribution (OS from the Linux family, in simple terms). Usually you just go to your app store and click on updates. Of course, there are other ways of updating the system and the choice is yours.
Linux is extremely more secure than Windows. The whole ‘open source leads to vulnerability’ is a myth. There are antiviruses for Linux, but nobody uses them. There is barely any malware targetting Linux, and when you encounter it, most of the time you’ll have to mess up and run it yourself giving it permissions. There are also more security-focused Linux distributions.
Nvidia: not really.
AMD and Intel: yes, incredibly reliable.
For AMD and Intel you don’t need any additional drivers, other than the generic drivers that come with the OS. They work perfectly and you can play games right away. For Nvidia you would have to go through the not-so-pleasant process of installing their drivers.
No. This sounds like something somebody who’s never used Linux would say on Reddit. While technically it is possible, just as it is possible on Windows, this is not something you will likely encounter at any point.
Personally I’d go with Fedora. It’s very easy to use. It looks nice too, kind of like MacOS. By default, that is, since you always have complete freedom to customize how your system looks. My gf, who doesn’t know what a Shift key is, is able to use Fedora just fine. For both gaming and web browsing. This is how simple Linux has gotten in the last years.
Most people will probably recommend Linux Mint. Another great choice for beginners. The UI/UX is very similar to that of Windows. Personally it’s not my favorite, but it’s up to user preference. You definitely can’t go wrong with it.
There is also Pop!_OS, which is similar to Fedora. However, it does include an ISO for systems with Nvidia GPUs, so you don’t have to go through the trouble of installing the drivers.
I’d highly recommend trying one of these. If you like any of them, then just stick to it, and you’ll have a great experience.