Our engineers can use Linux desktop if they want, and I suppose anyone else could as well, but Microsoft Office is really what keeps me on Windows at work. I could use the browser based apps for 80% but that last 20% is nasty. And yes, I use libreoffice at home. The cross compatibility just isn’t there without loads of extra time that I don’t have.

Email is never private, even with encrypted email, headers give away metadata. HOWEVER, Tuta & Proton are not scanning your emails to market shit to you and train AI. That’s the main advantage.

That’s great. Canada has very strong credit union adoption. The US is often more predatory. Banks can put people into minimum balance type accounts and fee you until the account runs dry. Not all, but some do. If you live in a rural area, you may not have many options. There’s a host of reasons. https://www.fdic.gov/household-survey

A surprising number of people don’t have a bank.

My spouse didn’t get it until she watched Meredith Whittaker’s SXSW talk. I just wasn’t eloquent enough. She admitted I had made the same points, but not as well. Show people that video. https://www.youtube.com/live/AyH7zoP-JOg

Those sports teams and events are using Facebook because they want your data.

Self hosted stuff will collapse without you. Bitwarden has a family plan with survivorship rules. You can also share passwords easily. Also, Google and Microsoft accounts also have survivorship rules you can set up.

Unfortunately your less cautious cohorts can reveal much of this about you as well. Privacy is a deep rabbit hole. Do what you can, try to educate your peers.

Also, link to the original post: https://mstdn.ca/@Linux/114899148717382605

Tried to persuade him. He’s an adult son, so I wouldn’t force it on him.

Grandma’s using it just fine though.

As more people learn bazzite just works, it’s going to grow. If I hadn’t rescued my son’s windows license he would have switched.

Doing better until you happen to incur a medical emergency, then bankrupt.

Time to sprinkle DRM magic on every Windows application

In ye olde days software was obscenely expensive. That $74 is $260 inflation adjusted. Imagine losing your Word Perfect disks to an accident. That was a $2000 investment in today’s dollars. Which means Zork II cost more than the latest Zelda. There was a reason people tied up phone lines for hours to get on the local BBS.

Replying to give you an extra boost. If your courses are remote or have online exams, you may need to install spyware onto your computer. I’m re-imaging my wife’s computer this weekend because of it…

Yeah but private enterprise didn’t. And if commercial, Leo can buy it without a warrant

Agreed - for someone moving from Windows / Mac, the immutables and flatpak are the way to go now. It’s going to take a bit for the Ubuntu / Mint crowd to change their song. Bazzite in particular is a huge olive branch to the gamers. Even for someone who is “tinkering” learning distrobox and/or flatseal can enable most things you would ever want to tinker with on a desktop. If you are really developing something, chances are that you use containers or a VM anyway.

I have to concur on flatpaks though: they have room for improvement. More validation / trust is needed, and the options are wide open. For non-technical users, the *surety and security *isn’t necessarily on par with the app stores of Microsoft, Apple & Google - though the experience is getting there.

Mass adoption won’t come easily. People treat social media just like broadcast and print mass media: they want to follow big names and brands. It’s a change in mindset looking for niche communities instead. Look at Bluesky, it didn’t really take off until big Twitter accounts moved and brought their minions with them.

Using computers since before GUI was available… Sometimes I think we ought to go back to it

It’s all about the instance. For the Lemmy instance I chose I had to write a few sentences. For mastodon I had to provide a picture of my SubGenius pastor card. I intentionally picked ones that had requirements.

If you had installed bazzite those kids would worship you