Oh yeah, hardware prices are what’s preventing HL3 from coming out. Sure.

Oh its fantastic. How’s the money from the competition?

I probably agree with that, which is why it seems scammy. I’m not sure you can get a true understanding of what is being done or not done either on the effort or the results. I don’t know, maybe these companies have a way of reporting that, but I doubt it.

Anther issue I see is that this seems like a one and done process. Scrubbing your old data when you didn’t realize how much was being out out there and shared is a process, but eventually it ends. If you’re privacy minded enough to use them, then you aren’t continually putting your data out there, so there’s no need for an ongoing subscription.

In that regard you should buy a mini PC that has 2 network ports. You get the simplest out of the box hardware, modern and power friendly, and just run the LAN to a switch.

Note: I didn’t do this. I use an old PC with a NIC added for 4 ports. Gives me everything I need (and Intel NICs are better supported than Realtek ones). The “power hungry” isn’t really an issue. It is wasteful and inneficient technically speaking, but its not large dollars annually. It would take years to add up to the cost of buying a new machine.

while you’re probably looking for some very tangible reasons in a bullet list of how its better, there’s really one foundational reason and everything else is a distant second.

Linux (mint or otherwise) is your OS that you use on your hardware. Period. It’s not going to tell you how to use it, what is allowed, what is right, or anything of that nature. It’s yours. Have at it.

They are a legitimate service. Whether you should use them or not is something you need to decide for yourself.

One of the biggest things they are good for is not giving all of your information away. A lot of these privacy companies simply spam out all of your information and request for the company to delete anything that matches that.

So for instance, if you signed up to a website newsletter with your email, they have your email address. And that’s it. Then comes a “privacy” company that send them your email address, name, home address, etc and asks them if they have any of this data then they need to delete it. That’s asinine and backwards.

DeleteMe doesn’t do this. They are more specific with how they process the data removal requests.

I’m not advocating for them, I don’t use them and probably never will. I have no idea if they are a good company or decent at what they claim to do. I just know they don’t do the spam technique.

Personally, any company that is a mass sponsor of YouTube channels is something I won’t trust myself. But that’s just my weird litmus test.

Why can’t they just ask copilot to program that for them?

I’m another vote for mint. Coming from a windows environment its very similar in feel. Get use to how Linux works then you can always change to another distro if you want.

Also FYI, many distros can be loaded from a USB stick to test out. If you like it, you install. If you don’t, you move on to another. Mint does this, so you can test it without commiting to it, and just get a feel for the UI.

Honestly, it’s about learning how Linux works. Its a different mentality than Windows (or Mac). Learn the file structure, file permissions, how things update, etc. Nothing is crazy (and it’s better in so many ways) but you don’t really learn that stuff until you start using it.

I’ll be the black sheep and say I actually quite like using windows at work. Not really enjoyment per say, but the software suites and accessibility is different in the business world, which is primarily built around Microsoft. Not that you can’t do most of it with Linux and that Linux would do some things better, but I don’t really have an issue with most of it.

Would I choose it for my home use? Definitely not. But I’d think that fitting a Linux cog in a Microsoft machine would create more negatives than positives. This is all subjective of course, and depending on you job, company, industry this could wildly not apply.

Don’t get me wrong, I hate Microsoft. But their ecosystem isn’t all bad.

I mean, technically Defender is a pretty decent antivirus. Nothing wrong with that. Hopefully they use more than antivirus to keep you safe though. I think most decent EDR/XDR support Linux.

Safemo is a wireless camera system that saves files locally to the hub, and even allows you to upgrade the drive for more storage. Cameras can be battery powered only, or use a solar panel for continual recharging or the battery. The only flaw is the flaw with any wireless camera, that there is a delay from activity recognition to the record time. So you might miss something depending on your camera positioning.

Yo dawg, I heard you like language in your language.

It’s my opinion that most people think of all the technology as it were 15 years ago. Apple was innovative, Google wasn’t evil, Windows worked well, and Linux was not as accessible as it is today.

I had two bouts with Linux in the distant past, and neither time did I think Linux was anything worth pursuing. Not that it was bad, I just didn’t see a benefit over the alternatives. In fact the alternatives had all the benefits in my mind.

When I switched a year ago, I was blown away how far it had come as far as being accessible. Now I can’t imagine using Windows as my primary OS ever again.

The other major advantage is your ISP can’t build a profile on you. Considering they know who you are and where you live, that’s a pretty important air gap to me.

Windows troubleshooting is always SFC and DISM as the new “have you tries turning it off and on again” default first recommended step lol.

I believe self hosting should be made easier. Definitely easier to understand.

If its not going to be that, then the opinion that people should self host is flawed. Not everybody can self host. They don’t have the knowledge or time to commit to it. So either it’s wrong to not have a better entry to them or it’s wrong to say they should self host.

I don’t self host much. What I do I keep with local access only. Why? Because while I’m no dummy, I also am very out of touch with modern tech and don’t have the time or energy to learn what I need to for it to be done right.

I didn’t play any BF6 this weekend because Arc Raiders sucked me in. My first extraction shooter too, but nice to see that it isn’t crazy sweaty (at least in the first map). I’ve run into people left and right who just mind their own business, or I like to jump in and help others if I come across them.

It depends what experience you are looking for and why you are switching. Plus what region you are in because some phones are not available/the same in all countries.

But I prefer Pixel with Graphene OS installed. Very private and granular controls, but not always the smoothest experience because locking down for privacy isn’t convenient.

Stock I really like the Samsung S series. Decent UI and doesn’t feel bogged down.

I think for “gotchas” you should consider how you message people and how you pay for things. Not that those are deal breakers for you, but they seem to be the most prevalent daily use cases that can’t always be gotten around.

I hear you. I’m not as doom and gloom as everybody else, but its definitely a shift away from their model. I mean, technically they are keeping their word by keeping Affinity separate and not subscription based like Canva. But I still don’t like it nonetheless.

The problem though is that there isn’t an alternative. Affinity was the alternative. Inkscape and Gimp have their place, but they are not the same level of software. I guess I’m just going to run my v2 into the ground waiting for other software to step up.

I get your point, but the fact that the data is available elsewhere isn’t really an argument for allowing another vector to collect the data (and also cross verify it).

There’s more of an argument if there’s not really another choice, say buying a new car that doesn’t collect data isn’t really an option since they all do it on some level. You either buy a car or not.

But cameras there are options that are not cloud based. Safemo is probably the best comparable product to other WiFi cameras, and then there’s any NVR system. You can accomplish the same thing without much sacrifice or compromise.

Then there’s the its “fine” today but tomorrow things change… Like Ring now feeding images to Flock and their surveillance/facial recognition system.

So no, its not quite okay that “they already have my data from other places so it doesn’t matter”