If you want to gradually move away from closed and/or paid software, afaik, the only way is through unlocking the bootloader and uninstalling programs through there.

Alternatively, there is the nuclear option, to replace the whole system, and start from zero with a distro as close as possible from AOSP. Worth noting it also requires unlocking the bootloader.

Sadly I couldn’t think of a better way yet. 😔

Though not due to piracy, I also end up with a lot of repeated, redundant and/or unwanted files, so I’m often having to delete them.

Not ideal, but what I do is to load all musics onto VLC, open the list view (Ctrl L on Linux), let the list fully load, sort by song name and check what appears repeated or that I don’t want for other reasons. It also helps if the songs are metadata-rich, such as the ones bought from Bandcamp and ITunes (not Apple Music), so it’s easier to differentiate them (given this community, I have no clue how/where from yours are). And lastly, there’s a little plugin I found a while back that helps a bunch, vlc-delete, which adds the option to delete the currently playing file, and that, at least in the Linux version, benefits from motor memory since it can be executed with a quick succession of 2 Alt shortcuts.

Whether it’s a rage-click community, a community made for an agenda, or both, I don’t know, but in either cases, I wouldn’t see as surprising for the mods in such a community to be very trigger-happy. Best you can do, I think, is to block communities and individuals with such a profile, and to recommend others to not engaging (remember to explain why if you do it, btw).

Mint seems decent all around. No cutting edges nor it’s specialized in any areas, but it’s a jack of all trades, and rather stable.

[Copypasta of the other repost] While I know the situation described in the article can set a precedent, the title feels misleading at best, given the article describes a single case, and not (yet) a widespread practice.

On the joke, define “sane”. 😬

On a serious note, I think there are valid reasons to have several VMs other than “I was bored”. In my case, for example, I have a total of 7 VMs, where 2 are miscellaneous systems to test things out, 2 are for stuff that I can’t normally run on Linux, 2 are offline VMs for language dictionaries, and 1 is a BlissOS VM with Google programs in case I can’t/don’t want to use my phone.

Link for the platform: https://bandwagon.fm/

To my knowledge, besides the newest updates not necessarily being as stable, but also, other softwares that interact with it would need time to adapt themselves to be sure they’re as compatible as they were before. In a situation of constant updates, other software would always be on a situation of catching up, whereas updates that take a bit longer to land allow “for the dust to set down”.

About gaming, from my personal experience, it’s overall pretty straight forward. When issues happen, you just got to have patience to read through logs and search up on Google or similar any suspicious parts of the log. Worst part is usually DRM/anticheat, but from what I can gather, usually pretty isolated cases are problematic due to compatibility, usually requiring the devs to go out of their ways to make the DRM incompatible.

As for the distros question, perhaps Linux Mint? It trades off bleeding edge updates for the sake of stability. Just avoid the Debian-based variant of Mint for now as it’s still in beta.

Both tools can be used from the terminal like most Linux programs, which should also give you better control during troubleshooting and also in the rarer cases of having to set up/run some more temperamental games. There are also graphical programs that handle Wine/Proton in a more friendly way, such as Heroic Launcher, Lutris and, specifically for Proton, Steam itself.

Found something: Apparently Recochoku occasionally sells music videos, but the store is blocked outside of Japan.

Yeah, things like interest of the right holders, contractual limitations and availability of a given media do play a part on getting published on a given platform.

Other than GOG’s withering “movies” section, I only remember of two that aren’t overly niche, DLsite and Fakku (both mainly porn stores). Maybe Itunes’ videos are DRM free, but I haven’t tested and still it would break the “no app” condition since it’s required for payment and download. Also maybe Itchio and Gumroad have something on videos too, since they don’t limit the types of media allowed there, but I have yet to confirm.

GOG tried, but either gave up or wasn’t able to keep supporting it (their communication is bad so hard to pinpoint). Now their movies section is just collecting dust, like Humble Trove was in the months before the old model was axed.

There are cases where AppImages aren’t viable indeed, like with programs that require ring 0 access. But limitations exist for all formats, so perhaps another good alternative is having multiple versions of a given program, like downloading the equivalent deb package through apt while also keeping the appimage version. It would bloat the storage for a potential automated configuration, but it should help with ensuring compatibility.

One thing I like to have with me is the AppImage version of programs when possible, since they usually work out of the box. Also helps ensuring I don’t depend on the availability of whatever package manager the system uses.

Never saw it before, but going by its description now, it’s the “GNU version of the Firefox browser”, so I would presume you can import everything you could between two Firefox installations, like whole profiles and favorites back up file.