I think the thing to take away from this is that this is the CLOSEST thing to another browser option we’ve seen in a while.

Yes, I’d prefer foss but we’re finally not talking about a Firefox or chromium fork.

I’m heavily conflicted …. I agree, but I really want to not need to agree. A door bell connected to the internet is extremely useful. Current implementations are a nightmare though.

But if it could be secure, private, and the technology actually served the individual in physical proximity “owner” it would be awesome!

I had a car with its own internet connection for a while, I could check my windows were rolled up from my phone, start it from anywhere, get alerts on fuel levels or oil change intervals…. BUT telemetry was used in evil ways against me.

A connected fridge that didn’t spy on you, show ads, or be designed to fail could be really useful. But we know the “business” behind this makes it consumer hostile.

Heck, my washer and dryer wanted to connect to WiFi and it COULD be useful to get an alert on your phone when it’s done but you’re not in its immediate proximity. But we all know giving this thing internet will be a net loss no matter what.

Smart tvs could be neat in concept, but we all know they’re little corporate spys. Watch out for these, especially Roku is apparently requiring internet connectivity for initial setup. Oh, and this is the company that’s got a patent to identify when an hdmi input is paused so they can inject ads.

I’m sad because technology is so cool and should have served us to make life easier. Instead, it has killed the joy. FOSS is helping revive the passion in technology.

So many things should be possible, but “people” went and ruined it for everyone.

For personal use, Libre office does everything I need. For work, Excel is an absolute beast. It doesn’t necessarily scale, but for those one off data comparison, manipulation, or validation often I can do it faster and easier than I can in SQL. VLookup was kinda cool. Index match is definitely powerful.

I still generally avoid the vb macros though I’ve found solutions online occasionally where they’re useful. (Reviewing the code to confirm it’s not malicious first of course.).

Let’s try this one

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7695681/

AI Summary

Title: Be Suspicious of HDMI

• HDMI technology is criticized for being a “money pool” for companies, despite the existence of better, royalty-free alternatives.

• Companies developing HDMI technology charge significant annual licensing fees and per-unit costs for using the HDMI name and logo.

• Additional features like HDCP require extra payments on top of existing licensing and unit costs.

• HDMI actively sponsors tech news articles to promote itself.

• DisplayPort is presented as a royalty-free alternative that offers similar or superior functionality to HDMI.

• DisplayPort supports more features, higher resolutions, and higher refresh rates compared to HDMI.

• The Steam Machine exemplifies the issues with HDMI, featuring a DisplayPort 1.4 connector capable of 4K 240 Hz.

• The HDMI connector on the Steam Machine is HDMI 2.1 capable but cannot be advertised as such.

• The HDMI organization does not license HDMI 2.1 for Linux devices, forcing Valve to label it as HDMI 2.0.

• There’s a call for the display industry to transition away from HDMI to less expensive and more open standards.

OK, so if I’m on Apple hardware, for now, what’s the best alternative to “Apple Maps”?

There’s a lot of correlation and speculation going on along with deflecting potential liability.

It would seem if you have one of these drives, make sure the firmware is current, and you should be fine. (Prerelease firmware and heavy load seem to be the “triggers”)

If you don’t plan for hard drive failure, you’ll learn that lesson eventually…

I fully respect if it’s just not in the budget for you. A company has to make money somehow. I’d rather pay than get ads or worse let them collect and yet worse sell my data. Also, you can use a burner email and vpn if you want to add an extra layer of obfuscation in there for privacy.

Here’s a few links from their faq.

https://help.kagi.com/kagi/faq/faq.html#why-trust

https://help.kagi.com/kagi/faq/faq.html#why-should-i-pay-for-search

https://help.kagi.com/kagi/faq/faq.html#why-does-kagi-search-require-an-email-address

I really hope I don’t come off as a shill for them. It’s one of the few companies I actually really like.

I also run proton family, and really like the product offering. Their leadership gives me anxiety though. Promos and sales are only for new customers and standard pricing is a bit steep, but you do get multiple services.

I know I’m not exactly hitting the mark, have you looked at kagi? You can personalize the weighting of results from certain sites. You can also add lenses which will let you drive results to forums, programming, academia, etc.

To me it was a bit like reliving the early days of google with the don’t be evil mantra still in tact.

Let me also say, it appears to be privacy respecting.

It has been good for me so far. If someone sees a reason I should run away from this, please let me know why and what we all should use instead, I’d appreciate it!

Why the pain of Arch? You probably fell in love with the rolling release, wiki, and the AUR.

If their computer can handle running a windows vm on virtualbox, I’d recommend that over dual boot. Windows update will almost certainly cause issues on boot…eventually.

Jump into Linux with both feet. Use the vm as a crutch or a bridge to windows only software.

Follow the advice below… backup everything. If you have a 2nd hd, this makes it easier to keep files and is separated.

If you’re prepared to reinstall, it’s easy to nuke it and try again. It’s part of learning and sometimes easier to troubleshoot.

Bard on my experience, Mint is probably the best gateway distro into Linux from windows. Debian and Ubuntu forums are relevant and useful. My wife and I are both IT professionals, and mint was just “natural”. She couldn’t care less what os, de, or wm is in use as long as it gets it done. She’s got mint on one laptop and Debian with gnome on another.

Once they decide they want something different they can find what meets those needs nice they have their bearings and a “need”.

Ubuntu never really hit home for me for some reason.

I wanted to move off mint, because I wanted the gnome DE. Yes, I did successfully slam gnome on top of mint, more as a can I do it vs should I do it exercise. Then I wanted something further upstream and went to Debian.

Then, I started tinkering with Endeavouros. This has allowed me to learn more about how things really work and WHY they work the way they do. Documentation on arch to me is second to none. Until I had daily driver Linux experience and spent some time tinkering, this was just overwhelming.

I for one welcome our new overlords. May you be fair and just; never making infamy in yepowertrippin’ bastards!

Thank you for your contributions!

It might be that I’m looking at this from a US perspective. Craig’s list has been a bit rough when I’ve tried it. Scammy and shadier people. I hope you’ve had better experiences here than me.

I found cash converters out of the UK. Is that correct? It seemed comparable to a pawn shop at first glance.

Ok, I feel old. The only reason facebook has any relevance to me is the market place. What’s the best alternative?

I’m on the Proton train, but know now, you’ll never see a discount once you’re a customer. They will promo you up to a more premium plan, but I recommend only comparing proton at full price.

Edit: I’m on a proton family plan. I’ve watched since October for any kind of deal or promo with Black Friday. There’s nothing available once you’re on this type of plan.

You will be offered a discount the first time you up to this plan, but once on it, nothing.

This sentiment is all over the proton communities.

For what it’s worth, I’m not expecting any BIG discounts from proton, but it would feel a lot better if they offered something (5 or 10 percent) on an annual subscription that’s nearly $300. (Yes I know annual is discounted from monthly, as is always the case).

As a subscriber it feels like you’re just part of the revenue stream and forgotten.

Thanks, I’ll dig into that one sometime!

In my experience, not much, but I’m a marginally functional newbie. Mint manages things for you fairly nicely and has been the best, it just works with out messing with much/anything. (At least for my hardware)

I managed to get gnome working smoothly on mint and have been happy with it. I started and returned here since I last ditched windows as a native OS.

The only thing that has made me consider distro hopping from mint is AUR on arch and gnome, though I’ve been successful so far.

Part of trying the distros that are more advanced and give you more explicit control and configuration is the sense of accomplishment and it makes you figure out how and why things work the way they do. It holistically builds your velocity in your understanding of Linux. (Or gnu whatever that nuance is).

If your machine has enough resources it is super easy to host VMs of anything you want to try. You can try them all, and it won’t cost you anything but time!

Kagi has been the closest thing to the google from 2003 that I’ve encountered in a long time. I’ve not tried their assistant that’s only available on the ultimate plan as it’s too expensive for me. FWIW, I have the duo plan, soon to move to the family plan.

The quick answer usually works pretty well and you have access to fastgpt if you want more of the LLM effect.

Completely agree. I understood WebKit to be a different browse engine than chromium or Firefox.

While chromium and Firefox have wider platform options, there’s “kind of” a 3rd runner even though locked to apple.

I agree Linux and open source is king.