Honestly a number of these were abandoned for reasons that are fair enough.

Additionally, lots of these are open source and either have been or can be forked.

If I had to pick, Ubuntu.

What I’d actually pick: Fedora

Workstation Edition (Gnome) or Plasma Edition (KDE Plasma), whatever your UX preference, with Gnome being more polished, minimalist, distraction-free, and Plasma being like Windows out of the box but much more powerful and customisable.

The name unfortunately conjures images of the tips fedora/m’lady meme, but the name predates that, and it’s a solid and well-supported distro that gets better with every update.

I don’t really dislike Ubuntu; they certainly get a lot right. But they have also made a few choices that I’m not really into. Most of all, the direction of Ubuntu is somewhat unpredictable, because Canonical is a for-profit business that has changing priorities.

We’ve come a long way. An analogue clock in particular seems crazy to me lol

It’d be interesting to see a timeline of different UIs on Linux, from the beginning to now

I’m going to preface this by saying the whole Americanised ACAB stuff is silly. Not everywhere has a shitty, militarised police force like theirs. Where I am, my experience with the police has been pretty positive, even with me being an immigrant with darker skin.

But man, no.

If police want your data, they can ask you politely, and if you say no, then that should be it. End of discussion. People have the right to privacy.

Maybe the officer wouldn’t do anything nefarious. But then again, maybe they will. You have no way of knowing what type of person that officer is. Even good police forces have plenty of shitty employees, so police powers should be limited to avoid them just doing whatever they want.

If there’s a genuine reason to have your data, say you’re implicated in some criminal investigation, then they can go through the proper channels and get a warrant.

Police absolutely should not have the power to just do whatever they like. If you let them, have that, it leads to shitty police forces like they have in the US and elsewhere.

Where did I say that?

You seem to be looking at this like a console fanboy. Me criticising Apple does not mean I’m a fan of Google.

Yes, Apple is bad. They are a tax-dodging multi-trillion-dollar company. They are not good. They are not your friend.

Android phones have this feature as well btw lol

A lot countries have this now.

Even for a number of countries where it’s not technically enshrined in law, police can still effectively do it anyway, by detaining you for as long as they like until you comply.

Indeed. Looking up how it works, this is how it should be done. I wish other browsers did this too.

This article is straight up misinformation in that it presents this as an erosion of user privacy. It isn’t.

That said, given how fickle people are online, Mozilla should’ve probably seen this coming and not enabled it on pre-existing Firefox installs.

You’ve celebrated genocide from the start. Bye bye.

I think buying an app for a couple of quid that has a good curated collection of wallpapers, a nice UX, etc. is a completely fair price to pay for the convenience. I like supporting devs. I fail to see the stupidity.

A $12 monthly subscription is an entirely different beast, though.

You are the one celebrating genocide. I’m not the one who needs their head sorted out.

Da comrade. Don’t worry. Soon the Ukrainians, Uighurs, and Palestinians will be exterminated

No, the discussion is about Chinese EVs. You’ve just went on a tangent of whataboutism because your dick gets hard at the thought of Uighur slave labour camps, Uighur sterilisation, Uighur killings, as well as Ukrainian children being raped and killed.

Because you’re a piece of shit tankie who should kill himself and rid the world of another turd who supports genocide. You love what China is doing, you love what Russia is doing, you love what the Nazis did, and you probably love what Israel is doing too.

Enjoy your subpar car made by slaves under the treat of having their family killed.

Again with the whataboutism.

I criticise China for using slave labour from a religious minority they are commuting genocide on and your reply is “but the US has done bad things too”

Nobody gives a fuck about the US. This isn’t about the US. I was just dismissing your whataboutism by pointing out that China is far worse.

Why are you advocating for genocide? Do you get warm fuzzies every time you hear about an Uighur dying in a labour camp? Or any time one gets sterilised?

I bet you support Russia’s genocide too.

A lot of people are very reactionary when it comes to LLMs and any of the other “AI” technologies.

For myself, I definitely roll my eyes at some of the “let’s shoehorn ‘AI’ into this!” marketing, and I definitely have reservations about some datasets stealing/profiting from user data, and part of me worries about the other knock-on effects of AI (e.g. recently it was found that some foraging books on Amazon were AI generated and, if followed, would’ve led to people being poisoned. That’s pretty fucking bad).

…but it can also be a great tool, too. My sister is blind, and honestly, AI-assisted screen readers will be a game changer. AI describing images online that haven’t been properly tagged for blind people (most of them, btw!) is huge too. This is a thing that is making my little sister’s life better in a massive way.

It’s been useful for me in terms of translation (Google translate is bad), in terms of making templates that take a lot of the tedious legwork out of programming, effortlessly clearing up some audio clarity issues for some voluntary voice acting “work” I’ve done for a huge game mod, and for quickly spotting programming or grammar mistakes that a human could easily miss.

I wish people could just have rational, adult discussions about AI tech without it just descending into some kind of almost religious shouting match.

You have to be exceptionally blockheaded to stay with an OS that no longer receives security patches

I never said using an OS from the 90s/early 2000s, I said theming current OSes as if they are.

But tbh, most people are that block-headed with tech (as you alluded to later in your comment). There will be plenty of people still on Win10 when support ends.

You’re here throughout the entire comment section pretending the US is worse (fucking LMAO), and minimising the genocide and slavery that China is engaged in.

Enjoy your car built by slaves from a community being genocided I guess.

I bet if you were around in the 40s you’d be clamouring on getting your hands on a vehicle built in Nazi labour camps.

You have an option not to take science?

Damn. Where I live the three main sciences were mandatory and they were all separate subjects

This is good news. I hope we get similar concessions on (fairly priced) spare parts availability 🤞

E: I’m guessing the downvoters want fewer spare parts available? Strange opinion but ok.

E2: Oh! I am stupid. Could just be an Apple investor

Not American. You’d think my spelling would’ve made that obvious.

And lmao at thinking China isn’t hugely more authoritarian.

Stop with this tankie nonsense. Genocide is bad. Stop defending it.