The Carbox X1 Gen7 is probably a decent choice, but it will depend on the specs - get at least an i5, and max out the RAM to 16GB - you can’t add it later, so make sure to buy one with the 16GB.

If youtu.be premium is actually ad free (and I can still run sponsor block) I can see paying for it. I get a lot of value out of it and can’t really justify doing a lot of work to avoid paying.

Ehh. That’s like accident billboards. I maintain that most people don’t know they can block ads, and a large part of the masses who have heard of it think it’s complicated or too hard for them.

With ad blocking I have a small tension that if I know a sort of thing exists, I presumably will find it when I search for it. So I don’t want another vacuum ad.

If I don’t know something exists then I have to stumble on it somehow.

The bigger problem would be if they didn’t block their own ads. I honestly didn’t even know they did ads so my blocking, of which they’re a part, apparently is working.

I think I’ve mostly moved to Kagi, because someone needs to be incentiviced to actually focus on search, not ads. That said it’s also good bang for buck in annual ultimate because you get access to multiple AI models.

That said, I so far continue to be mostly underwhelmed by AI except for basic starting points on scripts or for games like D&D.

I think I’ve mostly moved to Kagi, because someone needs to be incentiviced to actually focus on search, not ads. That said it’s also good bang for buck in annual ultimate because you get access to multiple AI models.

That said, I so far continue to be mostly underwhelmed by AI except for basic starting points on scripts or for games like D&D.

Just wait for an Islamic group to sue then. Or wait for Scientology to decide they don’t want to be a second tier religion and start suing.

Or an atheist group maybe. Idk there’s enough competition in religious zealots to make picking a favorite hard to do unless they just throw out the 1st ammendment prohibitions.

It’s fascinating how normies will figure out a VPN to use shitty social media but not figure out more open systems or alternative sites.

Yea, I just wish more niche communities would come to Lemmy, but most of the interesting ones are actively not tech savvy en mass, and so are lucky to figure out reddit I guess. Or Discord maybe, which sucks as a reddit replacement.

Windows post 7 was and remains annoying and getting worse all the time. So I wanted an OS without telemetry and one that I could control the updates on. I also work with Linux a lot at work. I use Alma 9 for a LTS release. Don’t have to mess with it much.

I have found that you usually have to go to a specialist forum or the like and spend a few months reading it and asking questions etc. Rarely has a community steered me wrong. However they also usually point to expensive or specialty products. Mass market is usually mediocre at best.

Sometimes though there are deals like Harbor Freight hand tools or their higher end power tools.

I am in NY upstate but travel around the east coast semi frequently, and was kinda thinking about online options too.

There are some people who really love their teslas. They don’t have any models that fit what I want so I ignore them.

The point is, if you buy a pre set up laptop with Linux the drivers are pre installed too. You cannot take a clean Linux install and not compare to a clean Windows install.

As to my Mom, she didn’t set up Windows either. In either case you’re paying someone to set it up if you’re like her. Just because you already learned Windows doesn’t make Linux harder, just different. Do you think an enterprise is not going to have IT in both cases? It’s not like the users are setting anything.

This seems like something the optimize charging tool could manage though. Starting the day at 90 percent or 80 percent or whatever is crazy to me - why am I going backwards to needing to babysit my phone when it’s charging, and why would anyone want to charge their phone when they want to be using it vs when they’re asleep?

Well it’s not like Windows hasn’t bricked some pcs with their driver updates. It does just happen sometimes. The argument I’m making is if I went to Burger King and every time I went I was disappointed in the food quality, price and speed of service I would eventually risk Wendys.

Heck my family was GM but after years of breakdowns and getting stranded by 3 different GM cars and weird / bad performance in a 4th, we changed car manufacturers.

Sometimes you ought to give up on the Devil you know if it’s costing you too much money and time.

On an individual level, having a computer is better than not having one. Even if you need a different OS.

On a societal level, we should want to limit both ewaste and insecure OSs. We could legislate MS and other vendors not to do what Microsoft is doing here. But we probably don’t want to legislate updates for 20 years or something. (maybe we do IDK). The more likely thing is kicking known EOL OSs off the internet, but then we’re back to ewaste.

What are the core problems I am skipping? That people like to bitch about Microsoft just like they bitch about gas prices but don’t take any steps to address the issue?

Look we suck it up on Windows for very specific legacy software, but every year more and more LoB apps are web apps, either we write them that way or they’re cloud versions. These all work fine on Linux and Mac, you do not need Windows.

We are even seeing companies like Autodesk provide some products on Mac, and there are competitors on Linux too.

If you actually used Microsoft in the enterprise you would also be up to speed on how they are pushing against “over management” of the fleet, and you should just use update rings and intune and stop wasting time with SCCM / MCM / Whatever it’s called this year. This argument about managibility is Microsoft 2005, not Microsoft 2025. Linux has more management now than Microsofts modern management suite, by design. And if you’re using 3rd party to fix that on windows, you are not just fighting Microsoft but you can not then disregard 3rd party on Linux.

The problem with this argument is not that I am saying you can do everything you can do with Windows on Linux, just like there’s a lot you can’t do on Windows you can on Linux. I am saying that it’s practically like Dodge vs Toyota trucks. There’s way more of an overlap than people like to admit.

Maybe there is a specific app you all are thinking of that you need Windows for, but I don’t actually think the average person needs Windows anymore except inertia. And the needs are going down as more stuff is cloud available.

Literally the statement was just Facebook. She doesn’t install software, nor did she on Windows. She uses Facebook. She never used Explorer so Firefox on XP to Firefox on Linux was no learning. The performance was better on Linux.

I have corrupted Windows plenty of times over the years. You’re just used to Windows so intuitively know how to fix it or not break it again.

The problem with modern computers is many don’t take a ethernet cable. They only have Wi-Fi. Maybe you are buying ones speced with a NIC but that’s a special order for most laptops, and likewise I can special order for Linux.

You never used Linux then. There are well defined packages in the way Windows is trying to get with their store apps and chocolatey can mimic if you build the packages. You could also look up containers, flatpaks etc. Similar to how Windows has msis and store apps and exes.

Linux has Foreman plus puppet. Or chef or Ansible. You can also use those on Windows.

The idea that a company could not decide their shell standards or their support company or people for Linux is like saying they can’t handle the competition in fleet vehicles or cloud providers or pen companies.

Have you used a modern version of Linux or Windows? You can basically use most Linuxes like Android with a guide app store, and there’s almost no way to break it. Windows also will still let you be admin and let you break it. Neither is particularly easy to break anymore.

Peripherals certainly do not just work on Windows. More and more I fight with getting anything to work on a clean Windows OS install. First I have to go find a network driver and copy it via USB. Then hope Windows will find drivers from there, which often it doesn’t get good ones for say Nvidia. Printers often take me to the manufacturer website and hope. For things like mice or Wi-Fi adapters Linux just works, same hunt for less standard stuff.

Maybe I just deal with a wider array of hardware but to say it plug and play on windows and not Linux is just not true.

For someone who just uses Facebook…there is no learning Linux. I moved my mom from XP to XFCE and Firefox just copied right over. She has a lot less issues with Enterprise Linux than she did with XP and Facebook still just works like 8 years later.

I looked at both, and went with fastmail because at the time it had a shared calendar you could use, which I do with my family to track events and do scheduling. Fastmail is standard commercial privacy though. Good enough for me, but no where near Proton Mail from what I understand.