I wish they had gone with an even smaller Mini-STX format like the AsRock DeskMinis but it’s still cool.

Good point but I will say even with immutable distros users are given a lot more control than Windows or Mac.

Yeah BlueSky is a solid side-step. It’s still for-profit and not federated but every BlueSky user is one not on X. And a lot of BlueSky’s userbase is comprised of particularly influential X users so them leaving is particularly harmful to the ecosystem.

I also think it’s funny how the journalists who repeat BlueSkys “decentralized” nonsense thought Mastodon was too weird and technical, and yet are promoting Pixelfed. Not complaining, but it is funny.

In Bazzite, installing software, for example, works differently than under a typical distribution.

This is true, but it’s also on the whole a lot more familiar to a non-Linux user (open app store, search, download).

Took a long time, but nice to see this topic getting mainstream attention.

This is literally the answer lmao why are you getting downvoted.

“Stuff in my feed I don’t want to see in my feed” is kind of the exact problem the Fediverse set out to solve. Nothing gets “injected” to a feed here so if you are seeing it, it’s a choice to continue to do so.

Zorin is another distro that (very successfully imo) does a windows-style taskbar with GNOME and is parent friendly, though like I said before, I think today I would go with something immutable for a non-techie because they’re very hard to break.

KDE is the easiest for coming from Windows, you almost never never need the command line or anything “extra” to customize it (beyond what even Windows will allow).

GNOME (especially in Ubuntu) by default is more Macintosh-like which might appeal to some people, it’s “simpler” but any customizations will require navigating the add-ons (and in my experience inevitably the command line too).

I think KDE is the one for most people who just want a functioning PC. GNOME could be good for the PC you might make for your parent. Bonus points for an immutable distro which are even harder to break.

If you told me r/RedditAlternatives was operated by Reddit employees it wouldn’t completely shock me. But a more likely explanation for why there is no “Fedi consensus” there is that because Lemmy/Piefed is the best option, the people who try it out are more likely to actually leave Reddit.

In short, there are people trying to “make Discuit happen” because unlike Lemmy it’s well, not happening.

This is still the best at capturing it, imo: https://xkcd.com/1732/

“Different developers but can still access the same content” is a great succinct way of describing it.

Still shocking to me that /r/RedditAlternatives isn’t just one big “USE LEMMY/PIEFED/MBIN” sticky post but on the other hand there are a lot of Fedi-resitant people there so maybe it’s a good thing to give that illusion of choice.

If they were smart they would find a way to paywall all the years-old posts where someone is like “hey how do I fix this specific part on my 1992 sewing machine” and it has a single reply with the answer.

This comment does a good job of explaining federation without it being scary:

a decentralized net of social media platforms which shares content among each other.

Definitely saving that for the future.

Bing and all Bing-based engines stopped being able to show Reddit results.

Not accurate, actually!

Mastodon also has a Weird And Scary reputation because journalists didn’t understand it. It’s interesting how they now regularly tout Pixelfed as an “Instagram alternative” but Mastodon still has the stench of “too techie”. I’m starting to think it’s a good thing Lemmy has not yet had it’s moment in the sun because it means the Mastodon team did the heavy lifting for the entire Fediverse.

Subscribed! Thanks for sharing. I have been considering creating a new reddit account to help spread the good word to the unsaved masses.

OP if you enjoy a fun weekend project, don’t go with a pi-hole. It literally only takes about 5 minutes. Also I recommend the blocklistproject lists https://blocklistproject.github.io/Lists/