If you consider only about 5% of Steam games being Linux-friendly these days

No matter how you twist and turn things, this is just flat out wrong…

Yeah, this is what I don’t understand about windows. I get that as an IT professional, I don’t have a much of patience for sluggish system and that average users might not care that much about system responsiveness, but from my anecdotal experience, it has started to bug the average user too.

Even on a high-end device, windows just doesn’t feel smooth at all. And for some reason, it seems to get worse with every major release. How can you be a major industry leader, have users with more and more performative hardware, but your software seems to perform worse and worse?

No. States are inherantly authoritarian entities, but authoritarianism is not simply a synonym for fascism. Authoritarianism is essential to fascism and fascism is always authoritarian, but not all forms of authoritarianism are fascist.

A normal person should not have to deal with different distros.

Ideally, clients would get shipped with linux of course, but at the moment, that’s hardly an option. There could also be value in having clients shipped with different distros installed.

Apple forbids you to install it on a banana. Fuck apple.

For this reason I would never buy an apple device again. However, I do see the value of having a super stable and controlled environment where it is super hard for users to fuck things up.

The few times a have some minor issue on linux, it is probably audio related or related to working with multiple different screens with different refresh rates, resolutions, etc, so you probably have a point.

However, I did have various issues with audio and multiple screens on windows as well, I would say even more frequently. However, on windows those issues were generally resolved after a restart, on linux I actually had to do some troubleshooting.

it is that they don’t have the time and energy to constantly fight their devices to perform simple tasks.

Nobody wants to constantly fight their devices to perform simple tasks, but that’s exactly the reason why I almost exclusively use linux and get incredibly annoyed when I have to use windows (for business reasons)…

Sure, linux based systems often take up more time until you find the right system for your needs and for your hardware, you will have some effort to find alternatives to some software that you might be used to and depending on what software you need, linux just won’t be an option for you, but once that everything is set up, at least in my personal experience, things run a lot more consistently and expectedly in my personal experience.

Maybe it’s just me, maybe I’m just lucky, but I have been using linux exclusively for about 3 years now on a desktop, multiple laptops and obviously servers. Have I experienced any issues? Yes, there were small issues from time to time, but nothing that I would not have with windows. But in terms of day to day operations and performing basic tasks, linux has been the superior user experience for me without a doubt.

I used to believe that linux is great for servers, and sucks for desktops and laptops, but ever since I made the switch, I have completely changed my mind. I still use windows because I have to, but the most annoying part of switching to linux was that windows has become even more annoying to use.

I use Ubuntu as my main operating system in my Desktop, but I always end up feeling very limited.

I used to use Ubuntu for a long time and had a similar experience where there were constantly annoying issues. I have since distrohopped around and ended up with fedora, which even though it is a more cutting edge distro, the experience has been a lot smoother and more stable, even compared to windows.

Maybe Linux is not good for beginners working full time?

I mean any OS takes time until you get fully into it and I would say Linux does take maybe a little more effort simply because there are more options in terms of pretty much everything. First, you need to be familiar with the concept of having different distros and be familiar with the differences between distros. Then you need to actually figure out how to install a new OS, which can be tricky to most people who are not that familiar with IT.

Another thing is that an experience with an OS can depend largely based on what hardware you are using. That’s why apple strictly controls the hardware on which their OS can run on. Microsoft has also started restricting this slightly. Linux goes the complete opposite direction by trying to allow running linux on any possible system.

What’s wrong with your pc

Are you on windows 11 yet? The only place where I still use windows is my company notebook. And it’s not top notch high end, but it has a ssd, it has a 6 core cpu and it has 16 GB of RAM, yet it still runs like absolute ass.

With virtually NOTHING going on, it takes about 3 - 5 seconds for task manager to open. Clicking on “processes” takes 5 seconds, not just the first time, but every-time I switch to processes (or pretty much any tab for that matter). I too believed that there was probably an issue with my device or something, but I just had to use a replacement notebook that has even newer hardware and it runs exactly the same…

Now is that unusable? No, I’m probably a bit nit-picky. But it does absolutely infuriate me that Microsoft seems to struggle more and more with performance with every new windows version, especially when I also work with Linux systems that just are 10 times smoother with half the hardware specs…

Before windows 11, I would more or less agree with you. Task manager would be reliable even when the machine was struggling. But since I use windows 11, I had task manager crash multiple times.

Well it’s not bad in theory, it just runs like ass… This version already runs 10 times faster than the real thing, sometimes I wonder what the hell is going on over at Microsoft.

I mean I couldn’t do that either, not for very long at least. I have the tendency to walk around aimlessly when doing something like that (same when I’m on the phone), which means I have to clean the floor after. So mostly I either brush my theeth in the shower or I sit down/lie down.

Damn, I just noticed that my theeth brushing habits are probably very weird, bit hey, at least that way I do it 2 - 3 times a day.

I used to fuck around with desktop shortcuts for fun. For example, replacing the internet browser shortcut with a shortcut to a script that starts the browser, but also does other weird stuff, often only after a certain time.

So somebody would “start the browser” and every 30 seconds, the script would open another browser window, or word, or close a browser window, or shut down the computer, etc.

I thought it was just harmless fun that was easy to fix and figure out, but the school IT would look everywhere to fix the strange issues and believed that students had installed a “hacked version” of firefox…

I probably can’t help you since I assume you are not from the same country as me. I would recommend that you use a more or less local service, but in order for us to give good recommendations, you will probably have to tell us where you are located.

Yeah that is indeed true unfortunately. I think small communities will be around eventually, it just takes time.

Did you even bother to read the sidebar and rules before you joined lemmy.world?

Lemmy.world doesn’t allow for discrimination, racism, homophobia, transphobia, etc. It doesn’t even allow for name calling and requires posts with controversial topics to declare that it is a controversial topic… In other words, most lemmy servers, especially the lemmy server you have chosen to join, have much stricter moderation rules than reddit, twitter, etc…

If you don’t want “snowflake crap”, you should probably join another instance, or host your own server where you make the rules… And you are free to do so, but demanding that a server, which you don’t own and have no control over, panders to your specific wishes seems a bit entitled…

One could even say that your attitude seems a bit “snow-flaky”…

Yep, anytime anyone accesses anything on the internet, there are certain privacy concerns to be had. They are generally not an issue if you aren’t being reckless, but there is still always a risk.

If you are worried about anyone knowing your IP, the only way to avoid that is to not access the internet at all. The IP address is the address which is used to send you data, which is a necessity if you want to access anything. When you access a website for example, you are asking the web server to send you a webpage which you then see on your screen, otherwise you could not see it. In order for the server to send you that webpage, it needs your IP.

It’s as if you asked “If I order a package online, do they know my address?”. Well yes, they have to know your address, otherwise they cannot send you the package.

building trust with a host.

This is indeed one of the risks with lemmy and other federated, decentralized and self-hosted services. Those services are generally hosted by hobbyists, not by companies, which seemingly makes it a bit harder to evaluate if you can trust a given server or not.

But it’s worth it to keep in mind that even though companies generally have a lot more resources to take care of security, there are still a lot of examples where they simply don’t do that, for example to cut cost. You also have no idea who works as an admin at “socialmediacompany x”. For example, there are a lot of admins working at twitter or reddit who you have never heard about (and never will hear about) who probably have access to your data.

And companies often just sell your data, an issue that you probably don’t have to worry with lemmy anytime soon (hopefully).

The way I deal with that and why I don’t worry very much about lemmy is to take care about what information I share. I don’t care that a server admin could theoretically find out which country I’m from through my IP. I don’t post sensitive information and I don’t send sensitive direct messages. I use throw away e-mail addresses. I also don’t plan on reading illegal content. And I don’t feel attached to a specific server/lemmy instance, I don’t care if my account is lost.

Am I sharing my IP address/ location with my host instance?

Yes. If you connect to any server whatsoever, the server will have to know your IP, otherwise it can not send any data to you and the whole connection cannot be established. With your IP, one can figure out your (rough) location.

is there a log of my view history

As far as I can tell, yes. There is the option “show read posts” in your option menu which hides posts you have already read. In order for this to work, your read history has to be saved somewhere.

are there general privacy concerns that I am not thinking of?

There are always privacy concerns when accessing/using any service or server on the internet, at the end of the day it comes down to protecting yourself and using services you trust.

A potentially specific issue with federated, decentralized and self-hosted services such as lemmy is that the people who are running the servers are mostly hobbyists. Most will probably also work in IT professionally, but in general, people who host lemmy are doing it in their spare time at their own cost. This could potentially mean that they have less resources to secure their servers and the data on it than a multi-million dollar company.

Another thing to keep in mind on lemmy is that private/direct messages are not encrypted, which means that server admins can read your direct messages (there is a warning about this when you write a direct message).

I do not want to be in a position where a Government creates an instance, and allows them to monitor.

I’m not quite sure if I understand your worry here correctly. In general, most of the content that is posted on lemmy is publicly available anyway, so they wouldn’t even need an account to get that information, let alone their own instance.

And if governments have an issue with a user where they want information on a user, they can just contact the site admin and demand the information from them. So if you are planning on posting stuff that is considered illegal where you are from or if you are planning to access content that is considered illegal, Lemmy is probably a bad place to do that

The sorting algorithm seems like it needs a bit of work. I don’t have the issue that I see month old posts, I tend to see very new and not very upvoted posts instead, but that’s fine with me. I just saw your post on hot near the top page, for example.

I was only active on certain small subreddits, here I am active in more different communities.

Yes, I absolutely use adblock, I couldn’t imagine browsing without it. I support creators I like by donating them money or joining their patreon.