The main reason I’m using Mint, the ancient NVIDIA card GT750M in my old laptop. Using the nouveau driver is buggy and slow, so I have to run the old NVIDIA binary drivers. These aren’t supported by newer kernel versions, so I‘m stuck on an old version. Wayland doesn’t run with the old NVIDIA driver in the first place because it lacks Vulkan support. The machine even has hybrid graphics with an Intel Iris Pro in addition to the NVIDIA card. However running only the Intel graphics seems to be impossible.

A Laptop from 2018 has an older DDR version, than the current ones. So less affected by high RAM prices as current ones.

HMDI can also do ethernet, which is very convenient. If you have two devices that support it.

It’s finally getting more widespread use. I‘ve had a machine readable ID with biometrics for two decades before I was able to actually use it for the first time online.

Removed by mod

You’re not forced to enter your true name or true birthdate. Do you have your true birthdate on your Steam account for example?

Not every tiny step is an inevitable slippery slope.

Germany-Italy-Japan the Faxes-Axis remains strong.

There is no age verification. There’s an optional field for a birthdate, just like there already is for your full name, email address, and address.

Angry nerds get upset about a nothingburger.

Yes, this whole thing is very silly. Linux installers ask for your full name already. You can just make one up. Same with the birthday.

The slippery slope total surveillance state paranoia is hysterical.

In my experience there’s usually a confluence of individual and institutional failures.

It usually goes like this.

1. hotshot developers is hired at company with crappy software
2. hotshot dev pitches a complete rewrite that will solve all issues
3. complete rewrite is rejected
4. hotshot dev shoehorns a new architecture and trendy dependencies into the old codebase
5. hotshot new dev leaves
6. software is more complex, inconsistent, and still crappy

Yes, it’s built with electron. It’s a fancy web page and browser packaged as an app.

Yes, for Linux it‘s like this typically (varies by distro):

• Discover (App Store) has two versions of the same application: repository and flatpack
• The website of the project might offer specific instructions or packages for a handful of distros, maybe a extra repository, maybe an appimage

Figuring out the best way to install the software often involves at least comparing two versions and deciding, which one you want.

macOS has many ways to install, but most software only choose one or two. And you usually get the same version regardless of install path.

For Linux you have several options to install and you don’t end up with the same version.

I use a Mac with unified memory, so that distinction slipped my mind.

native install wins

If you’re not using Arch, native install typically means outdated version.

For example all Ubuntu 24.04 based distros like PopOS and Mint ship neovim 0.9 from 2023! 0.11 is the current version. What’s the reason to keep a package that’s not part of the core functionality of the operating system on such an ancient version?

Snaps are kind of the right idea. Provide a stable base system with current version user apps. It’s just not well implemented.

As a longtime Mac user, that’s not quite as easy. Some apps are only available through the Mac App Store. For applications you download there are several variants:

• installers: double click and go through an install wizard with next buttons
• zip files: double click to unpack, then put the app wherever you want (typically /Applications or ~/Applications)
• disk images: double click to mount. Then drag and drop the app to /Applications
• through macports or homebrew via command line
• there are a couple of Apple system tools, that are often installed via command line like Rosetta and Xcode command line tools

Of course you can have a zip file, that contains a disk image, that then contains an installer.

For applications downloaded from the internet, you also get at least a warning when opening it. If it’s not notarized, you have to go to system settings to be able to run it. For many applications, you also need to go to settings and fiddle with sandbox settings to make them work.

New users are often challenged by all these options. There are many who end up running an app from a disk image for example.

You might also need to select the correct architecture because some applications don’t provide universal binaries for some reason.

While installation is an issue for Linux, the bigger issue is the low availability of quality commercial software. The immense fracturing between distributions creates tons of issues as well.

They serve the same purpose: Install software, that’s not in your distro‘s repository.

I use Appimage and flatpack, but not snaps.

It’s hundreds of megabytes for something that unetbootin, image writer, and others do in a couple of MBs.