tldr Sudden Death card

risc-V laptops might compete with arm in a few years - maybe not for power users, but for most simpl use , or for those who will just ssh into real computer.

dd

I think you might be missing the part where memes are not real. aur is useful. arch wiki is useful.

going to surpass ‘unknown’ any year now. it’s happening.

https://invidious.reallyaweso.me/watch?v=qK5nqmHz0UA

I love programs like freecad despite the really hard/unintuitive gui. 95% of all the modelling i need to do (as an amateur) can be done easily in a python script.

The finishing touches like adding filets and chamfers are the annoying part were gui is easier, due to the way edges are referenced.

Likewise at work, we have to produce a lot of regular reports in excel. All done via python / sql.

Surely Dracula doesn’t use windows.

replace HDD with SSD, number one thing to do if possible.

lxde or lxqt are quite a bit lighter then xfce.

you could try tiny core linux. it really depends what programs you want to run.

OpenGNU/SE

something like raspi-config ( i know that’s console based GUI, but it’s gui to me), or even the endevourOS launcher screen?

It’s the “bundling” angle again, very hard to prove the dominant position. But them linking it all to the one account is an important feature that ties the bundle together.

who are these adult humans who can’t face choices? I don’t really understand how or why they even chose their PC in the first place.

It sounds like such people will be a lot better off with android or mac, or windows or chromebook. If they want to do games get a console.

It’s sort of like if a person has no enthusiasm for or interest in cars, they might be better off with a rental.

if you really want to make another version of something like chromeos for this audience, there is nothing stopping you. But the free/foss open source world is always going to have choices that bamboozle these people who can’t look at the mint website and pick one, or just resolve to test all three.

Yes agreed. It also seems to change very often. so as soon as you do figure out how to do something, it changes.

I also wish it didn’t allow shared documents at all, it’s actually worse than sharepoint at that. The number of people who think it works though, then you have talk them through how to find the shared ducument (as if i can remember) and actually share it effectively. Waste of time because its pretendng to do something that it is quite bad at.

It was so much more usable when it was just skype/lync and it just did calls, screenshare and chat.

53% of my time is spent looking for CASE statements without an END. This is 99% human error - does that count?

All 0.4% of the user base or whatever it is? Unless you mean among the population of server admins.

Oracle vies with MS as to who fucks me more often each working week. Cuurrently Oracle is pippng MS for biggest fucker award. If you don’t understand, you’ve never had to use Oracle (front end / web UI products - tbf the back end DB usually works ok).

Please don’t get a job where you have windows, cloud, sharepoint , dynamics and one drive forced on you (plus a load of oracle). it makes you fucking hate computers.

Removed by mod

the year of the unknown desktop!

what do you think about:. “you don’t need to choose one” and “you don’t need other people to choose for you” and “distro isn’t that important in many cases”

I can agree 100% on what distros I use for what types of computer. And I can agree 100% on what I’d have used now, if i were a beginner again.

But all i can recommend to a stranger is, backup all your stuff properly,

try a few out (v.m. or liveCD/Ventoy) and be prepared to change.
make sure to check application versions in the base software repository - for any programs where that matters to you. and ease of updating - if that matters to you. and check out some flatpak if you think that might be a useful way to get extra applications or in some cases up to date.

if in doubt, choose gentoo /s