I personally think opinionated software is better. If the maintainers need to add a bunch of features to please everyone, that's going to be more work to maintain, and more work to set up an instance for example, as you would need to consider more options in the configuration. Being opinionated allows the maintainer to focus on polishing the main functionality, instead of battling tech debt in a project that has grown larger than initially intended.
I'll use another controversial project as example. The Gnome desktop environment has gotten a lot of negative attention due to the opinionated implementation, e.g 3rdparty extensions/theming breaking on updates. As a gnome user myself I've been annoyed many times. But I've been using fewer and fewer extensions and gotten more used to the "gnome way" lately, and have come to really appreciating Gnome for what it is. I keep coming back to gnome after trying alternatives, as it works pretty good out of the box and is a cohesive experience.
We have the same/similar regulations in norway as well. I don't have an e bike, but I guess the speed limit must be annoyingly low. I often pass them on my regular bike in like 30 km/h.
The qemu pulseaudio support wasn't very good though. Very finicky to set up, and a lot of stuttering issues. Maybe this was an opportunity to implement something better with pipewire.
Wait frostwire still exists? I remember using it to download mp3's back when I still used Windows XP. These days I use transmission for torrents. But only rarely to download a linux ISO.
I don't really care about imessage or icloud. But apple have a much better track record for providing updates for old iphones. Android is quite enshittified these days. Filled with sponsored unremovable apps, abandonware stock rom, and if you try to use something else like lineage os, it is no longer possible to use banking apps etc. Really all iphone need for me to consider it is sideloading apps which is presumably on its way.
Drivers are usually there in the kernel and usually works out of the box. You shouldn't need to manually install drivers with linux generally (except for proprietary drivers cough nvidia cough). But if your laptop is quite new, you need to have a new enough kernel. That would explain why ubuntu 23.04 works but not not 22.04. The kernel in 22.04 is probably too old to have the drivers for your network interface. Check what kernel version is shipped with ubuntu 23.04 and make sure that whatever distro you try have at least that version. Stable LTS distros often don't work on brand new hardware.
EU is the real MVP. Hoping that a few more years now and we'll have iphone with USB C, app sideloading, user replacable battery. I've never owned an iphone before but if that happens, I might consider one.
A bit of a tangent to the discussion but that issue with screensharing audio could perhaps be worked around, by piping the system output to the browser mic input, given that the mic still works when screensharing. Easy with pipewire and an audio I/O graph tool like helvum.
I always end up back in gnome. With a few adjustments it feels like home. Desktop icons, dash to dock, adw3-gtk theme for older apps, plus some small adjustments with the tweaks app.
It works fine on a desktop with a single GPU mostly. Though I have had issues with multi monitor setup at work with xfce and xorg. I actually had a better experience with gnome and wayland, in terms of multi monitor support.
That said, all my own non work computers I use AMD/intel these days though. It just works now. I did have a bad experience years ago with an nvidia optimus laptop, where I couldn't use the displayport without permanently enabling the nvidia GPU, killing battery life.
I agree. Nvidia drivers work fine for desktop systems with a single GPU and a single display. Everything else is a bit hit and miss. Here are a couple of real world experiences I've had with using linux on systems with nvidia.
Laptops with switchable graphics are the worst. You might have set up switchable graphics with bumblebee or something thinking that everything works fine. Until you need to connect your laptop to a projector for holding a presentation or something. Then you find that you can't connect an external display without disabling the integrated graphics in UEFI settings (causing terrible battery life), because the hdmi out is only connected to the nvidia GPU.
I've also had issues on a desktop with two monitors recently, where nvidia wouldn't respect my preferences for main monitor. The XFCE main panel would be stuck on my secondary monitor, as nvidia has decided that it is the primary display, even if I've selected something else in settings. If I worked around this by creating a new panel on the correct monitor, this panel would not be visible if I try to connect remotely with XRDP.
Sounds like you have some investment into hardware and software not really designed with linux in mind. Running windows in a VM could work. There might be issues with graphics though if your VSTs/DAW have a lot of eye candy, as you'll usually use a virtual GPU with a VM. You could always try a windows VM inside windows whether it works OK, before committing to linux + VM. An alternative could be to have a dual boot setup. You could use linux for day to day things, and reboot into windows to do music production.
I think this is a problem of the capitalist system the ad-based websites exist in. There is an expectation for continuous growth, and if showing ads is the main source of income, the only way to grow after a certain point (user base not growing a lot any more) is to be more and more intrusive to shove more and more ads in the users faces. At some point we're fed up with the ads to the point it is not worth visiting the site anymore.
If growth weren't expected we could have stopped at a reasonable level of ads that are not as intrusive and had a steady income to cover the cost of running the site as long as the users are satisfied. But unfortunately everything anyone wants to use the internet for these days becomes a get rich quick scheme, causing the eventual enshittification of most sites.
This is why I like self hosted services, community funded, non profits, etc. For example wikipedia, and beehaw 🙂. It feels good donating when I can trust that the site owners have good intentions. It does not feel good to pay a subscription to a mega-corporation to avoid ads.
I agree with your 2 cents. If OP eventually identify as cis, trans, or non-binary, that is great, but don't rush it. It's your own journey to take in your own pace, OP.
I have had similar thoughts as well as a cis gay man. Do I find this guy attractive, or do I want to be this guy. It's sometimes hard to tell the difference.
I personally think opinionated software is better. If the maintainers need to add a bunch of features to please everyone, that's going to be more work to maintain, and more work to set up an instance for example, as you would need to consider more options in the configuration. Being opinionated allows the maintainer to focus on polishing the main functionality, instead of battling tech debt in a project that has grown larger than initially intended.
I'll use another controversial project as example. The Gnome desktop environment has gotten a lot of negative attention due to the opinionated implementation, e.g 3rdparty extensions/theming breaking on updates. As a gnome user myself I've been annoyed many times. But I've been using fewer and fewer extensions and gotten more used to the "gnome way" lately, and have come to really appreciating Gnome for what it is. I keep coming back to gnome after trying alternatives, as it works pretty good out of the box and is a cohesive experience.