>"We are clearly different then. I always log in, but i have a major incentive due to wanting to squash ads with youtube premium

There are other options. I also have no ads.

>"I'd say the same for YouTube. It's used to watch videos. The number of people who comment on them is minimal compared to the userbase."

That is exactly what I came to post. I use YouTube all the time. I have *never* logged into it. So for tons of people, it is not "social media".

Facebook, on the other hand, is mostly useless without a login. You can see a bit of it, then it stops.

>"I'd be very curious to the exact definition of "social media" they use is. I don't think it's what most people consider to be social media."

Bingo. Plays right into my comments last week about the stupid Virginia law trying to force "age checking" for "social media" and they don't even define what "social media" is or is not. As if everyone knows exactly what it is. Yet, somehow, stripping adults of their privacy and rights will save children (since parents refuse to restrict or withhold internet-connected devices from their children).

Is Slashdot "social media"? How about my local LUG's forum? What about the comments section on Amazon or Walmart product pages? Or reviews of apps on Google Play? A USENET group? Chat sessions in online games? If just watching videos is "social media" does that make broadcast TV or cable TV or a movie theater "social media"?

>"but really HSR should be focused on interstates. "

Exactly. That is about all we can expect would be workable/affordable. Otherwise it requires extremely expensive elevated tracks. The problem with many Interstates is that some of them now are nearly "full", having expanded multiple times for more lanes. There isn't an usable center area and sides are pinned in.

>"The majority of the people you show it you will download it and do a full nuke-and-pave"

Doubtful. Although it might be a significant minority.

>"then wonder why this new 'Windows' can't run their favorite programs".

Like a browser? Because for a huge chunk of home users, that is all they really use now.

>"Even if all 1 million downloads turn into real OS installs, it's a drop in the bucket compared to Windows installs."

True. But if even if a small number of those people then show someone else and that other person switches, and on, and on, awareness keeps spreading. That is a great thing.

Generally, I don't care what OS people use (as long as I don't have to support it), but I do care if they are unhappy. Having Linux as an option is really great and works fantastically for a large number of people willing to really try it. The fact that it is free, fast/efficient, has no licensing mess, is more secure, more privacy-oriented, more controllable, more customizable, more open, easier and faster to update, and without forced cloud crud, no AI creep, no ads or nagware, and very little fake/forced hardware "obsolescence" all make it a very compelling option for lots of use cases. Not all use cases, but a surprisingly large number.

>"However, after Microsoft's recent announcement their own updates have broken their own system [slashdot.org] combined with no longer supporting W10, this can only lead to good things."

Microsoft obviously has its own agenda that doesn't mesh at all with what many (perhaps even most) users want now. And it shows. As MS-Windows has gotten significantly worse and more hostile over the decades, Linux/distros have gotten significantly better. Even people who haven't tried it in 5 years are often pleasantly surprised.

I tend to point people to Mint, but Zorin might be just fine, as well (I just have no experience with it).

>"I need an OS that I can plug a sound card into, start up my machine and it installs the driver and starts working"

Generally, that is Linux. I have installed various Linuxes over decades on hundreds of various machines. For the most part, modern Linux detects all the typical hardware and just configures and uses it. There is no need to "install drivers".

>"I want GUIs for all common tasks and I want it intuitive enough the I'm not spending hours looking up"

Again, that is generally the case with modern Linux. All the good distros can be completely managed through a GUI.

Could you end up with trying to install a not-so-great distro on a machine that has some unusual hardware? And have to take a dive into stuff? Sure. But that is the exception, not the rule, at least not in 2025.

As I already said in the previous post:

"MacOS mostly doesn't really even use ~/.config, because, well, "Apple".

We don't know if Mozilla will do that on MacOS, which does not follow all Unix conventions. Especially desktop ones, of which this is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

>"Linux" appears ZERO times in the specification."

And yet, 99% of who this change will affect will likely be Linux users. MacOS mostly doesn't really even use ~/.config, because, well, "Apple".

>"This is a specification for UNIX. Linux copied from UNIX but is not UNIX."

If it quacks like a duck and looks like a duck, it is probably a duck. Linux is Unix, in all ways that matter to anyone now (and for a long time before now). Worrying about exact Linux vs Unix vs UNIX vs Unix-like vs BSD vs POSIX is kinda no longer relevant.

>"Apps should keep their files in their own directories. Spreading them across a 1000 different directories makes no sense and just make uninstall a hassle"

It will still be in its own directory. Just in ~/.config/mozilla instead of ~/.mozilla

For example, LibreOffice stores its settings in ~/.config/libreoffice, GIMP is in ~/.config/GIMP, Thunar is in ~/.config/Thunar, VLC is in ~/.config/vlc, etc...

>"To date Firefox has just positioned all files under ~/.mozilla rather than the likes of ~/.config and ~/.local/share.

That is not technically correct. They have been using ~/.cache correctly for a very long time. So it is not *all* files. But it is true the other files have been in ~/.mozilla. I manage an ACTUAL multiuser system (something you rarely see today; yes, hundreds of different users each often running Firefox on that one machine), and even I don't care much that it is ~/.mozilla instead of ~/.config/.mozilla, but I will have to adjust a lot of scripts.

Sure. I would expect that each country would want to protect themselves from other countries.

>"This is about whether a hostile third party can affect a vehicle remotely because of manufacturer incompetence."

Oh, well, both are important :)

I have often wondered if it is reasonable to just find the antenna(s) and put a keyswitch across it/them, so you have absolute control over when/if they can be accessed remotely at all.

>"I will pause judgment until they conduct the same test on domestically made buses."

Most new vehicles have all kinds of spyware and remote control crap (mine certainly does). But, presumably, domestic ones are nowhere near as much of a threat than a foreign, potentially hostile nation-state.

>"12345" topping their list while "123456" dominates among everyone else.

Not a SINGLE system I use, and I use a LOT of systems, would allow such a stupid password. Granted, there are also tons of systems that go extreme in the other direction with requiring FAR too complex (which is also incredibly stupid). And the stupidest of all is password aging.

A reasonable password, coupled with rate limiting and lockouts, is very secure. It will not be broken by brute force on the "outside" of properly-configured systems.

>"I just had trouble looking at a comment on one of my posts yesterday because I can't get through the Cloudflare bot detector."

I had the same problem yesterday and this morning. I could not open any direct links to postings. Period.

Ironic because I recently posted on Slashdot about how dangerous it is that all these sites are handing over their accessibility to a single huge company like Cloudflare, and complaining that Slashdot was throwing bot checks against me all the time in the last few weeks (which it had never done before).