Those are all great reasons, but unfortunately the use cases I get lately are:

Can I use OBS with multiple monitors with different screen refresh rates to stream games to Twitch? What about Discord?
Will it play Steam games without screen tearing using the latest Proton, Linux Kernel, and Nvidia game-ready drivers and Wayland?

Things that even Ubuntu LTS can't do - at least not until 26.04 LTS is released

Debian is my recommendation for servers, Kubuntu and Ubuntu Studio for average users (LTS for non-gamers, latest for gamers), and then I tell complete newbies that just want to play games to try Bazzite since it's immutable and can roll back if it breaks. I'm just sad Mint's missing the boat for all this linux gaming and streaming enthusiasm as people are finally jumping ship from Windows 11.

Glad to hear there's still users that support Mint, though. They're a great team and do a lot of work on little things that improve the UI so much. (Cinnamon had colored folders long before many others did and other tweaks like easy driver and kernel selection/roll-backs)

  I've just moved on to KDE Plasma as it's similar enough and supports what I need, but you never know. Could always come back if I find a solid use-case in the future.

Mint has a small team, and right now, Linux is in a time of rapid development for gaming on PCs with Steam, Wayland, enhanced gaming drivers, and such. I think it makes sense for them to pull back and maybe even just release based on Ubuntu LTS releases every 2 years.

I was a big fan of Mint for a long time because Cinnamon was such a nice alternative to Gnome and Unity. I eventually left for Kubuntu because the Mint devs had ZERO plans to work on Wayland. They wouldn't even entertain a discussion about a plan to make a plan to even think about working on Wayland while every other DE was in active development and even pushing for its release as default over X11 in upcoming releases. Now, they're busy playing catch-up bolting support for Wayland onto Cinnamon.

Maintaining a distro is a lot of work, especially for a small team, and they've got a LOT to improve on before I could recommend them to any of my gamer friends that are interested in trying out Linux - They're playing with Bazzite, Kubuntu, CatchyOS, and others.

Long term, I really think Mint should just fold itself into being an official Cinnamon Ubuntu flavor and work on just improving Cinnamon... or they could rebase on a different flavor entirely, like they did with the Debian version. I mean, they can and will do whatever they want, but my experience with them was that they couldn't see the writing on the wall that Wayland was super important for the future of Linux DEs, and I can't recommend them right now to anyone as other distros have caught up and gotten so much better. What's the point of maintaining Mint these days? Who's the target market that wouldn't do better on another option? I dunno.

They just did. Jobs are still being created.

A recovery more like it

First off AI needs to sit in a desk and be watched for productivity. How do we know they are really working if we don't badge swipe and see them?

AI needs full collaboration and creativity that hallway moments and using shared poopy toilets, which brings in that real company value. It can't happen.

Just ask any pointless HR rep or CEO on this?!

Science? Really? There's a lot of soft-brained, unscientific and technophilic pseudo-religion in the article.

Let's work with the argument's load-bearing phrase, "exploration is an intrinsic part of the human spirit."

There are so many things to criticise in that single statement of bias. Suffice it to say there's a good case to be made that "provincial domesticity and tribalism are prevalent inherited traits in humans", without emotional appeals to a "spirit" not in evidence.

The REAL headline and buried lede for the original post should be:

Trump guts nuclear safety regulations

“The president signed a pair of orders on Friday aimed at streamlining the licensing and construction of nuclear power plants — while panning the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for its ‘myopic’ radiation safety standards.”

We now have industry capture of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Who here knows about Admiral Hyman RIckover? All of this is worth reading:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyman_G._Rickover#Safety_record

Are You Scared Yet?

I would be.

The Department of Energy is selling off more than 40,000 pounds of weapons-grade plutonium from the Cold War arsenal to nuclear reactor startups. All of which I’m sure will be thoroughly vetted and monitored, because this is done under the direction of a former board member. Yikes!

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

Who IS Oklo, Inc. the "private nuclear reactor builder/operator"? Oklo is Sam Altman:

Trump Administration Providing Weapons Grade Plutonium to Sam Altman

We're in territory where weapons-grade plutonium is being given at fire-sale prices to billionaires who's ethical boundaries include creating their own demand for otherwise unnecessary, high-risk energy projects. Guys like Altman, who get their ideas from Wikipedia articles about Ayn Rand — because they are one rung lower than people who actually READ that garbage.

But I'm sure no inventory of hot nuke metal will ever go missing.

Apple had a culture of authenticity. Culture dies pretty hard in most cases. I think we will see the last of that culture dissipate, as it eroded so greatly under Cook and Ive. Then the extractive, enshittifying corruption will spread from Apple, too.

There really was something, that began with Jobs and Woz. It wasn't perfect, and Jobs had a way of twisting ethical stances in ends-justifying-means sophistry. But Steve Jobs would never have prostrated before Trump, proffering a solid gold token.

Oh, you want profit? This is a surveillance spyware wrapper around the entire MacOS user experience - so if you thought Microsoft's Copilot Recall was invasive monitoring, you haven't seen anything yet.

If Apple won't monetize a user panopticon and partner with governments to do it, OpenAI will be right there, to take the cash.

I will argue against strict adherence to this statement. Gnome applications written to the project guidelines have become very fine, since the introduction of GTK-4 and libadwaita. I prefer many of these to their equivalents on MacOS.

It's true that most of these fall into a general category of "utilities", and that Windows enjoys a broader ecosystem driven by commercial incentive. But Windows programs are hardly "better' for this, and the widely varied usability is generally sub-par compared to level that's become norm for Gnome/Adwaita software.

I am sure my dedicated 5080 with cuda can run circles around your mac

and it's here today. No homelessness. No medical bankruptcy. No food insecurity. Affordable education. Decent places for everyone to live.

We are also (I assume) college educated professionals. Not the guys with hs diplomas being fired for being 4 minutes late from their potty break at Walmart where they are treated like kids and can't have their phones out etc. all for 35k a year.

These are American statistics of course. Terrible management who are a different breed rule blue collar jobs. It goes back to slavery and class structure for these roles.

Only 25% are college educated. Terrible work environments motives my education