Ubuntu does work and is a decent distro in many ways. The problems are around how canonical leverages things for its own financial benefit for the detriment of users and the Linux community.

A good example is Snap. It is forced on users - even Firefox is a snap on Ubuntu. This is not an efficient way fo end users to run their system or their most used software.

Instead of making the builds available as standard software, users have to use the Snap or go hunting elsewhere for builds. That’s anti-user and is identical to how Microsoft behaves with windows. It doesn’t do things to benefit users, it does things to benefit Microsoft.

It’s arguable whether what snap does is actually worth the overhead - I can see that it is more secure in many ways. But then so it Flatpak, and that is more universally used for desktop software across Linux distros. Snap has some inherent benefits for server side use but then why force it on end users where it is not as good as Flatpak in many ways? Or Appimage?

So Ubuntu is fine in many ways, but why bother when you can go for alternatives and give the best of both worlds? Mint is an Ubuntu based distro without snap and other canonical elements. I used mint for ages, it’s great and there is a reason it’s so popular.

I’ve moved on to OpenSuSE now but the Ubuntu ecosystem is fine, it works well for many, and it’s very well documented and supported which often works downstream in Mint and others. It’s just Ubuntu itself thats a bit crappy due to the decisions made to suite canonical rather than what users want or would suit them best. In the end it all comes down to personal choice and what people are willing to accept from their distro.

There is no market, or not much of one. This whole thing is a huge speculative bubble, a bit like crypto. The core idea of crypto long term make some sense but the speculative value does not. The core idea of LLMs (we are no where near true AI) makes some sense but it is half baked technology. It hadn’t even reached maturity and enshittification has set in.

OpenAI doesn’t have a realistic business plan. It has a griftet who is riding a wave of nonsense in the tech markets.

No one is making profit because no one has found a truly profitable use with what’s available now. Even places which have potential utility (like healthcare) are dominated by focused companies working in limited scenarios.

I pay for my email (Proton) password manager (last pass), and VPN (nordvpn).

I’d say subs that maintain your privacy and security are well worth it - there is no such thing as a free lunch and instead the tech giants are dining out at the expense of users.

Googles ad monopoly needs to be torn apart. Because YouTube premium prices may actually represent what it really costs to maintain video sites like YouTube, but Google have managed to destroy all competition with the free model and now there is no one realistically able to compete on content or price.

if you’re american, manufactured 18 July 2023?

Intel claims to have caught up with the upcoming Lunar Lake series but still to be seen.

That may be too late for whatever new device Valve is working on as given the lead time for such devices they may already have committed to an architecture for devices next year.

Also running X86 games on Arm devices is not likely to be efficient. I doubt the energy efficiency of Arm chips would outweigh the overhead of X86 to Arm translation?

But it’s all speculation - even without hardware, getting Proton to work with Arm is good for steam regardless of any specific devices. For example it would allow steam to push the compatability tools onto Mac devices and even potentially mobile devices. Makes sense for Valve to do this without it meaning anything more that it being a god idea in itself.

The oldest intact building in my city is from 1320 - so 700 years old. Baguely Hall, which is an old landowners hall.

The city itself - Manchester - dates back to the roman era and we have the remnants of an old castrum/fort in the city centre dating back to 79 AD - so 1945 years old. Surprisingly there were more complete ruins at the site but much of it was levelled during the industrial revolution.

There are plenty of options for personal computers; you have to make the choice to go private and personal.

I built my own desktop, which remains very common and is relatively easy to do. I have Linux and Windows on it, and use Linux nearly 100% as I agree I don’t like ads etc. I use a Firefox with ad blockers and don’t get ads; I use lots of open source software even to access services like Youtube (Free tube).

There are also even linux laptops, and the Frame.Work laptop which is fully modular and bring your own OS.

There are open source OS for phones.

You’re right about the corporatisation of the internet and services, but it remains up to users to vote with their feet and chose to take back their privacy and person computing.

Linux is at 4% of desktop users in recent months - that is many millions of people actively choosing to exist in a space where they control their personal computers. People don’t need to remove computers, just chose to set them up to be what they want them to be.

As others have said, gaming is thriving - AAA and bloated incumbants are not doing well but the indie sector is thriving.

VR is not on the verge of collapse, but it is growing slowly as we still have not reached the right price point for a mobile high powered headset. Apple made a big play for the future of VR with its Apple Vision Pro but that was not a short term play; that was laying the ground works for trying to control or shape a market that is still probably at least 5 if not 10 years away from something that will provide high quality VR, untethefed from a. PC.

AI meanwhile is a bubble. We are not in an age of AI, we are in an age of algorithms - they will and are useful but will not meet the hype or hyperbole being banded about. Expect that market to pop and probably with spectacular damage to some companies.

Other computing hardware is not really stagnating - we are going through a generational transition period. AMD is pushing Zen 5 and Intel it’s 14th gen, and all the chip makers are desperately trying to get on the AI band wagon. People are not upgrading because they don’t see the need - there aren’t compelling software reasons to upgrade yet (AI is certainly not compelling consumers to buy new systems). They will emerge eventually.

The lack of any landmark PC AAA games is likely holding back demand for consumer graphics cards, and we’re seeing similar issues with consoles. The games industry has certainly been here many times before. There is no Cyberpunk 2077 coming up - instead we’ve had flops like Star Wars Outlaws, or underperformers like Starfield. But look at the biggest game of last year - Baldurs Gate 3 came from a small studio and was a megahit.

I don’t see doom and gloom, just the usual ups and downs of the tech industry. We happen to be in a transition period, and also being distracted by the AI bubble and people realising it is a crock of shit. But technology continues to progress.

Why “dr*g”? That’s a wierd bit of censorship - making a joke about drugs and sex workers and feeling the need to censor the word drug? I don’t get it?

I don’t think hyperbole like damage lasting for millenia is worth much. People don’t think in such terms and the only people who will listen to that are those who are already on the side of climate action.

The articles call to arms is right, but this is not the way to beat trump. Instead of damage for millenia, the focus needs to be on convincing people that his short termist policies will damage then financially and personally.

Instead of cheap renewable electricity he wants to use voters tax money to subsidies and promote fossil fuels. Instead of clean cars in cities and towns, he wants to choke you and your children with petrol fumes.

An image of trump in a jacket covered in fossil fuel company sponsorship logos, and trying to force an exhaust pipe down a child’s throat is the kind of thing that summarises his position. We’re not trying to convince die hard republicans, just the moderate centre / undecideds that trump will harm them and their children directly with his policies, let alone millenia of damage.

950,000 Capri Suns

(200ml per Capri sun, 5 Capri sun per litre, 190,000 litres water)

But it would take a long time to open each packet and spray it on the fire.

After being forced to standardise to usb c and be responsible for some of the e-waste it produces, apple has finally relented.

They fought tooth and nail against the EU regulations to force charging standards. I don’t care if they up sell cables to some people; most people will reuse what they have and thats the whole point of the regulations.

Regulation works.

Probably a pixelation joke too for nudity that the kids won’t get but the adults will.

Why would I say no? If it can be turned off I don’t care. Mozilla might get some money from the idiotic AI frenzy which will help keep them going.

Of course if its implemented badly to affect privacy and security then no. But forks of Firefox like Fennac and Librewolf will strip this stuff out. I’m no fan of this AI nonsense but I haven’t seen anything yet to suggest this is anything more than a gimmick.

I’m sorry you and your brother have been through so much and been so damaged. I experienced an abusive up bringing and I know it never leaves you, and shapes who you are for the rest pf your life. For me i was lucky and it shaped me to try to be a better person then my parents and not repeat their mistakes; it sounds like you are also treading that path.

My siblings were not so lucky, they are all damaged and have been unable to live “normal” lives. I lost one brother who died through severe mental illness, another sibling is crippled by mental illness and another is struggling but fortunately getting by.

I’ve learnt the hard way that you can’t fix other people, no matter how clearly you see what is going wrong. You can encourage people to deal with their problems, and you can support them when they try but ultimately they have to want to change or get better. Everything else you do, no matter how well intentioned, will not change anything if the person themselves does not see the problem or want to change.

Regarding your brother, you can reach out to him and try but sadly you may have to accept his life is stuck on a trajectory of self destruction and even sadly violence. I don’t think anyone is born bad, but are shaoed by their childhood. Your step dad and mum are also likely products of bad events or difficult up-bringings and it sounds like they couldn’t change their life paths either. Its a cycle of chaos and tragedy disrupting each generation.

But there is something you do have control over and can change - your own family. You can break the cycle by being a good parent to your children. You are now in the position your mum and dad were, and can be the role model for your kids and ensure they have a happy childhood. That is where you should focus your time and effort.

I’m sorry for your brother, despite his crimes, but your priority should be your wife and children and everything you do has to be focused on what is best for them. Sadly, if that means not including your brother in your lives then so be it. Be there if your brother reaches out for help but otherwise I think your time and energy is best focused on giving your children the upbringing and future denied to you as a child.

You succeeded despite your parents. Ensure your children succeed with your help and support. That will break the cycle in your family and that love, kindness and compassion will be felt by your grand children and great grand children. That is what you can realistically control and that could help many more than one person in your family long term. That choice could have positive echoes throughout your children and their children’s lives.

OpenSuSE - YaST is as good as is made out to be. I like how many fundamental parts of linux are managed via one tool. Other distros I’d used before were heterogenous mix of tools that felt cobbled together and inconsistent, while YaST feels well designed, integrated and consistent.

A - space travel would be harder. The difficulty with travelling into the solar system is gravity, not the vacuum. You would still need to launch something with enough energy to escape the earths gravity. Aeroplanes are not escaping earth’s gravity - they’re constantly using fuel to stay a certain distance from the earth’s surface but they do not have enough energy/power to reach escape velocity.

So if you filled the solar system with gas you wouldn’t fix the gravity problem. What you would do is add more friction which would cause drag on space ships, and slow travel between destinations as well as require even more fuel than present. Once a ship is in space currently, “aerodynamics” is not an issue; it’s all about gravity and velocity. Throw in air, and you have new problems in drag, shape and as a result likely fuel consumption to stay on course or reach as far as you want to.

Its not about memory size its about the asymmetric sticks. It was a classic problem with OS memory management in the past. Modern OS are better at dealing with it but it is not the optimal set up.

You’re running windows game which use proton/wine that manage memory for the game and use linux for access to RAM. The asymmetry could conceivably cause issues you wouldn’t notice with native apps.

I’d try removing the 16gb stick (or the two 8gb sticks and keeo the 16gb stick; all that matters is whatever ram isnleft is the uniform) and see what happens with the games you’ve been trying. It might not he the issue but the only way to know is to test it, rather than dismiss it because its not what you expected.

The common denominator in your issues would be your PC. If games are working according to protonDB and you’re unable to get them to work on multiple distros that suggests its your PC.

There are two candidates in your specs - your RAM and your Graphics card.

As others have said, asymmetric RAM is unusual and it certainly was warned against in the past as it caused system issues. While OSs may be much better at managing RAM now, that doesn’t mean all scenarios can tolerate it. Given what Proton is doing is complex (running Wine, which is essentially a windows layer) I would not be surprised if the memory configuration is just a step too far - you have windows software using a windows compatibility layer for memory asking a linuxn system for memory access.

An obvious way to test this is to remove the 16gb stick from your machine and see what happens.

The other side is your graphics card - are you using the latest nvidia drivers?

The other problem with the “good guy with a gun” is how many people does an attacker need to kill before you are the good guy killing the bad guy? One? And what if you didn’t witness it? The “good guy” with the gun attacking another guy with a gun without knowing what’s going on, are they still the “good guy” in that scenario? It’s a mess.

The whole thing stems from fallacious logic. Arming everyone doesn’t stop bad guys murdering people, at best it might curtail the length of some attacks and at worst it causes innocents to die as so-called “good guys” try to save the day and make it worse.

Prevention is the way forward, as then 0 people die. And the best way to do that is no one has guns (not even most police; just a small subset of specialist police). That is an anathema or sacrilegious to Americans, but it’s the approach taken in many democratic and free countries in the world.

If the chart is trying to make a point, it’s making the wrong one anyway.