I do my banking on my web browser, and when my previous bank tried to force me to use their app, that’s why they are my previous bank and not my current bank, because I told them they could go fuck themselves.

I refuse to put their proprietary spyware app on my device.

I refuse to even have a proprietary app store on my device. More or less install your proprietary app.

Oh, that’s interesting. I didn’t know you could have Windows and Linux on the same disk in separate partitions, and then boot Linux and have the virtual machine access the raw disk image of Windows.

For now, yes. But it’s a supply and demand curve, so either the demand from AI is going to crash as the AI boom crashes, or the amount of supply will increase to satisfy the demand. I am suspecting the AI bubble will crash before the supply side catches up.

That hasn’t happened for me, but it has shifted from desktop to mobile for me, because, for me, desktop Linux is just about fucking perfect, and I see no need to change it. But, I do very much enjoy playing around with different things like lineage OS, and possibly post-market OS on phones.

I’d say my phone is my primary computing device so it’s what I like to mess with and the laptop is just a system that I need to work whenever I pick it up and therefore it gets Linux installed on it and doesn’t get many changes.

I would say my laptop is more like an appliance similar to my toaster. When I turn on my toaster, I expect it to work. And it’s the same thing with my laptop for the little bit that I need it. And my phone is the device that I mess with, primarily.

I started with Ubuntu version 10.10 and currently my computer runs Linux Mint Debian 7.

Though I am seriously considering giving NixOS another spin. I gave it a try once, and it didn’t quite work for me, but I think I might try it again. I am getting pretty convinced that immutability is the future because then the operating system developer can work on the operating system and the user space can focus on the user space. And user space applications can’t do things to the operating system that would screw it up and bork it. I’m primarily thinking of when an application gets uninstalled and then uninstalls some shared library that’s needed by another application and fucks it up.

I know immutable systems and self-contained applications require more disk space, but that’s a worthy sacrifice in my opinion. Disk space is pretty damn cheap.

Mint is wonderful though I am considering switching back to a system with GNOME instead of Cinnamon because the screen reader works better under GNOME.

I am thinking about giving NixOS another shot or at least going with an immutable system, but Mint is a great place to start your Linux journey, and hell, it’s a great place to end your Linux journey if you don’t give a shit about computers and just want the damn thing to work reliably.

I don’t know if it’s possible, but have you considered trying to install Windows in a virtual machine and just use Linux as your primary system? I started out this way too, where I had a dual-boot Linux and Windows system, and eventually I realized that I was booting into Windows so little that I just installed Windows in a virtual machine for the, like, very few times I ever needed it. And then, eventually I found out I didn’t need it at all anymore, and just killed the VM, and I haven’t used Windows for years.

Windows 11 is synonymous with installing Linux.

Limiting traffic already exists, and it’s called proof of work. Try it out.

Tor implemented it in August of 2023 and was an extremely successful integration.

I think that would depend a lot on the amount of servers serving that service.

If you’ve only got one server, then the proof of work is going to ramp up quite quickly because of the fact that it can only serve so many requests at a time. If you have 10,000 servers serving the same website, then the proof of work would ramp up pretty slowly because then you can serve a ton more requests at once before needing to kick the proof of work up. Tor currently has a zero proof of work if the service is not under load at all, and then ramps the proof of work up as the service comes under more requests. My thought would be to not have any point where there’s a zero proof of work and have a minimum proof of work required of one.

That’s true, but I don’t really truly think bots need to be entirely stopped. I think they need to be more limited so that they can’t just overwhelm a website. And proof of work will do that.

Clearly, they haven’t heard of proof of work.

Ask tor, it helps tremendously.

Hidden services went from being absolutely horribly unreliable to being very reliable.

2.95-4.02 Monero

Oh, I never use the default operating system. I pull it out of the box and power it on and go through what setup is required to get to the home screen, open settings, enable developer options, and enable USB debugging, and then immediately flash lineage OS onto it.

I don’t even buy a new phone unless it supports lineage OS because I have no desire to use default Android with Google apps and services on it.

Cheaper phones are actually getting really good too though.

I have the OnePlus Nord N200 that was released in 2021 and i paid ~$250 for it. The Moto G 2024 actually has better benchmarks than my device does and it only costs like $130. It’s only slightly better, but it’s still better, and the device is three years newer. So if I were to buy that device, it would be more of a sidegrade.

I used the 1 year SMA so i meant what i said

Eh, 2.95 Monero. Could be worse i guess.

Not something I would buy though, since I don’t play video games.

I will not bend here. Either Google stops that, or I will not be using websites that use ReCAPTCHA as their service.

I will not scan a QR code with my phone, and I will not wave at the camera. I will not allow it to access my camera.

Lol. Unless I’m mistaken, you have to add “–no-preserve-root” to get that to go through.

Ctrl + F4 too