Chromebooks are what everyone’s using in school. Windows is in a state, and if businesses are going to replace it they sure as hell aren’t going to use Linux (too informal) or MacOS (too locked down).
For individual users, something like 90% of internet browsing is on mobile devices so Android and iOS have already won over Windows bigtime.
I don’t really care about timed exclusivity, especially when it’s just downloading a different launcher. Permanent exclusivity, or worse eventual unavailability I do care about though.
I’m really glad for all Valve has done for Linux, but Microsoft is not the monopoly it once was. Chromebooks are the new frontier and Epic is the one taking on the Play Store monopoly.
Add in GOG to the mix with their anti-DRM advocacy and I’m left with a tough choice for who I would rather my 30% store tax to go to.
It’s really frustrating that this whole situation is caused by people not knowing how to enable parental controls.
I’ll never switch to Chromium no matter what happens, not on an ideological basis, but because Firefox is the only browser that allows me to create duplicate bookmarks without manually copying and pasting it.
Linux in general is not secure for desktop users. There’s basically never sandboxing, and when there is it’s usually weak, antivirus is rarely used, and developers aren’t vetted as stringently as with paid software. Apparently Fedora and OpenSUSE take these issues more seriously, and SE Linux does somewhat restrict what malicious things a piece of software can do.
It’s a pretty widely held view that Fedora and OpenSUSE are more secure than Debian, Ubuntu, and Arch for desktop users but I’m not really an expert so I’m mostly retroactively justifying what I’ve heard second-hand.
I’ve recently had some issues with Fedora (KDE). After I install any update it tells me to restart to finish installing. So I restart and it still tells me the same thing. Probably time I distrohop again.
With the usual restriction of “either upstream or Mint, otherwise you’re doing it wrong”. There are 6 options. Ubuntu is obviously out. Arch is not my cup of tea. Fedora is already ruled out. Debian/Mint aren’t as secure as Fedora/OpenSUSE. That leaves me with going back to OpenSUSE Leap.
But the proprietary media codecs on OpenSUSE come from the AUR … looks like I’m out of options.
Ultimately duckduckgo is the best.
Bing and Google are out for obvious reasons. Startpage kept asking me to prove I’m human. Qwant blocked me whenever I enabled a VPN with an exit in a region they couldn’t run ads to. Ecosia is a non-profit so I’d feel bad blocking ads, but I don’t want to see ads. Mojeek returned garbage results. Kagi is ridiculously overpriced and restrictive. Brave Search often didn’t return the results I was looking for. And SearXNG I don’t remember what the problem was.
Their solutions suck, I agree. These are designed by people who don’t understand the role social media plays in people’s lives in 2026. They should use parental controls for age-inappropriate content and require age verification to get algorithmic recommendations (to discourage people from doing so, if nothing else).
But the problems are real, and that is the driving force behind this globally coordinated campaign of legislation. It’s not some shadowy cabal of malicious people, it’s a genuine worldwide crisis.
The world is all doing this in a coordinated fashion because social media is causing many, well-evidenced problems.
They made is pretty clear that they think a broad coalition is necessary to support their cause of privacy.
These purity politics are nothing but self-aggrandizement. It achieves nothing towards improving the conditions of the working class and if anything it’s actively harmful.
What does Vulkan video decoding do?
Fedora does good work on security and it doesn’t have snaps. But personally I prefer the stability of Debian (not that I daily drive it).
Or just only require those ID checks if people want algorithmic recommendations.
I’m not trying to defend him
Defend him from what?
Upstream or Mint. Meaning Fedora or Mint, since you ruled out Debian and Arch.
IIRC Linus is self-declared as “woke”. The exact quote is:
I’m a card-carrying atheist, I think a woman’s right to choose is very important, I think that “well regulated militia” means that guns should be carefully licensed and not just randomly given to any moron with a pulse, and I couldn’t care less if you decided to dress up in the “wrong” clothes or decided you’d rather live your life without feeling tied to whatever plumbing you were born with. And dammit, if that all makes me “woke”, then I think anybody who uses that word as a pejorative is a f*cking disgrace to the human race.
That’s well outside the scope of the Linux kernel policies.
Putting aside the question, the answer is that they should use upstream or Mint. There are basically no exceptions.
It’s frustrating that in 2026, Debian doesn’t have a firewall installed by default.