That’s why they’re a 40 billion dollar company instead of a 39.999999999 billion dollar company.

As someone who is way into the idea of Linux, wants to switch, and is very gun-shy about the million little programs and extensions I might not be able to replace, let me tell you what is required of anybody who is actually genuine in their desire to see Linux gain the traction it deserves:

Don’t ever tell anybody to read the manual again. Just answer the god damn question. It’s good when answers to basic, common problems are peppered around the internet like that; it’s dumb and wrong and weird to think of it as a thing to be avoided. If you’d like to put a link to the part of the manual where the questioner could have looked to find it, that’s cool, too. Don’t just leave the link–there’s a good chance they didn’t understand it and that’s why they’re asking. Maybe they just want a person-answer instead of a reference-manual-answer, and it’s good when the answer exists in both forms. Every answered question is a contribution.

I would go even further: the version of reality where Linux beats Windows and ushers in an era of community-centric open source dominance is populated by a Linux community that considers “rtfm”, “pebcac”, etc to be borderline bannable offenses. If you are a small, weak person, and want Linux to be your way of thinking you’re better than other people, you’ll drive question-askers away, back to Inferiority Land, using your knowledge to dunk on them instead of help them, and call it a win. These are the ugly bridge trolls, who may as well be paid Microsoft employees, keeping people away from your community, and a serious change of pace might yield much smoother adoption. At the very least, the community owes it to their own work to see how much smoother.

As someone considering the switch seriously, the knowledge that I may have to deal with people like that is absolutely, 100% a factor, and I am someone who has no qualms about telling someone on the internet to fuck off, so it’s gonna be more of an issue for many others who are more conflict-averse.

The Linux community needs to take very seriously whether it actually wants increased open source adoption, or if it wants to remain a tiny minority so that it has a nice, large majority to feel better than.

What advantage does KDE have over Mint for gaming?

The comment you responded to covered all that. It’s possible it’s a translation/tone error. No reason to assume face value given the stakes.

If that ends up being not the case, then ok.

Don’t fuck with KPAP or the fans will destroy you online.

That last one had better at least require two or three people to sign off on it. One shitty mod could easily become a bigger problem than a troll with that in power in hand.

We need to compile a list of shitty executives for boycotting purposes. No more “this company did a bad thing”. No. We need exactly this, with “this is David Davidson, who led the enshittification of ABC, Inc”

It needs to be a document, a wiki, of exactly the shitty things those people did so that businesses will have monetary reasons to want to avoid shitty executives.

Let’s help those poor, poor companies from being victimized by those awful greedy people. The poor things.

The list of apps that want to invade your privacy populates itself?

First past the post is what you’re tangling with.

Https://youtu.be/s7tWHJfhiyo

It makes it so third parties only hurt their closest friend and lose to their least favorite party. Taking that energy into the democratic party itself is probably the best bet. Not good, but best.

In ranked choice, yes a new party would probably be best.

Out of the two and only two choices Americans had (thanks, first past the post), she was overwhelmingly and objectively the best.

But yes she was weak on Palestine and that was bad. Ranked choice for actual third parties, please.

It’s like not commenting, but with more effort.

Nazis do this dumb thing where they go “hey that small and therefore relatively defenseless group (badassness of individuals aside) is the cause of all our problems, let’s kill them to solve everything!”

Surprisingly, it never works.

So they do it again with somebody else, and somebody else, and somebody else, until everybody on earth is killed by nazis or somebody stops them.

As for why anybody is dumb enough to fall for it in the first place…it’s anybody’s guess.

No, we don’t know. It makes less sense than it ever did seeing it play out in real time.

He gets two terms, whether they’re split up or not. This is his last term by law.

He’s probably just going to stay anyway, because Republicans have managed to infect government with the kinds of losers who would back something like that.

Morrowind is great and people should definitely play it, but god damn will it not meet the need of feeling badass. It makes you feel like a wooden chess piece and you just get used to it.

Those spells area very cool, though.

George Lakoff is practically a one-man think tank

This made my dick black and gay and now it lives in Palo Alto.

It starts with fury. Everything is beyond messed up over there.

Add in: anger funnels focus. Tunnel vision. It almost feels morally wrong to think of another thing. Anger helps you in a physical fight, so this makes sense. Also, ordering lunch while your neighbor’s house burns down is kinda dickish.

Add in: first past the post voting. This is the big clincher. It forces two party systems mathematically, and most people understandably haven’t heard why.

Factoring in the information in that video, you realize your choice really is Harris or Trump. Third choices get transformed into a vote for the candidate you dislike the most. So you take the best option.

Take away the knowledge of first past the post, and you have every reason to think that third parties will work if you all just had some spine and imagination, god damnit. You resolve not to let yourself be one of the ones who sat by silently while horrible things happen!

Cast protest vote thinking it makes you one of the people who actually helped, not realizing first past the post transforms that vote into a vote for trump, and everybody keeps fighting instead of watching that video and letting the facts it points out inform what they do.

The resistance infiltrating the enemy base in disguise can get a lot of work done. Especially if it’s long term and you don’t even need to sneak around.

Even just a low level functionary who’s not a nazi or a terrible person makes my time dealing with a government agency better. There’s not an automatic moral imperative to bounce.

The slightest effort at extrapolation makes this whole idea monumentally short-sighted.