“any media outlet, no matter how big an empire it is, that is not owned or funded by the state” is not the common definition of “independent media” (it’s not even the definition given in the hyperlinked definition). “Independence” in this context refers to journalistic independence.

Zorin is another distro that (very successfully imo) does a windows-style taskbar with GNOME and is parent friendly, though like I said before, I think today I would go with something immutable for a non-techie because they’re very hard to break.

KDE is the easiest for coming from Windows, you almost never never need the command line or anything “extra” to customize it (beyond what even Windows will allow).

GNOME (especially in Ubuntu) by default is more Macintosh-like which might appeal to some people, it’s “simpler” but any customizations will require navigating the add-ons (and in my experience inevitably the command line too).

I think KDE is the one for most people who just want a functioning PC. GNOME could be good for the PC you might make for your parent. Bonus points for an immutable distro which are even harder to break.

FOSS land is always going to be populated by freaks and geeks. The well socialized devs get jobs at Google. It’s impressive the “system” works as well as it does, IMO. Passion is a big motivator.

There is a reason the type of devs who have the talent, passion and time for projects like this are not spending 60hrs/wk at Google.

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Honestly I had the same thought. But on the other hand, internet outrage talking points have also become extremely formulaic…

Bitwarden

Do you mean Bitdefender (the antivirus)? Bitwarden is free.

Before anyone well ackhuallys me yes, there is a very cheap $0.80/mo plan if you want an authenticator.

I don’t get why people are so interested in the fediverse.

Because Mastodon is Twitter without the possibility of an Elon Musk and Lemmy/Piefed is Reddit without the possibility of a Steve Huffman. You clearly feel that you can do better than the collective efforts of the ActivityPub devs so I am rooting for you!

“Lemmy” is actually not a platform like Reddit, it’s software and the network of instances running that software is decentralized (Lemmy uses the ActivityPub protocol) meaning each instance is operated by a different person (or group). There are also other similar softwares like Piefed and mBin that work pretty well with Lemmy. That is all to say that if an Admin or Mod is “getting fascisty” you can block that instance, join another, or even create your own. That’s the beauty of ActivityPub!

The only thing I’m aware of that they do even remotely better than anyone else is privacy.

Where did you hear this? Its my understanding that they are one of the worst when it comes to privacy.

“Many small instances that can survive with a couple of donations” seems much more sustainable than a handful of large ad-selling business “powered by Mastodon”.

Well said! My instance doesn’t need ads because the servers don’t care about profits.

I’ve never seen an ad-based tier on a Mastodon instance and the network does just fine 🤷‍♂️

Without executives leeching money from going to the actual cost of servers things seem to work better! Go figure!

I opened this thread to type out this exact comment but somehow you typed up the exact same thing before me?

Actual Budget is software. It can be run on a home server if desired.

I loved the constant pop-ups with offers for things I could purchase. If I don’t purchase something frequently enough I get sad so it’s nice to have an OS that cares about my well being.

Bitwarden

I like that snap support is included. You can’t easily add it to immutable distros and there is still some software out there only easily available via snaps.

I am not an expert but I don’t think Snap support can be added to an immutable distro after installation, meaning there is going to be some software that simply cannot be easily installed. Snap support is basically a legacy support feature at this point but I think it’s nice to cover their bases if they are trying to make something for widespread adoption.