I don’t like flatpaks because they never feel cohesive visually on my system.

And not wanting to learn to do basic things on a computer made companies put everything on rails and then once everything was on rails, they could just take control away from you. I don’t know how many times working in an office people would be completely ignorant of how to use their computer and be completely fine with it. Like this is your career and your livelihood and the tool that you use daily to get the job done. Learn how to use it and not just the steps to “point and click at certain things” and when it doesn’t do exactly what you want you give up.

Building off of this awesome and thorough response. There are some games that you might need a different version of Proton for everything to work right. I had issues with Blue Prince not being able to see any videos that played during the game. With Proton-GE, that is solved. So there might be a little adjustment and tweaks that need to be done but I’ve found everyone in the Linux community more than happy to help.

As to your comment about security vis-a-vis open source software. I think that comes from an inherent misunderstanding about what open source software is because I had a similar thought when I was younger. If a program is open source and you can see all the bones of the software, you can see the code and know how to hack it. That was my thinking at least. But the security comes from having everyone able to view the code and patch out vulnerabilities. Closed source just means that you might have the veil of security through obscurity where it takes a little time to have your bugs exploited.

My only complaint is that tab is not an option to auto complete. It’s infuriating as someone who works in Excel all day for work and then has some things to do at home in a spreadsheet and I type =vlook tab and then it switches to the next column. Let me autocomplete the formula to the next input! And they don’t let you change it either. It’s the most infuriating thing. It’s why I refused to use LibreOffice for a while but the switch to Linux forced my hand. I like Libre Office more than Only Office.

I’m certainly not. And I decided that election night was going to be the day I got sober so that’s fun. 120 days of no booze!

uBlock Origin + PiHole FTW.

2020 for $4 billion.

Love Joan Jett, especially as an Orioles fan. She was the guest splasher at the O’s game the other week. Said she has the MLB At-Bat app up during her concerts to keep an eye on the Orioles score as well. She’s just the best.

I’m surprised that makes you want to move back to Windows instead of moving to another hardware platform. I guess it’s cheaper to go back to Windows but I’d just rather support a company that supports what I do.

As an American, all I can say is thank you Europe for continuing to have sensible legislation that forces these companies to have decent policies worldwide if only to comply with EU laws. I only use Windows on my company provided laptop but just because I don’t need to worry about it personally doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t care about how it affects others.

Just got a Keychron Q5 Pro and love it. It and the Zoom98 were the only two that had layouts that would really work out for me (wanted a 96%/98%) since I need a numpad and wanted a volume knob instead of just media keys.

Even if we were thirsting over it, what’s wrong with it? Apple makes some impressive silicon that’s really efficient. The problem is that it’s tied to their products and closed off. You can marvel at what they’re doing on the production side while not liking their business practices.

Excel is vastly more complicated than Word. Word is just basic word processing. Excel has lots of data manipulation, formulas, tables, charts, plus when coupled with visual basic, scripts and macros. I could do all that stuff in LibreOffice if I only worked in LibreOffice. But having to work in Excel at the office and LibreOffice at home would’ve been a NIGHTMARE.

I think a lot of the issue with mainstream adoption to Linux is the software suite and not the operating system. I refused to switch to Linux because of needing MS Office (specifically Excel). I needed it for work at my previous job until they provided everyone with laptops during the pandemic. And before you say just use LibreOffice or OnlyOffice, they are fine options for personal use for me. But for my productivity, switching between the two with different shortcuts was miserable. LibreOffice still pisses me off for formula auto completion. If I hit tab while making a formula, I want to go to the next parameter in the formula not the next cell.

I work at a credit union where we deal with a lot of smaller investors and many of them have properties where they aren’t breaking even on a cash flow basis. But they are using the losses to lower their taxable income while building equity elsewhere. They are (from tenants I’ve heard from) good landlords. Lately we’ve been dealing with a lot of realtors that are buying up properties and that just doesn’t sit well with me so I’m looking to change careers and get more into C&I and CRE rather than SFR investments. Being able to cash out 7.25 weeks of accrued vacation time I haven’t been able to take too is a big plus.

And you can get a cheap enclosure for the old m.2 or SSD to copy files you need off the old one.

I’m with you especially since what I use Reddit/Twitter for the most is sports highlight clips/discussion during games. Those communities just aren’t here. I love chatting with other Orioles/Panthers/Penguins fans in the game threads on Reddit during the game since none of my friends are fans of those teams other than my brother being a Penguins fan too.

Luckily a lot of the Twitter follows I had which were mainly for College Football are on Bluesky so I can use that more but missing out on the rest here. Once Boost for Reddit stops working (still works if you mod a sub) I won’t be using Reddit anymore though. The official app is that bad.

Excel. There’s just basic stuff with LibreOffice and OnlyOffice that work like crap. Like why in LibreOffice when I type =sum then hit tab does it think I’m done with the formula instead of adding the ( and letting me put in the first input. It’s awful.