So basically, Google realized they fucked up by tightly integrating their browser with their OS, and now they're doing what they should've done in the first place by uncoupling them.

It'd be badass if someone used this opportunity to make a ChromeOS fork based around Firefox.

I've heard of this before. Stupid question, but what's the risk of being banned from Discord for using it?

2020 was such a shit year in computing. So many things got killed off. CentOS, Windows 7, Flash, and Python 2.x, off the top of my head, and probably some other things as well.

I mean yeah, most of these things were getting long in the tooth, but they were widely used and it would've been nice if they were all supported longer.

I'd love it if the KDE devs made Baloo and Akonadi optional. Their insistence on including them reminds me of Micro$oft's insistence on bundling Internet Explorer and integrating it into the OS shell in Windows 98.

Here's hoping that they don't.

So in other words, we still don't know yet.

"Them" being Threads or Kbin?

So, is kbin.social not defederating from Threads then? I'll be really disappointed if that's the case.

I'm a Linux user, but I like having control over my own hardware, and I don't want my next PC to be an underpowered thin client designed only to work with a commercial cloud OS. I hope this doesn't take off any time soon.

I felt Reddit's quality started going downhill around 2021, which is not long after they introduced the official app and started allowing Google logins.

EDIT: Looks like the official app's been around longer than I thought. :O

Unless you happen to use Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux, or Oracle Linux. It doesn't affect Debian, or Ubuntu, or openSUSE, or Arch, or anybody else.

So, stupid question, but would Fedora be affected at all? I know that's related to Red Hat, but I'm guessing it's not affected since it's not based on RHEL.

It's not a question of legality really, but more one of an ethical nature. It sort of depends on you, as to whether or not you're bothered by RedHat doing this or not.

I'd say I'm bothered by it, but there's not really anything I can do about it. I'm disappointed the GPL doesn't have stricter rules regarding the distribution of source code though. I feel like it kinda defeats the purpose if sources aren't freely available to anyone who wants to use them.

Fuck Meta. We need to vehemently oppose their presence in the Fediverse.

Don't start with Arch unless you're looking for a trial by fire. It's a distro intended for advanced users who already know a few things about Linux. I don't even use straight Arch, and I've been using Linux for years. I do use EndeavourOS as my daily driver though, and that's basically a pre-configured Arch with a GUI installer.

Ubuntu, or one of its variants like Kubuntu or Xubuntu, is a better pick for someone who's just starting out. Mint is supposed to be decent for new users too.

You made a wise choice picking a Radeon, btw. Nvidia support on Linux isn't the greatest. AMD, on the other hand, is nearly plug and play since the drivers are built into the kernel. You may or may not need to install extra drivers for proper Vulkan support though.

Another thing I should mention; if you decide to dual boot with Windows, it may seem like a smart idea to share your steamapps folder between OSes, but this doesn't usually work out well because of the way Proton uses symlinks. You're much better off having separate steamapps folders for each OS, even if it uses more disk space that way. (Proton is the compatibility tool Steam uses for running Windows-only games on Linux. It even works better than running Linux-native games in a lot of cases)

I mention the steamapps thing, because it's a common newbie mistake to try sharing a steamapps folder between Windows and Linux.

Linux is a pretty deep rabbit hole to dive into, and it's not for everyone. But don't let this discourage you; it can be rewarding if you're willing to learn how to use it.

I actually just saw the number, so I know it exists now. It was next to my username.

When you hover over your username, is there a number next to "notifications" that you can see, or do you have to click it before you can see what you have? I don't see a number, in my case.

When I click it, it shows nothing, but I wonder if it's just doing that because I've already opened my article and seen the new comments.

Strange, I enabled the setting, but I didn't see that there was a new comment on this article until I saw the comment number go up under this article on my profile page.

EDIT: tbh, I didn't notice there were links for "notifications" and "messages" until I moused over my username. Would be nice if there was a Reddit-style inbox icon right on the top bar.

I haven't been getting them, but I just learned that there's a setting I need to enable that's disabled by default. ^^;

What determines how closely federated one instance is to another?

It's GPL3 and the source code is available on GitLab, so it's open source. That's usually a good sign as far as software safety goes, since it's harder to sneak nasty things in when your code is out in the open than it is with a closed-source app.

It is ironic, but the great thing about Kbin is that since it's not subject to Reddit's bullshit API policies, we could see some great apps for it in the near future. Meanwhile the way things are going on Reddit, people probably aren't going to have a choice but to use the official app come July 1st.