Okay but what about app compatibility?

Our router doesn’t support it (it’s the V2 model)

Unfortunately, it’s not so easy or useful if you don’t have a powerful machine to host it with

I frankly wouldn’t care at all had MS not truncate your home folder to 5 characters when using a Ms account and also didn’t make using remote desktop impossible when enabling a passwordless account.

What a time to be alive

That. Is the goofiest system I have ever seen

I’ve personally moved to Bing from Google. Partly because it’s annoyingly the only way to do web searches from the start menu, But also because it’s much more flexible with AI compared to Google’s new AI Overviews (The engines vice president actually tweeted about being able to disable Copilot in response to Google’s new AI).

I personally like how Bing presents information better, but it still has quite a few problems. Especially around relevancy, and it’s image search isn’t the best if you’re looking for anything that isn’t a photograph.

Yay the torment Nexus is now faster

Why YOU should write a Wayland compositor

I don’t really know how to do that

That’s why it’s important to build a personal security and privacy model and a good idea of what you are and are not willing to give up. Instead of blindly chasing after the things that everyone else does. Since for most people, that idea of living in a forest is usually unobtainable

I personally think you should just allow cookies indefinitely. There are honestly so many bigger risks from phishing and other forms of social engineering that as long as your family isn’t leaving their computer unlocked in a public place, I wouldn’t say there’s really too much of a risk in leaving cookies enabled.

I apologize that this doesn’t exactly answer your question, but I’d like to suggest an alternative. I’d like to also ask, is your family using a password manager by any chance? And if so, are they making use of passkeys on supported websites. Many modern websites, including Google and Facebook, support them. And they require virtually no interaction aside from unlocking the password manager. It’s still a form of two-factor authentication, but it’s far more convenient than anything out there.

I also don’t really think you should try to force Linux on people who aren’t particularly comfortable or familiar using it.

I worry they’ll get frustrated to the point that they’ll go out and splurge on new macbook air when they already have a perfectly functional laptop with functional OS.

If you’re worried that they’re going to go and do that, then Linux might not serve their needs. Linux might be a fully functional desktop system, but it’s also one that isn’t an out of the box experience either. There’s certainly been a lot of improvements, But I don’t think that any Linux Desktop Environment is ever going to reach the same level of intuitiveness as something like Windows or macOS. I would certainly love to see it that way. But I think it’s just an issue of the people who actually use it.

I understand looking out for family and ensuring they don’t spend excess amounts of money. But you also shouldn’t take it upon yourself to try and dictate how your family uses the computer either. Linux wasn’t built as a commercially supported desktop operating system with years of full-time researchers studying topics surrounding human computer interaction with a multi-million dollar budget. It was built to be a free as in freedom alternative to the mainstream systems that are available (I personally call it “The problem solving platform” for this reason) by a loose knit group of volunteers who love computers and know a lot about them. Most people who use a computer use them to do work, and not really for promoting a personal agenda.

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t try to get your family members to use Linux, I’m just saying that you shouldn’t force them. You should put their best interests first that can help them.

I’m sorry to go on such a long rant about this. I just see a lot of people who I believe to vastly overestimate the willingness of others in certain places. And the whole part of “worrying about someone spending their own money” just kind of struck a red flag to me.

I don’t hate copilot but I seldom use it enough to justify having a taskbar button for it

Stick to the walled garden. There are monsters out there.

Okay, have fun inside!

I hope Mastodon will incorporate this

Personally with XMPP, I think it’s right now because of the lack of decent looking clients (especially on iOS), as well as a lot of the same friction that people have suffered with mastodon.

Also, Signal is built towards a completely different audience that places privacy first over modern messaging features (things like API’s, sending messages through voice assistants, etc.). And for SimpleX, I’m not really sure if sharing a QR code/link with someone else is the best route to go in UX just to message a friend

I always feel like whenever someone complains about fedi not being fully decentralized because they perceived too many instances as being held under a single place, they miss the point a little bit in terms of prioritizing infrastructure over user governance.

Aside from the potential disasters happening at them, it just really doesn’t feel like a problem if most people are hosting an instance on a popular cloud platform. These are companies that are just providing infrastructure, and as long as you aren’t trying to abuse their network or spread anything that they consider to be harmful, they won’t really care.

Instances operated under Home and business ISPs aren’t particularly immune to this either. And can still cut off an instance if they decide to.

It’s not like everyone has a choice in the say. Given that many schools and workplaces rely on Google for something

Yeah, but I think that most of the clients are a bit dated in UX otherwise. There isn’t really anything that I could suggest a friend to use

Ok good. But then there’s the problem of actually convincing people to use Signal. A messaging app is pointless if nobody else wants to use it.

The thing is is that if MNO’s truly cared about running their own RCS network (instead of leaving everything to Apple and Google). It might actually be a more open system. Sure, you can’t self host an MNO, but it’s still a much larger step forward.