After quite a bit of agonizing, I eventually landed on openSUSE Tumbleweed. I chose a rolling release distro because on my desktop I want to be up-to-date. Having used Gentoo a long time ago, I didn’t want a distro that takes effort to install and set up. openSUSE is somewhat popular with an active community and decent documentation in case I run in to issues. I also considered the fact it’s based in Germany, because EU has at least some decent privacy laws. I was put off by the fact its backed by SUSE, but that’s a two-edged sword.

Right now I’m content with Tumbleweed, but I’m keeping an eye on OpenMandriva Lx if I feel like switching.

openSUSE Tumbleweed has served me well for some time now. Maybe give it a look-see?

I like Posteo. Affordable (1€/month) and with focus on privacy and FOSS.

Years ago I tried running Debian on my desktop computer and it became very quickly apparent it was not suited to my needs because of the out-of-date software. These days I only really consider rolling release distros for my desktop, or at least something with a fairly snappy release schedule. If I went for Debian, I’d probably run sid or testing.

Now, in situations where the bleeding edge is not necessary, Debian is fantastic. I’ve run it on my laptop, Raspberry Pi server and PinePhone. On the laptop, having a solid base that doesn’t break if I don’t use it for a while was great, since I didn’t use that laptop often. I did use flatpaks for some applications that I really wanted to be more recent and it worked nicely. So yes, you can use Debian as a solid base and use Flatpaks/Appimages/other to run apps you really need the newest version of, where available of course.

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The interface is a bit bare bones and 90’s but I like it that way. It’s a good and reliable client.

Can’t help you there, I buy CDs and lossless copies from Bandcamp and Qobuz. Those work for me.

I’m sorry, but that’s private.

“Install Gentoo” is a meme, not life advice. With Gentoo, the installation process gives you good insight in to the internals of Linux systems and compiling (almost) everything from source is interesting, but won’t produce noticeable benefits for average users. Especially since updates take some time, what with compiling the programs again. Gentoo is a great distro with a fantastic package manager, but unless you’re an enthusiast or a serious hobbyist, Don’t Install Gentoo.

It will be exciting to see Kamala and Trump debate whether Gecko or Blink should be the industry leader.

That’s actually a pretty clever subversion. Nice.

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Mandriva was a Linux distribution that went out of business years ago. OpenMandriva is one of the projects that rose from its ashes with some of the same personnel and code base. It is an independent (not a fork) and community run distribution that, I think, does quite a lot with very limited resources.

Corporate backing is a two-edged sword, unfortunately.

I refuse to accept that there is nothing we can do about it.

I don’t think you quite understand just how stupendous the amount of data Google processes from YouTube alone is. There is basically no way for hobbyists to provide an equivalent service. Very few companies have those kinds of resources. If you want, you can of course try running a PeerTube instance, but you rather quickly run in to problems with scaling.

I find it almost miraculous YouTube exists to begin with. It is no accident Google has very few competitors on that front, and I don’t think YouTube is even profitable for them. Without Google’s deep pockets and interest in monopolizing the market, YouTube would have withered a long time ago.

Trust me, I want a solution too. But 500 hours of content are uploaded to YouTube every minute. All of that is processed, re-encoded, and saved with multiple bitrates. You can’t compete with that. YouTube might eventually keel over from Enshittification and its own impossibility, but replacing it with anything meaningful will be a challenge.

I had Windows 8.1 but as the end of its maintenance was approaching I saw the writing on the wall with Windows 10 and especially 11 and I wanted no part of that. When 8.1 was put to pasture I returned to Linux and I have been content ever since. Seeing where Microsoft is taking Windows I’m more and more convinced that Stallman Was Right. I control my software, not the other way around.

!stallmanwasright@lemmy.ml

After Thunderbird’s UI overhaul I jumped around a bit and landed on Claws Mail. It’s fairly old fashioned, but I personally prefer that and find it clear and logical. It’s a good client.

I’m on Tumbleweed and there are issues. As I understand, Slowroll is unaffected, though I can’t guarantee that.

I was hit by (what I assume is) a recent catastrophic Mesa update on openSUSE Tumbleweed. I’m mostly fine, experiencing some issues with cursors and the Yast window is all black. It’s also affecting Wine and some installers are broken. Now I’m just waiting for Mesa to update since I’m mostly fine and nothing critical is broken for me. I think this is the first actually major issue I’ve had on openSUSE.

If you want Debian with more frequent updates, consider going Debian sid. Base Debian is also fine, maybe with Flatpaks for more up-to-date applications where needed.