Don’t blame the devs, blame the timelines and the pressures of implementing features.

So people most familiar with a system have an affinity to it? Colour me shocked. I expect Windows users would want to return to Windows for their own reasons.

Depends what you mean by bloat. It has a very large repo, but it compiles into little commands with least privilege execution. A lot of those commands are specifically there so someone doesn’t have to pull in other repos with a larger attack surface. e.g. there is a time sync daemon to replace having to pull in ntp which is a lot more complex and fraught and the one thing most desktops need of NTP which is to set the clock.

Why do you still exist? I try understanding what the purpose of your reply could be? Screenrecords do not work. For plenty of people. Google it. Yet you feel entitled to share you smalldick energy wisdom of “proper way”. That is exactly the vibe of the shit ppl. You do not help Wayland or x11 or anything, you just fap into your own mouth because nobody can ever love you like that. Go get help.

Wow, someone needs to grow up. You laid into Wayland when screen recording doesn’t even go through Wayland. The app asks the WM to screen record via DBus. A more constructive response would have been “thanks I didn’t know that”, or perhaps “oh it’s a driver issue”, or “it’s an issue with that WM/ffmpeg/pipewire or whatever”, or anything else likely to be the underlying cause. But it’s not Wayland. Have you got that? Not Wayland. There is no need to be sore and immature about it.

Screen records do work providing the app asks for a screen cast in the proper way (which BTW is not via Wayland but through a message to a DBus service). The service and the desktop then ask permission from the user if necessary. X11 didn’t give a damn about protecting the contents of your screen and any app whether it was beneficial or malicious could do it with impunity. So you should see this as a major security improvement - you can screen record but only if permission is granted.

Yes it’s been stable for some time with a couple of caveats - you need a decent graphics driver and not be using apps with edge cases.

Here is a simple example of an edge case and it’s not hard to find people blaming Wayland even though with some thought this was a security issue - apps like Zoom, Discord, MS Teams want to do screen sharing which is easy in X11 because it has non existent security - just steal the screen bitmap. That’s a problem.

Wayland (the protocol) provides no means for one app to grab the screen, or other apps. This is by design for security. Instead the app must be a good citizen and send a “i want to screen cast” message to the xdg-desktop-portal (a service provider implemented by GNOME, KDE etc.), the desktop asks for user consent and then the app gets a video stream. So it’s a lot more secure but it requires the app and the WM do things properly.

Desktops and apps have matured and these issues are thankfully going away. I think the biggest hurdle left is proper graphics drivers, especially the problem of getting NVidia drivers working.

I think Wayland just attracts trolls in the same way as systemd does.

I’m glad Wayland is maturing and taking over. Even most of the X11 devs hated X11 which tells you something.

When you “buy” software, you’re buying a license that grants you permission to use it subject to the terms & conditions. The stealing as the law would see it is from using software without purchasing a license or using it in violation of the license.

It even extends to digital content people “buy” on Steam, or Google Play, or Amazon including books, music, and videos. You didn’t buy that content, even if you think you did. You bought a license to it which is why occasionally Amazon or whoever will just scrub the content from your account without your consent. That’s also why in some countries you pay VAT on e-books even though you don’t pay VAT on real books - because you actually bought a software license which is liable to VAT.

So the best advice is don’t buy digital media from online services. For games and software it is unavoidable but recognize you don’t legally own squat although most console games on disc or cartridge can still be sold second hand. But even that is being eroded. Nintendo apparently are planning to sell “physical” games in stores but you open it up and there is a redemption code inside. Sony and Microsoft have both tried to get away from physical media too.

I think there is an implication that if you buy a game which is online by nature (e.g. an MMO) that the servers can and will shut down eventually. My cupboard is filled with defunct MMOs. And people do not “own” any commercial software per se, they run it under licence.

So I don’t see that Ubisoft has any legal obligation here. But as a good will gesture they really should put the server code in escrow, or open source chunks of it so that games can continue to enjoy life after the company itself has no economic incentive to continue running it.

Sometimes when I’ve torrenting from a public wifi I’ll get a malicious .scr file - but since I torrent from an Android phone it can’t do anything to me.

You can see why Amazon’s efforts suck just by using it. That isn’t to say I defend Steam, or Epic, or GOG, or UPlay, or Origin, or Battle.net, or Microsoft Store because they all suck. They suck for existing as separate things that all do the same thing but each eating 500Mb of space on my computer.

The ideal situation would be a federated platform where everyone shares a single sign on, everyone shares the same update, backup & restore mechanisms, everyone can join the same lobbies and matchmaking. But that’s too sensible.

I’ve been using it on and off since 1994. I still have a slackware dist on CD with the 1.1 kernel. I think Linux is great although I still prefer to use Windows, and Linux via WSL which is my optimal set up these days.

That’s more or less it. Linux Torvalds hates the different package managers and dependencies in different dists and versions of dists. He claims it’s virtually impossible to ship products that just run on some random dist and cites his own sideproject which is a sea diving app where he builds binaries for Mac OSX and Windows but can’t for Linux. He also praises Valve for using containers.

In theory it means slightly larger binaries, but the flipside it means Steam for Linux runs on a lot more dists, and so do the games and it’s far easier to test they actually run.

Next he’ll be wearing a swastika on his arm and claiming “oh this is just a whirling log, a symbol of prosperity and peace”. And also “oh this is just a very black uniform that Hugo Boss made for me”

Ubuntu. There are mixes of it but out of the box Ubuntu is about as straightforward a dist to install as possible and it is well supported.

That said “new laptop” and Linux are not always a match made in heaven. You might try it from a boot stick and confirm that things like the GPU, touch screen, touchpad, fingerprint reader, USB C / Lightning all work properly.

Valve had a Steam Machine before the Steam Deck which went down like a lead balloon but did get enough indie interest to continue to support a Linux version of the client. The Steam Deck is basically a continuation of that in a small form factor. I wouldn’t be surprised if Valve ever decide to offer cloud gaming that it is also derives from some of these efforts, if for no other reason than to avoid a Windows license fee on the server.

The weird thing to me whenever anyone complains how much memory a browser takes up, is what do they think the free RAM is doing otherwise? It’s free so why can’t an application use it? And that’s what browsers do, taking the memory to use as a cache, and releasing it back to the system if available memory dips below some threshold.

And downloading updates is a good thing. Means that the fresh installation isn’t vulnerable to something that was fixed between when the USB / DVD was pressed and the time the person installed it.

Linux has made leaps and bounds with usability and ease of installation but it’s no better than any other modern OS - which is a good thing. Installing Windows from a USB stick is not difficult - the simple path is literally, pick a language, select your wifi, choose who is logging in, click install and go grab a coffee. About the only difficulty if you can call it one is that some installs will ask for a serial number because it’s a commercial product.

Also, the number of questions & buttons during installation is one thing but the certainty of a functioning system is another. Linux is better at supporting old hardware, Windows is better at supporting new hardware. Choose accordingly if that matters.