And thank you for the refining exchange!

I also recognize that both the rave scene and free software are enabled to a large extent by people with cushy high-paying jobs and rich kids who don't mind sinking some money (and sometimes employer goodwill) into their passion without expecting any returns.

I haven't dug into them deeper but Fossify have what seems to be decent basic options for all of the base Android apps: Phone, SMS, keyboard, camera, etc.

Just replacing all the stock apps with the Fossify suite looks like it could be an easy privacy win for someone stuck on a device with locked bootloader and dodgy stock apps from vendor or Google.

I'm involved with people organizing free rave parties of all sizes and production grades and it's something I hold dear so your analogy hits close to home!

They all have income streams from outside the scene, including the ones responsible for events with thousands of attendants. While there are countless stories of people making industry connections promoting their careers and getting work there, a DJ or producer expecting they will be able to sustain a professional career purely through scene exposure or free parties is delusional.

That a few have been fortunate and resourceful enough to do so for a while is great but it's not an indictement of the scene if one of them makes a "The Scene Is Dead" post on Instagram that they're tired of the freeloaders and only doing paid gigs from now on. If they then continue publicly theorizing on how one could successfully financially exploit this community, they shouldn't be surprised if the people who have been volunteering (usually a better characterization than charity IMO) for years feel rubbed the wrong way.

it’s bizarre to me to see the “fuck AI in every way” place turn around and attack this guy

Agreed in the mobbing of the wider thread but I hope you don't see that going on here?

No errors or output from the add?

I don't see anything wrong in what you are doing assuming you have permissions but if it's just for your user you can flatpak --user to install in your homedir instead of system-wide.

Also convenient for distro-hoppers as you can just share or copy the flatpak dirs between home directories so you don't even have to redownload for every reinstall.

Hex Launcher: https://f-droid.org/packages/com.mrmannwood.hexlauncher

Pie Launcher: https://f-droid.org/packages/de.markusfisch.android.pielauncher

Similar approach in both of these

Best coupled with frequent refactoring and breaking of APIs so any community efforts at documentation are eternally outdated.

It's more like busking on the street and then feeling offended about not getting any money despite people liking your music. Maybe you're even inadvertently part of some commercial ad shoot profiting of the city vibes. Or offering free trials of a service and then being upset when nobody converts.

I don't think things you do become "charity" just because others benefit from it and you don't get compensated. The bar is higher than that.

No reason to expect that everyone will be in a position to do that indefinitely, especially when it comes to massive projects that turn into full time jobs.

For sure. No strings attached goes both ways.

At least Brave is open source, in contrast to Orion.

I adored Budgie precisely because it was still on X11 🥲

Anyway, for a relatively simple and clean holistic GNOME-that's-not-GNOME, it's a very polished desktop. Worth checking out for your F&F.

The need to think about and deal with snaps is the reason I don't recommend Ubuntu to noobs in general. It's confusing and unnecessary and adds to the frustration of being forced to make judgement calls about things you don't want to understand just to do your thing (we have enough of that as it is). And if you do decide against snaps, it's a bit of an uphill battle and it's easy to start feeling that the OS, like what they came from, is antagonistic. Canonical decided to isolate and take control of part of the Ubuntu ecosystem with snaps and that has made the distro a bit more niche compared to before.

For better or worse Ubuntu is also known to be on the edge with new developments on the desktop. Switching to new shiny desktop environments between major versions, being very early on Wayland-first, etc. Having to learn new OS UI after an upgrade is not ideal if you are not an enthusiast.

Other than that, Ubuntu can be a fine distro, both for server and desktop. If you either accept the particularities like snaps or know how to work around them, it can be a very good experience and it's well-maintained in general. But it's less of a no-brainer and more situational if it's appropriate or not.

Like Alpine or Gentoo: Great distros but for different reasons not anything I would recommend a non-technical Linux virgin to replace their Windows or macOS with.

Good first distros for beginners:

• Linux Mint Debian Edition
• EndeavourOS
• Debian
• Pop! OS
• Fedora Workstation

Not Good first distros but still getting picked up by people who don't know:

• Manjaro
• Ubuntu
• Omarchy
• Zorin
• Garuda

Everyone: If you've only used one of the latter, try another distro before you believe "Desktop Linux is not ready" or "Linux is not for me".

Specifically on Steam: Which hardware you run on can affect on which distro it runs out of the box on and if you need to fiddle with drivers and firmware or not to get things running smoothly. There is also some difference between installation methods (some people swear by the flatpak version and others swear off it).

Maybe also check the health of your SSD and that your firmware/BIOS are up to date.

Separate your personal and work computer

nods enthusiastically
Important for security of both the employee and the company. Don't mix business and pleasure. It's the only thing that makes sense!

Put Windows and all work related software on a separate work laptop and use remote desktop from your Linux PC to do your job.

What? No! Keep them separate! This is how people get pwned. Don't backdoor your employers machine from your personal PC or vice versa!