Same! My 80+ year old dad has been using Mint for years now. All he needs is a browser to check his bank account, read news, go on Facebook. Mint just works!
I run EndeavourOS with KDE. For VPN, I use SurfShark which do we have a GUI for Linux installable via AUR (Arch User Repositories). Steam works pretty good too.
You're must be joking! Look around, if you look past the bitten apple, there are plenty of perfectly capable devices out there for under $300. In fact, I see plenty of people who are on the street corners panhandling AND using a smartphone.
Crate an account on a different instance? And oh yeah, stop being a dink?
My rule of thumb is this: if I perceive that the IP I want, was created by an individual who must have spent their blood sweat and tears creating it, I'll pay for it to encourage that work. If, on the other hand I'm being made to pay extra for something just because there's a queue of corporations that just want to profit for providing something made by others, I pirate it as a form of protest. As an example, I'll gladly pay for an ebook being distributed through an author's website even if I'm not sure I'm going to like it. But I will not pay for a cable subscription just to be able to watch sports programs. Another example: I've paid money for mobile games when I see a lot of effort being spent in making the gameplay engaging, but I will delete or try to cheat or pirate games that I perceive as pay-to-win.
While I agree that getting bullied in the news cycle is not healthy, I feel like getting the information about what's going on around you from memes is also not good. It lacks context and details to enable the user from processing the news with critical thinking. I don't know what the answer is, but for people who exercise their power of a vote, I feel like they need to be as knowledgeable about the issues as possible.
Gimp, OpenOffice.org, VLC, Slackware, and on and on after that. Every flavor of Linux: RedHat, SuSe, Ubuntu, now on Manjaro and Endeavour.
Gnome online accounts are also in Cinnamon if you like a more traditional desktop paradigm. Using it now on Manjaro. Works well.
I don't know if there's any gasoline car vs electric studies, but there's been some research into, for example, carbon footprint of oil drilling vs lithium mining. Here's one of the articles that has a bunch of sources sited:
It worked as far as syncing the subscriptions. I was also hoping it would sync the profile settings like languages, display name etc. Which it didn't. Not a big deal though as I was mostly after the subscriptions.
Trying it now.
Been using FF on almy devices for over a year now. Best.Browser.Ever.