Starting from version 12 or 13 (don’t remember exactly) proprietary drivers have been included in the installation images, which removed the biggest pain point (IMO) for novice users.

Yes, from version 12. I have some kind of relationship with Debian (I like the philosophy behind it) so I have always wanted to use that when I was going to switch to Linux. Version 12 was what did it for me - removed the installation pain points, as you said. I would use it on any set-and-forget computers (like parents mail-and-web computer) if I get the chance.

It comes with that magical “free software only” mentality

Less free than it used to be. Now you get closed source firmware by default, making the initial setup much better than it used to be.

Sometimes the pain is worth the gain :D Just not so many free afternoons for me in the next while, otherwise I would be trying Arch … but for now I will be using set it and forget it Debian.

Sure

I’m glad that we agree.

I think sometimes there are hits and misses when installing a distro. Could not get Mint to boot after installing it so I ended up installing Debian - where Mint should be easier to get going, Debian installed perfectly fine for me.

This is completely ignorant of the fact that landlords can get insurance for those things and often dont have to pay anything at all

They still have to pay insurance to get insurance. And I’m not sure you can get insurance against the roof getting old (not in my area anyway). When the roof is too old and needs replacing, you do it out of pocket/bank loan. Complete roof replacement are not so often (depending on material), so you can (and should) as a home owner save up to this.

To be fair, the UI Control Panel of Windows has become more and more fragmented. Windows 11 is slowly transitioning different settings into the Settings App. It’s going slow and I have no idea if Microsoft will ever finish the job. When Windows 11 was first released, Settings had so many shortcuts to Control Panel elements that it was totally useless. My thoughts (hope) are that Windows 11 is what Windows Vista was - a transition that would be a bloody mess - and at some point Windows 12 will come and people will like it because they reintroduce elements that people miss and fix some of these inconsistencies.

But how things are run, it will probably be filled with even more reasons to ditch Windows.

You would in fact be severely limited if you only used products made entirely by people who are ‘perfect’ in every way.

Who is talking about people that are perfect in every way? Do you think that people believe that Linus Torvalds is perfect? He is not. We don’t need people to be ‘perfect’, but not being part of a child molesting ring is good start.

Yep, the worst documents are yet to come.

You didn’t read what I wrote… unless you really want to be living in a constant concert

Hopefully that is a problem that will get less and less over the time. I see in my area (Denmark) that more and more public parking spots and supermarkets are getting more chargers. Maybe in a year or two, the situation in your area changes as more electric cars drives around and makes supermarkets want to attract electric car owners with having many chargers.

But for everyday use, I would rather just listen to music on my headphones instead of constantly being at a concert :D

This is true. I changed from a Windows laptop to a Mac and it was more or less the same price.

I think that “the cloud” is like it was with computers in the '70-'80. The OS/programs you wrote was very much tailored to the hardware. Over time this has changed. Now, we see a bigger push to make sure that we are not dependent on specific clouds and hopefully there is going to be standardization (like containers and such) that makes it easier to move your apps from one cloud to another or to your own datacenter cloud. I know Azure has (had?) a Azure stack that could be installed in your local data center. I know my country, Denmark, has the same issue with being tied to the cloud. And now that we are all locked in, the prices go up.

I prefer not to have my own private data center in my house and just let the cloud handle everything, however in these times, I have started up my NAS again and have started transferring my data back local (with backup to local USB disk and the cloud).

I have no experience using it with multiple monitors, but I’m using Remote Desktop Manager from Devolutions as we use that at work. They have a pretty capable free version and actually makes a Linux version too. Just a hopeful suggestion.

The article is about Europeans sharing their inventions instead of making them into monopolies that make billionaires instead of helping the common good.

But upboat for Ecosia!