Furries. No hate, just not even remotely interested.
And anime.
This would have been my top line comment. I wish anime wasn’t such a glaring blind spot for me, because it’s something so many people connect on. But I see it like reality TV. There’s 1000 shows with 1000 episodes each, and some shows are probably great, but I’ve never been interested.
There are plenty with just one or two seasons and that’s it.
Reality TV or Anime? Cause either way, the medium just isn’t my thing.
Sure, whatever. I’m just saying it’s a very broad cultural Japanese thing, and not just “hundreds of soap opera” episodes, or Naruto or whatever, I don’t even know myself. A lot of variety is what I’m saying.
It’s actually pretty interesting. I guess “the west” is kinda prejudiced about what anime really is.
No, I agree, and I’m not saying I dislike it for a good reason or even a vastly informed reason; I’ve watched a few, and they felt varied in content and style and tone (at least to me). I’m just saying sometimes it’s as simple as “just don’t like it”. I don’t like eggplant either; had it prepared a few different ways. I don’t think it’s that I just haven’t found that magical preparation or mix of seasonings or whatever; just not a fan.
No judgment since I think many anime shows are not worth the time, but anime is just another medium, like books, more than anything. If there’s a genre of something you like on another medium, then there probably are some decent shows for that genre in anime.
Lots of anime is written with a specific audience in mind, such as the most well known anime shows being written for teens and young adults. Even more, most anime has a specific gendered audience as its target audience.
I personally didn’t care too much for anime until I watched some very high quality shows that pulled me more into the medium.
Yeah it just seems like a random style of cartoon to me, i dont get why ppl are obsessed w this one type. Im probably just too ignorant
I find the idea bwhind each show is more compelling and tends to be more mature to what the west peovides in the same (animated) genre.
You get the odd show like ‘Invincible’ that is more mature but they are way more rare than on the eastern entertainment domain.
Can’t really say I have noticed much shows that are on the level of ‘Avatar the last airbender’ in western tv (and that alone is a controversial topic of if it’s a western cartoon or more eastern in influence)
FLCL has like 6 episodes and is a good entry point
That is like pushing someone into the deep end of weird.
I know you’re struggling to get into this genre, here try this story about a kid who grows a phallic unicorn horn from his forehead…
Yeah I was probably too young to grasp that when I first watched in ~2003. It was one of the first anime I watched with relatively adult themes, but was drawn in by the art style and music. The sexual overtones were lost on me.
FLCL is great, but it is pretty damned weird and better with knowledge of the material it parodies.
Cowboy Bebop is the entry point to anime. It’s mostly episodic so there’s no need for a huge time investment. You’ll know if you’re going to like it or not after an episode or two. The only problem is that it’s so damned good, it’s only downhill from there.
I’m kinda in this boat but I have a soft spot for anime that I grew up with in the 90s and early 2000’s.
There’s also some more recent stuff that’s been generally OK, but I can never keep up with conversations about it because I’m just not in that sphere at all really.
Hit me with some Gen 1 Pokémon, Avatar: TLA or old Ghibli stuff and I’m waxing poetic instantly lol
I’m a furry and even I don’t get most furries, haha!
Like, I’m here to be an animal. I heard “people who like to be animals” and went “whoa, sign me up!” and it turns out a lot of furries DON’T like to be animals, they just… pretend to be animals but “oh that’s a character not really me” and they still consider themselves human…?.. also they’re only half-human-half-animals, not actual animal shape either?.. I don’t get it
turns out most of the actual “I’m just an animal” animals are the therians instead (once I found them I decided I’d be both). I’m still a non-character, non-anthropomorphic (the furry jargon for normal animal shape is “feral”) furry though, and the anthro furries can just deal. :3
– Frost
Owenfromcanada: I dont want to know anything about furrys
Forestbeast: super detailed descriptions of furry culture
This is hilarious. Don’t get me wrong, @forestbeasts@pawb.social , I appreciate the details - a fascinating glimpse at something I didn’t know - but it’s funny timing with some of the other threads here
Haha yeah! :3 I uh, misread the critter I replied to as saying “I don’t get it” rather than “I’m not even interested in getting it”. Cue the massive infodump. >,,>
I’m not that sorry, though. It’s still fun to talk about and also kinda hilarious that it happened.
– Frost
I tend to do the same thing. “Well if you didn’t want a half hour introduction to color theory, why did you ask an unrelated question?”
I… might have the tism…
Unsubscribe from Furry Facts!
and it turns out a lot of furries DON’T like to be animals, they just… pretend to be animals but “oh that’s a character not really me” and they still consider themselves human…?
Do you not consider yourself to be human?
Nope! I’m a wolf! :3
I’m trans, but for species instead of gender. Yeah that’s a thing. 🐺
– Frost
Don’t you think this kind of trivializes what transgender people go through? Saying you can be trans for species sounds like some sort of mockery of transgenderism
I used to think that, but then I realized human brains are kind of a mess so if weird things happen it’s fine as long as nobody’s hurting themselves or someone else
If that’s what they feel good for them, validity isn’t a pie and more for a weird niche group isn’t less for the rest
And if they’re trolling you’re failing responding to trolls 101
Sports culture. Betting, fantasy leagues, statistics. I immediately flatline if the conversation turns to it
Some folks get deep into D&D and build encyclopedic knowledge on estoric spell combos, some delve deep into trains, and some memorize how many lifetime touchdowns Joe Namath has. Dumb, but I understand it.
Its that reason why I say everyone is a nerd about something.
Yah, you may be talking to the former school jock/football star who was barely handed their diploma, but ask them about their sport/the industries around it. You will likely get a better lesson on statistics and managment that you can get out of most text books. (Assuming you can keep the conversation focused)
People usually like talking about their interests.
Yeah, there’s nothing wrong with being into football, just like there’s nothing wrong with not being into it. If you’re an asshole about either of those things, that’s a problem.
Meh, even that is different. One facilitates an activity YOU partake in. The other is an activity you watch others do. Obsessing over how well grown men perform at children’s games is odd. Structuring your weekend around observing other people exercise while you sit on the couch…is weird.
I don’t drive a train though???
But they don’t scream at you and call you a weirdo if you say you’re not interested.
Same here. And it used to cripple me during meetings, and basic conversations with coworkers. I’ve worked in sales, construction, and inventory management and the sports convos were inescapable and apparently a huge key to relating to customers and colleagues.
Just could never get into it, and not the type to fake it either. Unless I’m playing the sport, I could give a fuck less about others who I do not and will not ever know playing a sport.
Streamer culture and Vtuber culture.
Some aspects of streamer culture I get, I do not understand vtuber culture. Youtube started recommending one to me because apparently played a video game I like and watch videos about, and…as far as I can tell her job is to be professionally sexually harassed. Like, men used to whistle at showgirls in saloons, now they throw virtual acorns at anime girls to “nut on” them.
Fun part is her mom apparently found out, and participates.
now they throw virtual acorns at anime girls to “nut on” them
I almost feel bad for laughing at this.
vtubers are just ugly people. they know they won’t get as many views if they showed their real face, so they use an avatar.
Why are people down voting this?
Because we are all just tubes of meat and, barf.
Because it’s blatantly wrong. Many high profile vtubers have had their faces on stream or leaked and they are usually average to way above average looks and often get more views on their IRL content. I am sure some are ugly, but claiming it as a primary reason as if all vtubers have image issues is provably false.
This is how I know I’m old now; what little I’ve ever seen or read seems utterly stupid and vapid to me. “Oh, just watch Flimdiflub6g for 1 hour, you’ll get it!” No, no I don’t think I will.
Oh, looks like I found mine.
I know nothing about both but since I suspect vtubbbing brached from anime subcultures I kinda get why they did.
Streamer though, I weirdly should be their demographic but I’m not.
I’m an avid gamer, I follow youtuber since vlog brother/smosh era, so I witness Pewds rise to fame but never find any joy in watching it live.
Like SovietWomble, his bullshitery series is top notch entertainment, I’ve rewatched the Arma and CS series multiple time, despite never played either one. Still didn’t like watching it live.
I think because it’s similar with the one with celebrities. I just don’t care with the parasocial aspect of it.
I can count the number of streamers I’m a fan of on three fingers, and the number of Vtubers I can even name on one
I have no idea what the difference between those labels are.
Vtubers are people pretending to be anime girls
Vagina tubers?
I was gonna make a comment about the differences before I realized I couldn’t tell you the difference between them outside of how they choose to represent themselves.
Vtubers are a subset of streamers, they are subject to all the same drama and content. People just like to separate them because, similar to anime, there are many people who watch vtubers but don’t watch other streamers.
I don’t watch the streams or vods but the clips are funny/entertaining
Why people are infatuated with celebrities.
Same reason people like watching TV dramas. It’s escapism. They get to vicariously live someone else’s more colourful life - or are glad they’re not living the celebrity’s real or acted horrible life - for a short while to get away from their own.
And anyone on a screen is usually better-looking as well, which is a big draw.
This is a really fair way to put it. I can’t understand it personally, but I read fantasy books to escape the real world, and I tell anyone I can that I read fiction only because I live in the real world and I’ve had enough of its shit. So appreciate your shedding some light on it, because I certainly didn’t understand it (celebrity nonsense). Still don’t, but maybe I will soon.
That’s a fascinating subject IMO.
Like there is a king/celeb/hero/… hole in ther mind they just must fill.
Lifestyle channels and blogs. This type of content is often very consumeristic. Unless it’s in an educational/informative context, I don’t have an interest in watching strangers have experiences that I could be having myself.
Thats why I dont watch porn.
I only watch educational/informative porn
Student: Is there any way I can get an A on my test Professor?? Professor: Take your clothes off.
So the Discovery Channel?
Fashion
Religion. Even when I’ve taken the time to look up the difference is between a Catholic and a Christian, or a Shia and a Sunni, it seems like within minutes at most, that knowledge just sublimates.
difference is between a Catholic and a Christian
Not sure if the error was intentional to make the point that you don’t care, but Catholics are the largest denomination of Christianity, rather than an alternative to it.
The Dutch make a distinction between Catholic and Christian.
looks surprised
goes to check Dutch Wikipedia
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katholicisme
Using Google Translate to convert the overview to English, I get:
Catholicism is considered the largest movement within Christianity. The term derives from the word “catholic” and comes from the Greek (καθολικός - katholikos), meaning general or universal. The term “catholic” was first used in the context of the church by Ignatius of Antioch. In a letter to the Christians of Smyrna in 107, he wrote: “Where Christ is, there is the Catholic Church.”[1]
Catholicism is united by two creeds, the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, and can be divided into:
Christians who unite under the Bishop of Rome (the Pope): Roman Catholics
Other Christians who call themselves Catholic
That sounds like they’re classifying it the same way I’d normally see it in the English-speaking world.
I’m talking about the Dutch, not academics and Wikipedia article writers. When someone is talking about someone who is “Christelijk” they mean protestant.
I’m from New Jersey and we all make a very big distinction between Catholicism and Christian. And lots of us were raised Catholic around here, and Christians all seem to be late-in-life converts, at least where I’m from. And I’m a typical nothinger now, but I’d take Catholicism and it’s bullshit (not kid touching) over what I’ve experienced with the Christians around here, never met a faker bunch of people.
denomination
Yeah, thats what I thought
Maybe more to mean like the original belief vs the now off-spring?
It’s appel vs fruit. There are lots of types of christianity, chatolicism is a type of christianity.
Zeus is the most important but he sucks. Poseidon is in charge of the sea and he really likes sinking ships. Hades is in charge of you when you’re dead. Artemis and Athena are both aroace, but Artemis like platonic bathing with her besties while Athena prefers maps. Everyone hates Ares but not as much as Hephaestus, Hera will kill you if you cheat on your wife, and Hestia and Dionysus can’t agree which one is more important. Some people say Persephone is a victim, but the truth is she’s ruled the underworld a lot longer than her husband has. Demeter is not supportive.
My favorite thing about Christianity is how all the different sects pretend that every other sect isn’t actually Christian
Amen brother.
Usually how those divisions occurred is much more interesting.
I’m fascinated that certain ideas have persisted over millennia and curious what it is about them that has captured minds so consistently. Religion, but more broadly spirituality, seems to have a constant presence throughout human conciousness and that is quite remarkable.
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Think of it in terms of gladiator movies, the crusades, the fall of Rome. That shit is history, knights in armor, clash of cultures, and is full of drama as game of thrones
Tiktok and ai chatbots.
Tiktok and most kinds of short form content for me. I have a few friends into Tiktok and I’m sure it’s fun but I just don’t care to check it out.
I’ve tried to see what the appeal of short form content is. Twitter, mastodon, and bluesky have all ended up being a shitty RSS feed interrupted by the opinions of strangers for me. Now I’m just over trying to get it. It’s just another weird ass thing that tonnes of people are into.
Cricket.
67
I think it’s funnier if I just never attempt to “get it”
23 skidoo daddy-o!
What’s to get? Not a lot of depth if any to any of these. Like someone huffed glue and laughing at a fly on a wall.
You know what’s funnier than 24 Patrick ?
The need to have a giant house / car / other oversized, impractical status symbol. It just reeks of insecurity and it’s all bullshit, no one needs houses that big it’s just plain fucking stupid.
It has gotten almost impossible to find a practical pickup truck. they’re all giant penis enhancent vehicles.
Ugh, yes everything seems to be a four door and way too tall.
I wish El Camino type low cars with beds made a comeback.
Same, think there are like 2 available but I’d want electric which doesn’t exist at all. Had an el camino as my first car and other than the lack of heat it was great.
Other than American pickups, the rest of them have stayed relatively reasonable sized. Toyota Hilux, Mitsubishi L200, Isuzu D-Max, Volkswagen Amarok, Ford Ranger, Nissan Navara, Mercedes X-Class … There’s plenty to choose from.
The Toyota Hilux Workmate is a great ute in Australia. A lot of Hilux’s are still big wank tanks.
BUT I NEED A ROOM FOR ALL MY PRECIOUS MOMENTS FIGURINES!!!
Hmm…
I’d argue against houses/living space (what is reasonable) but the other stuff: Yeah.Example:
I’d like a living space with 3-4 rooms with a nice garden.
Do I need that much when I could suffice with just 2? No.
Would I like to, to do my hobbies and interests? Yep
The kardashian universe. I’ve never seen an ep, don’t know their names or whatever the fuck they do or say. As a 30 year old woman I feel like a unicorn not knowing shit about fuck when it comes to that whole thing.
Good for you - seriously, are you single?
LMAO! I’m married and now basically live the life of a 95 year old legit couldn’t be happier. Never had an instagram either. I don’t wanna get caught up in that shit.
Much of the outrage culture online is rather foreign to me. It’s not necessarily that I don’t “get” it but I simply can’t relate with the people who engage in it. Writing angry messages about certain people and events, having people pat me on the back for sharing views that they agree with and reading other people sharing these same same views just seems like some kind of fart smelling gathering which simply just doesn’t appeal to me. It’s all just meaningless noise. That kind of “conversation” could go on forever and it wouldn’t ever achieve anything.
You’ve just described 95% of lemmy
Which is why my keyword-based list of content filters grows by the day. Trying to block the noise feels like a full-time-job sometimes.
“Can’t stop the signal, Mal.”
I straight up quit lemmy for almost a year due to people pushing stuff so hard where even unrelated communities weren’t safe from anything and no one would care because c/all would act as one feed anyway. It really does feel like people want to be outraged for the sake of outraging rather than wanting to change something for the better while doing it at the cost of undermining what they wish to “protect”.
Sup, I’m only here to get mad.
“FUCK Google” makes people feel relevant and involved which is pathetic.
Linux. I don’t want “using the computer” to turn into a hobby that I need a computer science degree for.
That’s one of the reasons I switched from Windows to Linux.
Every single patch and every single version upgrade made using worse as all the settings changed weirder and weirder and hidden or missing.
Yes, I have less issues that needs to be fixed, or tweaked on Linux than on Winslop. Less popups that appear out of nowhere, and no forced upgrades while being on the toilet
Yeah, I just have a tough time believing you guys, from my limited experience with Linux, but also from many others here who seem to be Linux users, but can appreciate why others don’t use it. Folks talking about updates bricking peripherals and whatnot. It’s something that has literally never happened to me in the last 30+ years I’ve been Windowsing.
If Linux users could stop being so hyperbolic in their superiority, it might entice me to try it out. Windows isn’t some unusable shit and everyone knows it. It’s had its issues since day one. And to suggest Linux is just this set it and forget it OS is preposterous. Let’s all be real.
If Linux users could stop being so hyperbolic in their superiority,
FYI, we’re actually substantially downplaying how superior Linux is.
That’s part of the message we’re trying to share, now that it is ready. You’re allowed to use Linux as a shit-free alternative to Windows. For some people, that is enough.
But that’s barely skimming the surface of all the cool shit happening on Linux today.
There’s so many options for Linux though. Mint is super beginner friendly and doesn’t focus on the terminal. You don’t have to set up Arch your first time around.
Thank you for confirming that, yes, we are on lemmy.
Lol, touché.
Which one is “literally just legally distinct windows 10”?
Anything with the KDE desktop!
That’s a neat thing about Linux, the look and feel is actually totally separate from the distro. Everyone focuses on distros when really, that’s mostly under-the-hood stuff, the look and feel is the desktop environment.
KDE is windows-10-like (out of the box, you can also rearrange the crap out of it, ours is set up more like Mac!) and also happens to be one of the most full-featured desktop environments, so you won’t be missing stuff (like HDR support or whatever).
So, a distro with KDE.
Debian is great if you want something that Does Not Break on you. Ever. It will never throw you a curveball with an update. That also means you just won’t really get updates very much, outside of a Big Major Upgrade every couple of years. If you’re tired of Windows Update screwing with you, Debian’s perfect.
Fedora is pretty good if you want the new shinies all the time. Major updates every 6 months. Debian has a bigger appstore and even stuff that isn’t in there often provides .deb packages, which Fedora can’t run, but it’s not a huge deal.
Mint doesn’t have a convenient KDE version (but you can install KDE after the fact). It has its own desktop called Cinnamon. More Windows 7 vibes. It’s based on Debian so you get the Debian compatibility, as well, and they put work into making sure you have GUI apps for stuff like installing drivers (Debian you might need a terminal command or three during initial setup).
There’s also immutable distros like Bazzite, which is basically SteamOS But Desktop. It also comes with similar restrictions to SteamOS, though. Good for an Appliance Computer, an absolute fucking pain if you ever need to install drivers/VR stuff/other system software or what-have-you. I’d avoid for your main computer.
– Frost
It looks like debian with KDE would be worth looking at. How do I obtain this?
Edit: Oh it’s free, I just googled it and it came up.
Oh it’s free
My least favorite thing about Linux is that I can’t pirate it
It’s recommended to run a ‘live usb’ first to see if there are any problems with hardware compatibility. Nowadays many distros have their installers as live usbs anyway, but idk about Debian.
Debian is weird in even having non-live ISOs, but they do have various live ones with different desktops! (Don’t grab the one from the homepage, grab one of the live ones instead.)
Debian is weird in even having non-live ISOs
I see the model of ‘burn seven dvds to then have every package under the sun’ is alive and well.
Yeah! https://www.debian.org/CD/live/, the little teeny “live KDE” link. =^.^=
You don’t want the “netinst” ISO on the main page. It technically works, but it’s a pain to use and needs internet access to install. Its only redeeming quality is the small download size and fitting on a CD (if you’re burning it to a CD-R which is unlikely).
Edit: Oh it’s free, I just googled it and it came up.
Haha. I often forget to mention that part!
A ton of really good software is also free. I found the hardest part was choosing which software was right for me.
I just installed Debian with Plasma, and have been using a system with Mint and Plasma as my daily driver for a few months now. I used the default Cinnamon for about a year. Plasma is definitely way more polished and allows almost everything to be done via menus which is NOT a given with most Linux things. It does work most of the time but expect to run into some basic task you didn’t even think about on Windows and having a frustrating experience chasing solutions to untangle how to do it.
I’m never going back to Windows but the amount of times I’ve had to do something convoluted to attempt something you’d think would be easy is too damn high.
You’ve just lost 90 percent of the population. They didn’t understand a word you said. That’s the problem with Linux and its developers. They assume people know all this stuff.
I mean, I could just go “TLDR grab Debian’s live KDE edition” if that’s easier!
The whole point in me explaining all that is that people don’t know all this stuff. That’s why I’m explaining it. I did gloss over the fact that distros exist, but it seems like the person I’m replying to already knows that multiple versions of Linux are a thing so that’s not a huge issue.
And going “here’s some options to pick from” helps if it turns out you’ve got different priorities than we do. But yeah, “TLDR Debian” is also good if you’re overwhelmed.
I’m out of touch, not stupid. I understood them just fine.
@starlinguk @forestbeasts meh… he wanted to give you all the info and all the options, that may be confusing for someone that only option was windows until now… Nowadays I dont give options, just try Kubuntu and see if you like it.
I can’t ever tell what is critical to people. I got my wife her first MacBook last year. She’s used it three times and hates it. I’m like… red yellow green, and everything else is just like iPhone. Nope, she despises it.
I moved my daughter from windows to Linux Mint, and she barely noticed. She can’t use her VR the same way, and that was the only difference that bothered her.
So I can’t say you wouldn’t hate Linux, but I can tell you I don’t want my hobby to be fucking with OSes and Mint was perfect. You can just use it. Steam games, browsing the web, damn near everything works exactly the way you’d expect on Windows. I don’t happen to need a second computer after my work MacBook, but if I did it would be Linux for sure.
Well, except no OneDrive. Which another point in Linux’s favor.
For the Mac, I’ve had opposite experiences thanks to all of y’all online. Both my ex and my youngest kid wanted Mac’s, but I was the one cautioning that they may be popular but they’re different and some people don’t like that. He wouldn’t even try mine: I have windows, Mac and an assortment of Linux he can just try at any time
Jokes on me, I spent a ridiculous amount of money buying my kid a school Windows laptop (with him there apparently not speaking up) since that’s all he’s ever used, and I had to return it for a Mac
Don’t take anything I’ve said as being anti-Mac. I am much happier to be on Mac than Windows. I would be happy on Linux as well, perhaps happier, but the corporate world being what it is, it turns out Linux doesn’t make it easy to load a computer up with a bunch of spyware.
Okay, I’ll be fair. Windows and MacOS are like… 3 things (If you still support Mac on Intel). Linux is like… 500 OSes. Even if you strip it down and support the most common, you’re looking at Arch (so customized that might as well be a separate OS for each user), Ubuntu, Fedora, and maybe Mint. So it’s way more work to support Linux even if Linux were as easy to support as Mac and Windows, and I believe it is not.
I’m very happy with my Mac. But my wife hates things that change. She’s one of those people who will hang onto a 15 year old laptop because “everything is the way I want it,” even if it’s all janky as hell.
I put Ubuntu on my MacBook a few weeks ago.
What kind of VR setup are you using?
I’ve been successfully using SteamVR on atomic Fedora. If she also uses SteamVR, I’d be happy to write details about my setup (though it’s fairly standard)!
I think so. She has an oculus 2 and she is trying to connect wirelessly to Steam VR. I haven’t really tried myself for a couple of years. It used to work fine on windows, at least wired. Wireless never worked that well for me.
I never got it to work in Linux but I haven’t tried in a couple of years and I assume it’s gotten better since then.
I’d say here we go making os a hobby, but it took some effort in windows, too.
Ah, I haven’t used wireless VR yet, so I can’t comment on that. Planning to wait for the Steam Frame, I’m sure Valve will make it work well enough. There is a project called ALVR that I keep reading about in the context of wireless VR on Linux, might be something to look at if you wanna dig deeper.
I’d argue that my setup allows you to not treat the OS as a hobby, but your mileage may vary :) I’m using an atomic Fedora variant (specifically Aurora, which is focused on developers - but there’s also e.g. Silverblue (Gnome) or Kinoite (KDE) as normal day-to-day versions, and Bazzite which focuses on gaming). Steam is running through Flatpak, and everything else - SteamVR & the games themselves - honestly just worked for me. Sometimes SteamVR shows an error after starting, in that case I have to quit, unplug my headset for a few seconds, plug it back in & start SteamVR again, but other than that it’s been a fairly painless experience.
I should mention that I use a Valve Index, but as long as you’re using SteamVR, things should work the same.
A good reason why I don’t want to “get” Linux is this guy posted in this thread with Linux as his example, and it’s the most replied to thread with each user trying to justify their distro.
This is like me going into a bible belt small town, expressing my spiritual beliefs, and watching as each of the individual churches try to try and “save” me.
Until Linux users “get” why Windows is the marketshare leader and not demonize it like the spawn of Satan when it’s literally just an OS on a completely optional piece of hardware, I don’t think I’ll ever “get” Linux.
Though I do care very much for Android if that counts. 😉
You don’t have to tell people you use Linux or talk to them about it. I know that because I use Zorin OS, which is a really modern feeling Linux distro with a slick user interface, that’s perfect for people like you and I, who don’t want to be bombarded with opinions on the “right” operating system and just want to use their computers in peace. You should totally switch!
I think a lot of Linux people really do more harm than good when they try to sell people on Linux. Some of it is because they wildly overestimate how much the average person knows about computers, and some of it is just over sharing.
I’ve been using Linux for about half a year now. I’m a slightly above-average computer user, but not some kind of programming prodigy. I’ve had one significant hiccup when I was first installing it, which you probably won’t have because that was a weird quirk of my specific 10+ year old motherboard.
After that everything has pretty much been smooth sailing. 99% of my general computer use is exactly the same as on Windows (though to be fair, I’ve been big on free software for a long time so I was using stuff like libre office and gimp instead of Microsoft office and Photoshop already)
I haven’t yet run into a steam game that won’t run for me. One or two of them I had to add a launch option or choose a different proton version, and I figured that out by basically just googling “steam Linux game name” and a couple keywords about the problem I was having like “audio stuttering,” and the first search result had the fix.
Some games even run better for me now (mostly they’re about the same, some are very slightly worse)
If you use a lot of mods, they can be a bit of a pain in the ass to figure out how to get them running, but it’s usually doable, and once you do it’s done and you don’t have to do it again.
If you rely on specific windows-only software, usually you can get it running with WINE. That does take some figuring-out. But again, once it’s done, it’s done.
And overall my computer runs better and boots up faster without all the windows bloat.
It also breathed new life into my parents computer, and they’re tech-illiterate, retired, old people. They’ve had no issues with it so far.
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In case that convinced anyone to give it a try, here’s my recommendations.
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Think about what software on your computer you use. See if there’s a Linux compatible alternative. Try that out, see if you can live with it. Do this before you ever even think about making a Linux USB.
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Pick a Distro - here’s where a lot of guides fall apart I think. I’ll make it easy. If you’re primarily a gamer, go ahead and choose bazzite. If you’re looking for a general computer to browse the web, do your homework, etc. choose whichever flavor of Ubuntu (Ubuntu, Xubuntu, Kubuntu, etc.) or Linux Mint (which is ubuntu-based) looks prettiest to you. Don’t think too hard about it, don’t do too much research about the pros and cons of different desktop environments, don’t listen to the people who have some moral and philosophical bones to pick about Ubuntu. Just go by vibes. It’s stable, it works, it’s about as well-supported and documented as it gets, and if you do have a problem, you’ll find the answers in the Ubuntu forums without too much searching.
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Put that on a flash drive, and just run off of that for a week or two. See if you can live with it. Bear in mind it will probably be a bit slower running off the flash drive than it will be once it’s actually installed. Play around with it, you can’t really break anything unless you purposely go rooting around in your windows hard drive and start deleting shit willi-nilly. If you absolutely hate it, just pull the flash drive out and forget about it.
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If you decide you like it, take a deep breath and go ahead and install it.
I’m a slightly above-average computer user
My brother you’re in like the 99th percentile of computer users. The vast, vast majority of people can’t understand what a browser tab is, much less a motherboard.
It do be like that.
Like, most linux user seems to not understand that just being able to boot to other OS is witchcraft to the general population. Most of my friends never even heard of Linux. Their phone is the computer.
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Windows is that as well.
Learning how to use a Linux distribution like Mint doesn’t require any special degree or knowledge. I’d say you can do that in a weekend or so. Especially since you can ask the AI about everything and it’s surprisingly good at Linux questions and terminal commands, although you don’t really need those for Mint.
If you’ve never been into Microslop Windows, navigating their piece of shit os can be equally as daunting since you are not free to do what you want, you can only do what MS want you to do which is completely counterintuitive to what Linux is.
Just because something is the market leader, doesn’t make it good or better than the alternative.
I get that you don’t care for Linux, and that’s fine but if you are the slightest interested in IT, you’re doing yourself a disservice not learning it.
I hear where you are coming from, but you just said “Use AI” on Lemmy. This should be fun 😁
I don’t think you know at all where I’m coming from. You don’t seem to understand how great AI are at documentation. I’d rather ask an AI than browse the mint forums reading decades old threads that won’t lead to anything anyways. That’s just wasting time. What’s your argument?
I didn’t have one. I was asserting the idea that people were going to attack your post for saying “Use AI.”
That’s fine. If people want to work in an inefficient manner and waste time, I’m not gonna stop them. I will take advantage of AI and I’m happy to do so. It makes my job within IT easier and that’s nice!
Do you ever click in to see more details? We used to have memes about stack overflow always having the answer to tech questions. Now we have ai summarizing stack overflow for us, but stack overflow no longer gets the activity to generate new answers, or even stay open.
You seem to think that stack overflow conatins all the answers to everything. The AI can search and look through the web faster than any human on the planet, yes that includes stack overflow, but also forums and other open websites, anything that can be indexed basically.
Often times when you have an issue, it’s very rare that you are the first one to have it, so I’d say all the info you need to solve it is already out there and AI do a fantastic job to help you find an answer to your problem quicker than your could ever do yourself. Why not take advantage?
Why not remove the search function from stack overflow, you could just read all the questions and articles yourself to find the most sutible one for your question. It’s quite nice to have a server that can look though all questions available and suggest to you which ones are the best for you based on your search term. It’s exacly that, but way borader. How is that not a good thing?
Stack overflow still had an amazing percentage of answers to tech question but of course it’s not the only source.
Realistically I used to use a search engine for answers and it was pretty good about discovering relevant answers. Usually I clicked a handful off links from the first page of results, evaluated them, and selected the answer
Now the search engine returns an ai summary of the top results. It’s a bit slower but sometimes I can just use that. Other times I may need to click into sources for more information or to evaluate what it’s telling me. The big difference is who does the first evaluation/summary. Originally the ai was slower and less accurate but it rapidly improved
But here’s the problem. The older approach meant I clicked into the source. If they relied on ads or tracking, they received their income to support themselves. If it’s a gamified community source, responders got their karma. It was sustainable. Now with the ai, no one visits the original site and no one has incentive to contribute more answers. The ai is rapidly improving at the cost of its own sources
Mint has an AI? Wow, now I hate Mint
lol no. That’s now what I said at all. I was refering to chatgpt, claude of what ever flavour of AI you wanna use…
Oh, I hate all of those because of all the murders they keep committing. Young and vulnerable people go to them looking for help with homework and end up being talked into isolation and suicide.
Bazzite is super easy to use and sets everything up for you.
I don’t like using it because it doesn’t allow you to mess with your computer as much as I like to, but that makes it perfect for normal people.
There are very, very few things that Bazzite prevents you from doing. Usually they just have an alternative approach (e.g. in a Distrobox) to ensure the stability of the system.
I mean it doesn’t allow you to mess with your computer at easily as I like to.
Do you have anything concrete in mind? I don’t feel like the atomic Fedora variants make it harder for me to mess with my computer once I’ve learned their approach.
I didn’t want to learn their approach, I just wanted to install a software.
Sure, that’s fair, but then you shouldn’t go around saying “those distributions make it harder to mess with your computer”. Your criticism seems to instead be “I can’t use the tooling and processes I already know”, which again is fair, but definitely a separate issue.
You’re going to have the same issue with any distribution that uses a different package manager, and it wouldn’t be fair to e.g. Alpine to say “it makes it harder to mess with my system since I can’t use
aptordnf”.Now I’m on Arch, where learning is fun
Preach. Any thread remotely about operating systems turning into a “Fuck windows” Linux cicrclejerk is just annoying as fuck. I’m almost refusing to use Linux just to spite Lemmy.
And I’m well aware I’m a spiteful person, it’s how I’ve survived 38 years, and I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing, it’s worked out just fine!
Any thread remotely about operating systems turning into a “Fuck windows” Linux cicrclejerk is just annoying as fuck.
Haha. Fair enough.
But also, fuck Windows though. Really. Microslop could have made a good OS, they have in the past.
Today, they’re just choosing not to.
Anything that goes against Common sense or sciene.
Especially the latter. Most stuff is undrstandable by school knowledge. But they choose to Not believe that. I Just cannot get it.
Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
- Albert Einstein
- Wayne Gretzky
Oh. Thats an interesting Point of View. Thanks for Sharing!
