my new (last year) phone is android, but it's a basic flipper. no apps or play store, no internets, not even an account needed for it. don't know what i'll do for a wireless phone when this type is no longer available.
i use gmail for one work-related email, because i need one that's not hosted on one of our own domains, but i mostly use a mail client for it.
i do not use anything else related to google, except for consuming yt videos in a private browser session with ad and script blockers and a couple userscripts--and no login.
i use duck for most of my searching. when i need to test something in a chromium-based browser, or want to utilize browser addons that are not available for firefox, i use a new portable install of opera or vivaldi and delete it when i'm done (right now, i've got one set up to watch a streaming service, using an addon to autoplay).
this gen x'er isn't keen on the idea, either. before the days of cell phones, the street lights coming on was the cue it was time to go home--and we could go pretty much anywhere in our (small) town. and later as a teen when we lived close to a city, all mom wanted to know was whether i'd be home for supper. there was no worry because every 'horrible' thing to happen to a kid wasn't published or broadcast for the world to see.
Windows as a software package would have never been affordable to individuals or local-level orgs in countries like India and Bangladesh (especially in the 2000’s) that are now powerhouses of IT. Same for many SE Asian, Eastern European, African and LatinoAmerican countries as well....
the major OEMs basically get paid to put windows on the systems they sell. they get the licenses at a deep discount, then top that off with the money coming in for the preinstalled garbage.
That’s because Cinnamon is actually a fork of an ancient Gnome release
mate is what originally spawned from gnome 2. while cinnamon was built from gnome 3, it has been completely separated from it for a decade.
both are under active development, run current applications, and offer what would be described as a more 'traditional' desktop environment (compared to gnome shell or ubuntu's unity). they're both lighter-weight then gnome, with mate being a bit leaner than cinnamon.
mint would be my suggestion for op, and any of the default mint desktops, including their other option--xfce, would be suitable for op's use case.
that's the whole reasoning behind having LMDE. seems a little redundant today; but within a release or two mint may very well be only based on debian itself, with the way canonical is steering ubuntu.
tbf, customers have a near-infinite number of different issues and problems. those 'flow charts' and scripts are designed to start at a baseline and work up from there and they start with the most common ones. you'd be paying more for whatever it is you're calling in about if they hired only fully-qualified persons that can 'think on their feet' without the flow charts and scripts wrt whatever issue it is you have, troubleshooting it, and coming up with the specific solution for you... a hell of a lot more. and yes, the first thing you should usually try with tech items is a power cycle. ::insert itcrowd-turnitoffandonagain.jpg::
newsletters can have trackers and shit built right in, and this is especially true when using a service to do the mailing. this is, of course, on top of the contact info and anything else requested at 'signup'. none of which needs to be 'required' when reading a web site or an author-submitted post somewhere. there's basically two reasons to lock content behind a 'newsletter': a paid sub is coming, or selling readers' data.
I know Debian and others can breathe life into older machines. But i wonder if there are any distros with serious optimizations that I haven’t heard of. I’ve already tried MX Linux on an old Thinkpad SL400, and didn’t see any difference from plain Debian....
c2d era laptop. first step if you haven't yet, swap the hdd for a low-cost sata ssd if you can. if you have some homeless sodimms, up the ram, too, if it won't cost anything to do it.
if you're going with mx, you want the fluxbox spin; or opt for antix with icewm instead.
otherwise start with a debian base install (no de or extra sw at install), then add only what you need. peppermint is another option--a basic debian with xfce out-of-the-box and little else. it's what i've been using lately on similar hardware.
for something 'different', you could look at slax.
I have 500gb SSD and need to basically uninstall Elden Ring and Dark Souls 3 to install Baldur’s Gate 3. I want to buy new SSD, but my money is a bit tight right now as I’m saving for my degree’s tuition fee....
agreed. games read a lot of random data. performance won't be nearly as 'good' as op expects.
the difference of $50 matters that much for op, i think that not spending anything would be the more prudent choice.
that said, if it were me i'd raid-0 two of them and keep the third as a single drop-in replacement for when that array dies; containing a full backup of the array's contents kept up-to-date with every major patch the games on it gets.
every. damn. day. the worst might be i get to the outer door at the office, ready to go outside. and i just stop. 30 seconds later, shake my head a bit and go 'oh yea. i'm leaving now'.
there was different trick-or-treat "events" on saturday and sunday here, so as few as 360 if the same schedule holds for those things next year (weekend before a halloween that falls on a 'school night').
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It seems Gen Z is just fine with parents knowing where they are all the time (www.businessinsider.com)
Random thought: Windows is largely successful because of Piracy
Windows as a software package would have never been affordable to individuals or local-level orgs in countries like India and Bangladesh (especially in the 2000’s) that are now powerhouses of IT. Same for many SE Asian, Eastern European, African and LatinoAmerican countries as well....
I've unfortunately made this mistake at Costco of all places. (startrek.website)
It's just the most 100 recently saved songs. The fuck. (startrek.website)
Inspired by reading everyday news (lemmy.ml)
NOTE: may be inaccurate. Feel free to photoshop your variants.
Just wash it right off (lemmy.world)
Fedora or Mint for noob?
A friend might let me install Linux on his secondary laptop he uses for university. He’s not a tinkerer and wants something that just works....
Loving this AI revolution so far (sh.itjust.works)
The problem solver [workchronicles] (startrek.website)
Fedora Linux 39 Released As A Wonderful Upgrade For Leading Workstations & Servers (www.phoronix.com)
Best lesser-known distribution/DE for low-end machines?
I know Debian and others can breathe life into older machines. But i wonder if there are any distros with serious optimizations that I haven’t heard of. I’ve already tried MX Linux on an old Thinkpad SL400, and didn’t see any difference from plain Debian....
Much Better (lemmy.world)
Just plain good advice (startrek.website)
The best RAID setup for internal HDD and does it actually make sense to use it all for gaming?
I have 500gb SSD and need to basically uninstall Elden Ring and Dark Souls 3 to install Baldur’s Gate 3. I want to buy new SSD, but my money is a bit tight right now as I’m saving for my degree’s tuition fee....
Google-hosted malvertising leads to fake Keepass site that looks genuine (arstechnica.com)
It's so annoying (telegra.ph)
Men In The US Are Peeing Incorrectly According To Urologist (www.iflscience.com)
Gentlemen, it is with great displeasure that I must inform you that we're doing it wrong.
Dave has arrived say hello (lemmy.ml)
All you ever need (startrek.website)
We must prepare! (lemmy.world)
Them Duke boys be at it again (lemmy.digitalfall.net)
It doesn't have to be this way (lemmy.zip)
Unity will quietly waive fees if developers switch to its ad monetisation (www.eurogamer.net)