Microsoft railroads you into this. Your Bitlocker key will get exfiltrated unless you do a bunch of bullshit to make sure it isn’t.

And that’s the thing with Microsoft, they just keep doing this everywhere in Windows. There is and endless torrent of shit to turn off. No reasonable person will keep on top of it. And if you fuck up a singular time, they just vacuum everything.

Veracrypt carried the torch.

It is pretty common to write unit tests for functionality that doesn’t exist (test driven development). It gets you to think about, and test, everything that needs to exist in the program before writing the program. This approach doesn’t always work, particularly in large code bases where you need to learn the structure of a module before you can even think about design.

‘Freezing the results’ is ok too, as long as you know the results are currently correct. The AI has no way of knowing this and poor programmers often don’t verify either.

It is very easy to write a shit test.

Just make copilot it’s own program that is uninstallable, remove it from everywhere else in the OS, and let it be. People who want it will use it, people who don’t want it won’t. Nobody would be pissed at Microsoft over AI if that is what they had done from the start.

The cars with solar panels on them are a gimmick. There isn’t enough surface area on a normal car to meaningfully charge the battery.

Works pretty damn well for France. Maybe we should follow their lead.

While it won’t be usable by consumers, lots of businesses will happily scoop up a rack for their own servers. Not only will a ton of demand vanish, but a ton of supply appears at the same time.

Any middle-class person who puts their mind to it will become a millionaire. It involves living below your means, not buying cars constantly, and investing your money for decades. I can’t stress enough how big of a difference those things make.

A huge portion of retirees are millionaires because they were responsible and didn’t blow all their money.

Millionaires shouldn’t exist.

Why would you want responsible, middle-class retirees to blow their money instead? Why would you force them into a situation where they have to rely on others in their retirement rather than living comfortably off their own hard work?

Yes. Though the parts that make Ubuntu bad aren’t the base code. The parts that make it bad are the Ubuntu-specific things Canonical puts on top, like Snaps. Mint doesn’t include those poor choices.

O, that is a real cool feature. So you just lose space then as they fail, not redundancy.

If two are dead, you probably should get at least one of them replaced. I’m assuming you are running a RAID 6 with zero redundancy at this point.

When the bubble bursts, used computer components are going to be real cheap. Even just a few liquidated data centers will provide a ton of used supply. Even if they don’t part them up, that is still a bunch of supply that won’t be drawing on new supply.

Hmmm, now that is not something I’m qualified to answer. Hopefully someone else speaks up.

Debian and Mint are both good. The former is aimed at servers and the latter is aimed at desktop use. They are otherwise very similar under the hood.

That explains why I kept getting lost.

Anything specific I could help out with?

Got it down to Ubuntu or Mint

Mint is good. Avoid Ubuntu; snaps just make your life hard. You don’t need to know what those are, and if you avoid Ubuntu you never will need to know.

Ah, had never heard of that before. Sounds like we both learned something. <3

REALLY wish citrix and epic worked on Linux

Epic games work on Linux via Heroic. GOG, Amazon, and Epic games all work through it.

Does it have the Windows GUI?

Linux Mint’s Cinnamon GUI is very similar. Has a start menu, task bar, tray, etc. It was one of the reasons I chose Mint, as it feels familiar.

Is the file architecture the same (C: Drive, Documents, Program Files, etc.)?

“File System” works the same as “C:” in Windows, it is your root drive. Your personal effects live in the “Home” folder. This is like My Documents in Windows. Everything else is in various places under File System.

Can I migrate my files over through One Drive

Microsoft doesn’t make a Linux GUI for OneDrive. That said, you can get your files through the OneDrive website (simplest) or though a third party GUI people have made for this exact purpose.

Can I use my Word/Excel 2024 there

Microsoft doesn’t make software for Linux (with some exceptions). However, LibreOffice works well on both Windows and Linux (meaning you can try it out right now), and it works well with your spreadsheets and documents.

What’s the alternative to Windows Defender

Unneeded. Viruses are 99% a Windows issue. It’s the only OS that needs active defense like that. There are some options, but I wouldn’t bother with them.

Can I run all my Steam games on it

All of mine do. Check out ProtonDb. Anything rated Gold or higher will just work. Things marked silver will work after some tinkering. And I wouldn’t bother with Bronze.

It is. My solution was to go to an OS that has both security updates and isn’t AI infested. Neither Win 10 nor Win 11 meet those criteria.

Depends on the program. But, for 90% of them it is just: “wine programname.exe” in terminal and it just works. If it is an installer, it will be in your start menu like normal and you can just open in from there after. For the other 10%, I lookup the error online and it will need you to add a component via winetricks.

There is a contingent that just won’t work. For those, it’s easier to just find an alternative.

As a rule, I use a Linux native program first. Then fall back on a Windows program if I can’t find what I want. Many programs build for both now. Things like OBS, LibreOffice, Firefox, Chrome, Discord, Dropbox, Steam are the same in Windows and Linux, just install and use it as they are built for both OSes.