But how do you get the average user, for whom the cost of licensing the OS is completely opaque, to even think about cost at all? The computer they bought comes with Windows or MacOS on it already. Neither of which currently has any additional recurring monetary cost to the user.

You’d need mass-market laptops and desktops coming with a Linux distribution tuned well enough to run Microsoft Office and Adobe products without any more work for the user than running them on Windows. It needs to come pre installed and work so well at the “prosumer” use cases that they aren’t constantly thinking about how much easier it was to run Windows. Doing that means the OEM has to do much more unit testing and compatibility checks to ensure that when the customer opens the box and goes to install Steam and Apex or whatever that it just works without any terminal work necessary. Add to that that the OEM will want support from the company that manages the OS, and suddenly the cost to license tried and true Windows vs almost any Linux distribution for end user workstations is nearly moot.

And to make a dent in gaming, there is still an ocean to cross in terms of driver readiness and ease of use. It’s coming along, no doubt, and Valve investing as heavily as they are in Linux gaming is sure to move the needle, but it will still be an area of difficulty for some time because the user experience needs to accommodate completely custom builds with unexpected hardware configurations and box-built gaming PCs that can be OE tested and configured and everything in between.

This is fair. But at that point the same could be said of a Chromebook for her needs, which I’d venture is true for most people’s computing needs given entire swaths of the world do everything on a phone or tablet.

The Linux vs Windows debate is peculiar, because it really only applies to users who are more advanced than the average, arguing about problems that only arise when you want to do more demanding things with your machine like development and gaming. Your average user doesn’t care about any of the anti-monopolistic / FOSS reasons to use Linux, which makes the argument for them essentially “you should use this operating system that takes more work to use because it’s better for you for reasons you don’t care about.”

In order for Linux to become more mainstream, it needs to be able to exceed Windows’ performance and ease of use for gaming and productivity - which is challenging since when most users think of productivity apps, they only think of Microsoft products. It’s not enough to be equal in order to compel people to switch from what they’re accustomed to.

Alarming.

If you can think of two boats meeting in open water, there’s porn of it on the internet.

I’m loving the FPS renaissance we’ve been seeing lately. The Boomer Shooter… boom, low poly gameplay-centric entries like BattleBit Remastered, rhythm games like Metal Hellsinger, and the latest incarnations of DooM and games seeking to mimic it are all welcome additions to the current gaming landscape. Also love experimentation happening by even established and larger developers - Gearbox’s efforts with the Tiny Tina RPGish games come to mind; though I wish they’d do a better job of addressing bugs in those games. I’d love to see more FPS-RPGs come around.

Hell - I’d love to see a ton of crossovers. It’s been a while since we had a truly great FPS platformer. RIP Mirror’s Edge.

Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanokenosis. Blow their minds.

Thickness is the only concern I have. I’d love to be able to replace the battery in my iPhone safely and easily, but I don’t really want to give up having a phone that’s less than 10mm thick.

I’m browsing all instances, not just communities on Lemmy.World right now. Curating a subscription stack more and more every day. And more importantly, identifying and blocking communities I never want to see in my /all/ feed. It’s been great so far.

This entire debate is pointing out a glaring flaw that has been solved in Mastodon but has not yet been introduced to Lemmy, which is the ability as a user to personally filter / block all content from any instance through your account settings rather than having it done at the instance level. I think that were we able to do so at the user level, it would completely abate this entire concern for all but the most stalwart “fuck meta” people.

For sure, but that doesn’t really address the issue.

Right?! We get it. “GOL” Okay. I don’t even like Squash, okay?

+1 to wanting this feature. Far be it from me to kinkshame anyone, but some of y’all are into some weird stuff. It hasn’t been too terrible to block community by community, but I gotta say - those of you who are into Fur are PROLIFIC with the genres and sub-genres of various yiff related activities. And actively participating! 😂

… the PDP-11 😂

I think the barrier to entry also helps a bit. The folks willing to put up with the rough edges that Lemmy has are also likely willing to participate with the intent of making Lemmy a success rather than just “hangers on” as it were. With a 1600% growth in “active” user population, there are definitely a ton of lurkers, yet. Once it becomes more approachable, we’ll see if the community feeling that Lemmy has begins to tarnish and fade as the volume of interaction and content rises.

Basically it works like this:

Instances A, B, and C are federated initially. When a user posts on Instance A, users on Instances B & C can see and interact with the post directly. Any comments they make will be sent back to Instance A as the “home” instance for that content.

Now let’s say Instance A decides they don’t care for the type of interaction they’re getting from Instance C’s users and decides to block - or defederate - Instance C.

To users on instance A, nothing changes other than new posts and comments from users on Instance C will no longer show up. To users on Instance B, nothing changes other than new comments from users on Instance C won’t appear in posts they interact with on Instance A. However, for Instance C, things are suddenly branched.

On Instance C, any posts that were created prior to defederation still exist in Instance C’s record. However, any comments that users on Instance C commit to those posts will no longer be distributed to users on Instances A or B, because Instance A maintains the “primary” record of the post. Similarly, Instance C’s users will not receive updated comments from users on Instance A OR Instance B, because again, Instance A is what determines which comments appear in federated instances. Furthermore, new posts created on Instance A will no longer show up in users’ feeds on Instance C. From the moment of defederation, Instance C’s copies of all posts on Instance A are now distinct, and the only new comments or updates they will receive will be from local users on Instance C.