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Cake day: October 24th, 2023

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  • Yeah I honestly legit enjoyed my fond time with old Windows machines back when they were fun and user-oriented instead of the user-exploitative SAAS monsters they are now.

    Win10 wasn’t even SO bad as everyone says…well, until recently when they started forcing Microsoft Accounts on install and harass you with their ads every 3 forced updates. Ugh.

    Now they’re on the Ai bandwagon? Yeah they’re real small in my rearview mirror now.

    I think it’s just a different landscape now, and I’m glad Linux was there to jump to after all these companies started losing their collective minds.



  • XP was totally a wild time, to Dad’s credit though! hahaha

    It was that funky era of needing like 4 different anti malware programs, and downloading game patches from various hopefully-trusty file hosts, or nabbing the suspiciously convenient “Linkin-Park-Meteora-FULL_ALBUM.exe” off of Kazaa which would promptly rootkit your whole system.

    Routinely running Spybot Search and Destroy, Ad-Aware, AVG, and CCleaner to combat constantly-reinstalling spyware.

    Heck, I consider myself kinda smart but I still had Bonzi Buddy for a while! …I mean, c’mon, funnee purpl monke. Who could resist?

    Like wow, now that I think back on it, you really needed a bit of “street smarts” back then. Nowadays security has gotten a lot better and one can get away with just “Not downloading weird Russian Web3 games off the dark web” and they’ll usually be relatively fine. Lol.

    TL;DR: Windows XP was compatible with Bonzi Buddy, Mandriva was definitely a more secure choice, seeing as it couldn’t run Bonzi Buddy unless you were determined with WINE maybe?

    … It’s cool you got introduced to Linux so early. Cool dad. :)


  • That’s defo Broadcom’s fault. Unfortunately when Linux is a second class citizen, hardware vendors will make crappy Windows and maybe Mac drivers, but a lot of Linux support seems like it needs to be reverse engineered or something, if the company itself refuses to play ball. :(

    This was the case with NVIDIA for a long while. Still kinda is. Hopefully that’s improving though.


  • Fair disclosure, I personally run OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, BUT…

    Honestly for this situation I think Linux Mint might be your on-ramp. It’s very familiar from a user experience perspective from someone coming from Windows, and everything can be done with GUI apps.

    It updates the entire system smoothly through an “app store” so it stays nice and secure. “Cinnamon” is also a highly attractive and smooth desktop environment.

    I’ve switched a few people to it who were sick of Windows on older machines, but NOT computer people at all, and they’ve enjoyed it a lot! The nicest thing is it will feel like your computer again, not like you’re leasing it from Microsoft.

    Don’t try and “completely switch over” in one go.

    Look up how to try Linux in a virtual machine on your existing setup (so you don’t have to risk anything!) and just try it and play around with installing and using it.

    An old laptop or something is also a great way to try it out.

    You can always dual-boot if you want. I sure did for a while until Win10 started BSODing for no discernable reason, and refused to let me “refresh this PC” because “Sorry, can’t. Goodbye.”

    I still have it, just in case, but it’s been most of the year since I’ve even bothered logging into it.

    If you game: you’ll want Heroic Launcher for your GoG/EA stuff, and Steam of course, and maybe Bottles to run your old CD/DVD games maybe. :)

    Sometimes things take a little tweaking, but Mint’s community is fantastic and helpful. You really will start to learn a lot about computers just by using Linux a little and trying things, while Windows makes every effort to hide things from you. (“wE’rE gEtTiNg ThInGs ReAdY” who’s “we”?!)

    As you start to get comfortable with it, it will grow with you. You can start trying to get the hang of the terminal, or jump to another distro once you learn why you might prefer to.

    But you really can’t go wrong just trying Mint out. It’s overall just a pleasant OS.

    ProTip: You’ll be asked about a file system when you install any distro. I spent COUNTLESS HOURS on researching this question. BTRFS can be a bit of an advanced file system, but if you just “set it and forget it”, it has the ability to take incremental snapshots without taking a ton of space! So if something really goes south, you can use an app called “Timeshift” to just roll back.

    This is great for your root drive / partition, but I wouldn’t suggest it for your home folder. :)

    (Just like Windows rollback used to do, but…more reliable lol)

    Lol sorry for the ramble but I hope this might help you feel a little less lost at the grocery store. ;)


  • You’re not wrong about how they operate.

    But there’s absolutely far reaching consequences to major decisions by leaders in power. Don’t fool yourself thinking “It hasn’t burned down yet” just because it’s not a Hollywood societal-collapse movie before your eyes.

    Work sucks more than ever for us now. Know why? Long-dead Reagan absolutely destroyed workers’ rights and established precedents that put bosses much higher on society’s totem pole. Recessions happened. People get desperate and forget that they even HAD rights as workers. Clawing this back is the battle of our time at home.

    Before that? FDR’s New Deal actually secured quite a bit of prosperity for people amidst a complete disaster. People still benefit from Social Security to this day, even if only a little.

    Teddy Roosevelt established the National Park system. Now we’re happy we don’t have luxury apartments in the middle of Yosemite or Yellowstone, or fast food chains all along the Grand Canyon. (Or it hasn’t been used as a landfill or something because the hole was already dug so it saves costs!)

    Citizen’s United is why we have trillions of dollars in shadow-money funding “both sides” of a broken system. (Although that wasn’t put up to vote, the people in charge were sworn in by people that were elected.)

    TL;DR: I get it. It’s all stupid, we’re all constantly lied to. That’s super lame. We know and we hate it.

    BUT:

    Votes. Have. Consequences.



  • Everyone knows capital-first politicians don’t actually care about us. We get it.

    I’m all 'bout that fancy praxis and mutual aid and all those lofty but pure concepts we definitely need to be working on. But we live in a society here.

    Not voting right now is giving an out-and-out fascist a ridiculous amount of power to start crushing and punishing anybody with a different opinion.

    We’re doing what we can with what we have to soften the blow, so we can actually have the chance to work on the higher concepts like “changing the people involved in it.”

    I’d much rather be on the ground convincing people to form unions to safely backtalk their bosses, rather than rallying up guerilla units amidst a “boogaloo” because a bunch of hateful and uneducated people put a screeching orange baby on a throne who refused to leave and became “holy immortal emperor.”

    Lmao hyperbole aside. Seriously. Standing on the sidelines and going “hmph” is basically a vote for things that are likely Very Bad For You™.








  • MonkeMischief@lemmy.todaytoADHD@lemmy.worldCompulsion to help others
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    24 days ago

    Yeah, my father was a policeman, and I’m a Jesus-follower to boot, added to the top of all these other similar patterns in this thread. I was taught to be aware at all times, to take care of people in need. To keep people out of bad situations. To give and give as long as there’s anything left of me to…

    I dubbed it a “hero complex”. It’s not about my glory or anything, just the opposite, I look out for my “squad” whomever they may be, friends or work people, whatever. I don’t leave people behind and I’m a sucker for a sob story…

    No, no it’s not that exciting. I just happen to know a little about a lot and I hate seeing people hurting. I hate seeing things go wrong. I can’t stand when things are broken and thrown away when they just need a simple fix.

    Like others here, I’m cursed with a combination of intense empathy, keen observation, and the compulsive need to give guidance and share knowledge, solicited or not! Lol

    But anyway, I got a job helping the public with computers. I’m pretty good at them and I’m good at explaining things. Perfect right?

    That job ruined me. I got so taken advantage of, and walked over, and stalked, and used…I’m still dealing with the fallout.

    I get pulled into situations all the time where people’s problems become my problem, I’m running to the rescue, I’m staying late, I’m bending the rules just this once, I’m taking care of the details, I’m fixing things, I’m listening, I’m teaching.

    And I end up becoming a captive savior because I’m the one who shows up. I’m the one trying to hold things together.

    So many of my therapy visits were about “Setting healthy boundaries” and “You don’t need to be solving everyone’s problems all the time so they’ll like you.”

    …But this world is bad enough and selfish as it is, I just want to help…