The true test is, would you install it for your mom. Have fun figuring out her public library and ereader shit on Linux.

AtlasOS is great wish I discovered it before doing it all manually. All it really does is apply group policy changes and config management, which is what any enterprise workplace will do by default. I have 15 years experience as a sysadmin in a mixed OS environment in the operation of critical infrastructure. We’re bound by intense regulations and audited often, and Windows is the workstation OS that we can easily manage security-wise. This is in contrast to the notion of Windows as a garbage consumer product, which yeah not wrong there, but people might not be aware of it’s compliance with industry standards and security regs. Which is a shame because that’s ultimately what’s evil about the MS approach to business, they create a problem for businesses and offer the solution.

The only thing you can’t disable here are the vulns, technically MS is obligated to patch though so I’d be interested which ones apply, I’m assuming there’s a lot of vulns in certain features. My Windows SSD is 60GB fully loaded with apps and drivers. Search and other stuff are just basic config items and plenty of UI replacements and tweaks to be had.

My Debian servers and laptop run way lighter as expected, unfortunately I need the custom hardware support of Windows for some software critical to my livelihood. All I do is deploy Windows in the same way I’d deploy and manage an enterprise workstation. No store, no live, no “apps,” no overlay bs or news feeds, just pure Windows. Gotta say I prefer 11 so far to 10, the window snapping and some other changes have been good for productivity, which is really the only thing I care about since I’d switch that machine to Debian in a heartbeat if I didn’t have a use case.

Oh yay another Windows 11 being bad meme, and all the same comments about it too. Feel like it’s groundhog day cause this place only has 2 jokes that get recycled on repeat.

It’s a route of exploitation. FOSS developers aren’t often paid for their labor, and what they produce is often commodified by capital. Products of people’s leisure are exploited basically, and they justify it through this moral framework, but no class dynamics are impacted and actually the opposite, they become reified even more.

If Linux or foss had the ability to impact political economy in some communist way we’d have seen it by now, so this is like a deus ex machina myth for tech hobbyists to elevate themselves, an evangelical tech religion. As a Marxist myself this stuff just makes me laugh, the irony of a creature like Bill Gates calling something communist and embracing it with pride.

If you want to put faith in technology and the internet changing the world for the better, just realize since the dawn of all this stuff wealth inequality and economic stresses have only increased until a full blown crisis in 2008 of the consenting economic model. Now as these stresses turn inward we see it culminating in what we might call neofascism.

Right, you’re establishing a moral superiority by your consumption model. I have the same consumption model but not vain enough to think the way I watch movies has any moral significance.

On paper I don’t know what those things really mean, “reform, tolerance, open-mindedness.” They sound like good things but are contingent, open-mindedness to what, tolerance to what, reform to what? They function as euphemisms for something I’m supposed to imply on my own. I don’t really have a use for this kind of thing.

woke could be taken back by left for its original purpose

I remember before the right adopted it as well, and I don’t think it’s worth saving at this point, it’s just a euphemism anyway. I like the religious connotation of “waking up” though. It describes this phenomenon of capital appropriating and mediating our discourse and approaches to managing the problems it’s caused. It’s a great way to ensure that notions of addressing disparities don’t threaten the bottom line through redistributive approaches that were so popular in the past. Reducing this to individual action and workplace etiquette has a pacifying effect, sometimes very intentionally. The worst thing to me is the economic relation this takes place under, corporations outsource and procure DEI services through consultants funded through private equity, rather than run it through their own employees. Even if the intention is completely positive this exerts a controlling influence under the coercive context of employment where there are inherent hierarchies and power dynamics. It’s also the fact this relation will influence the content of what is procured to that which ultimately benefits capital.

Just thinking of how the Bud Light thing went, nobody talked about how the only reason the company started hiring queer people was a result of union job actions and boycotts from gay bars. The corporation engaged in marketing and appropriated the virtues those people fought for, the right freaked out over the company being “woke,” liberals and well meaning people rushed to defend the corporation and correctly insult the right for their reaction, then the company retracted in some symbolic way leaving their hands empty. Invoking the history and what it took to get these human rights and discrimination laws passed is something that threatens all the interested entities here, and when you understand that you have something real to guide you rather than being subject to the whims of corporate marketing strategies.

You conveniently cut out the next definition

Liberal (adjective): given, used, or occurring in generous amounts.

those pertaining to the liberal ideology (not the liberalism ideology)

This is confusing, you seem to be using colloquial definitions of liberal with political ones interchangeably, but in the context of the political right denouncing liberal political projects as “woke” suggests you mean political liberals in the US.

When I see liberal parties in other countries, namely Europe, they are classed as center-right. Here in Canada they’re a little more spread out but economic right for sure. For just a quick example, I support strong affirmative action, but for political liberals that has become watered down to “equality of opportunity” and disparity frameworks.

Liberal ≠ liberalism. I’ve had to explain this so many damn times in this thread it’s beginning to make me nutty.

It’s because you’re using liberal as in, “wow that was a really liberal amount of gravy,” synonymously with liberal as in, “a supporter of a political and social philosophy that promotes individual rights, civil liberties, democracy, and free enterprise.”

That’s liberal as an adjective, not liberalism in its political definition. As a socialist I don’t have a liberal party in my country that I can support. They think capitalism will be fixed if there are no disparities in how people are distributed within it. It’s like thinking equal black and white slave owners in the Antebellum south would have fixed the economic arrangement of slavery.

I don’t think liberal approaches are just unfavorable, I see how they perpetuate the problems they’re invoked to address. We’ve seen nothing but wealth inequality rise as the latest liberal economic consensus came in to effect in the 70s. That economic stratification is what creates these problems, because you have ascriptive taxonomical hierarchies like race that develop out of economic relations like that.

Nah it depends on physical infrastructure and programs which aren’t capable of having values and principles. You mean people ascribe values and principles as their motivation for working on said programs, which I don’t doubt.

“The movement values and principles” is a fairy tale tech hobbyists tell themselves to feel like their consumer preferences have grandiose importance.

My use case is finding good online communities for my offline interests wherever they exist, and I’ve found some solid ones on Discord. This is why I agree with every point you’ve raised but find them ineffective at making me want to not use it. I value the connections I make with people through the platform more than any of the nerd reasons why I’m supposed to be bad for using it. Ultimately I don’t care about the platforms that much, they’re just transient things which come and go. So I’ll host a Matrix instance until something else is better, I’ll use Discord for running my weekly dnd group because nothing else worked for everyone and it’s been solid for 3 years. “Discord’s product is not usability” …okay I guess I’ll stop using it now. /s That just falls flat. To stop using it the reasons I use it will have to go away.

I’ve faced similar arguments about how I have a Windows machine for media creation, people try to debate me that there’s better alternatives assuming I haven’t tried them or that I don’t prioritize FOSS, but they don’t even have a connection to the scene I use this stuff for and they think some nerd technology argument is a valid reason to stop doing what I love. It’s like yeah every point raised is completely valid, but people will debate the ins and outs of platforms and software before they ever apply them to something beyond themselves.

It’s like okay you don’t like the new Milwaukee battery line of tools, but here’s a kitchen I made with them so just stfu and eat your food.

Just goes back to what the use case is. You’re alluding to a case where Discord is being used for content that should be easily searchable on the wide internet. Platforms like Discord including the FOSS alternatives aren’t good for that by their very design. The notion that every web service should be wide open and searchable is antithetical to privacy, which is ironically often cited as a huge downside to Discord. With the privately hosted Matrix instance I use with close friends for instance being isolated from the wide internet is the whole point.

it really isn’t a replacement of something like a forum, website, or wiki.

Discord adds streaming channels and effortless multimedia which is huge. What I do on Discord isn’t possible on these other examples.

It sucks everything without any way to find it again.

What’s the use case here exactly? Some servers are disorganized af and trying to use the platform in the wrong way. The search function seems to work fine for whatever I need it for though.

It’s legit bad for certain uses like any platform, sometimes people try to use it for those things. Linuxbros don’t like the idea of Discord in general regardless, for them the platform takes president over whatever people do on it, and assume that since the platform is bad anyone who uses it is stupid.

I don’t really care about the platform if it has good communities on it, and I’ve found a lot on Discord which I haven’t found anywhere else. I’m on an electronic music production server where people share works in progress, help each other, big names in the scene use it out of genuine interest as well. I’ve shared my own stuff and connected with people in the scene across the world to share our project files and instrument presets etc. Don’t really care about Discord though and would gladly use any platform with a community like this on it. Saying “Discord sucks” and referencing legit reasons why isn’t going to convince me it hasn’t been useful for passions I have offline.

Also I’ve hosted a weekly dnd sesh on Discord for three years now after we went through basically every other platform through trial and error. We had no loyalty to anything and Discord has just been the one that works. Super great for organizing a campaign we run through a virtual table top platform.

A lot of the FOSS alternatives are way better at a technical level, I use Matrix for our friend group’s privately hosted chat server every day. Haven’t found anything comparable to the communities I’ve found on Discord though.

Never been in to the Linus stuff beyond specific videos related to a general search

I don’t use an OS for some identity or hype reason, they’re just tools that allow me to do what I actually want to do with computers. Server and laptop are Debian and my power desktop is Windows.