Elementary OS, or something like Garuda or Debian with either Gnome or KDE desktops.

Are we posting rooted and ROM’ed phones here? ‘Cuz I have a cabinet of shock and awe available lol.

They’re not tightening Android up to protect users, they’re doing it to abuse and exploit them and restrict their ability to circumvent the data mining they conduct. There’s only one way they’d theoretically stop this course of action, and that’s if sales PLUMMET. Which won’t happen because the portion of people willing to abstain from new phone purchases to fight this is minimal.

There are millions of terrible trends that the consumer market has allowed to happen simply because the vast majority of consumers will bend over, drop trow, lube themselves up and say “Go ahead, I’m ready!” If we united and made an example of one brand and got even a six-month period of a drop in sales by 50% or more, they would beg us to tell them what do we want in return for buying again. We could have all the control we want, but people just don’t have spines.

Why has every company in the world turned pure evil?

Any Android I can’t either root or change the ROM I will never use. Period.

I commend and congratulate you! As a born American, it was never a problem for me. However, as a Jew I know full well the fragile and tenuous peace can vanish in a moment if any one or more ethnic groups become a convenient scapegoat for a regime. My grandparents got out of Germany literally with moments to spare. At the same time my grandparents were boarding a plane, SS were bashing down the doors to their home.

So if you are in a position that you could ever face persecution like that, getting the F out is the smartest thing to do. I sincerely wish you all the best and hope you make a peaceful life somewhere that isn’t headed down the hellish path that America is. Even being a white American, I still sometimes worry because of being Jewish. It can very easily happen again to my people, especially since antisemitism is in vogue again lately. And the biggest problem is that it’s familiar and comfortable for most people; my people are expected to have acclimated to oppression - hey aren’t you used to it?

I hope someday soon, the USA will be safe again for you, though I would further admire if you’ve made a life somewhere that is preferable even over a safe USA.

Kudos to you and your family.

Salud, cheers, prost, l’chaim!

Honestly fine by me. I prefer Linux remain non-mainstream. It has integrity like this. The moment any suits see dollar signs on it, it’s as good as ruined.

Why? Office is such shit.

Not at all. More like not wanting to see some corporate entity start to turn it into another monetized trash heap that’s enshittified to be sold to the masses in bloated and corrupt form. There’s a legitimate argument for remaining the way it is.

And that’s what the sheeple welcome with open arms.

If the day comes where it’s impossible to at the very least, clean off spyware stuff you don’t want, or install custom ROMs if necessary, then I’ll stick to older units that have the ability still. And if that ever becomes impossible, then stop using a smartphone.

And all the arguments in the world about how everything requires a smartphone - I don’t care about. That cannot be literally required, at least not for anything important because it’s not possible to assume/ensure that every person has one and that it is fully operational etc.

If this creates a nuisance for providers of various services, so be it - in fact, all the better because they can potentially be a source of pressure to maintain the availability of customizable devices. But that’s a very very miniscule likelihood; more likely is that they say well, too bad, if you don’t have a smartphone then this hospital can’t treat you. There may come a point where it literally will be impossible to functionally integrate in society without being spied upon 24/7. And in America at least, this will be welcomed with open arms because - well, you know: sheep.

But even then, there will develop a bigger and bigger fringe subculture of off-the-grid individuals who still value the concept of privacy.

So - like every sci-fi dystopia depicted in film and literature throughout history. Well, anyone who complains won’t be able to claim they weren’t warned a million times literally.

Why is this post FILLED with AI not comments? Are the corpo platforms so bitter about federated they want to just poison it?

I’m just gonna run it solo either with multilaunch, or I’ll do separate vm instances for the different game instances. I don’t need Steam for anything as of yet.

Thanks for the info about the front-ends.

Yeah I don’t play it on Steam, I use the old launcher because I run multilaunch. I was playing it back in ‘06 and am stuck in my ways.

I’ll take a look in Lutris, though, thanks.

How different is it, then, functionality-wise, from VirtualBox or VMWare?

What’s actually the best one? I used to use PlayOnLinux and it worked so well. But then it started to have problems and I read it was abandoned.

So, for example, if I wanted to play Guild Wars with multilaunch, what integrator would be smoothest and least complicated?

Yeah, and also games often require a real install. I think aside from those types of scenarios, the safest, most efficient and convenient is a VM.

Like I said elsewhere, the ideal way if you absolutely need to run Winblows on the same machine, is to do so within a VM on the Linux host. Not usually an option if the purpose is gaming, and, well, usually the purpose is gaming.

The BEST way if you must use Windows, is to have it in a VM on a Linux host. Isolated in its own sandbox.