arcterus

I think it’s actually much harder for small artists to succeed now, even with the proliferation of stuff like social media sites and music apps. Most streaming services pay artists practically nothing, and from what I understand, touring is less profitable than it used to be because the artists are getting a smaller cut of the profit than they used to from merchandise.

Stuff like Bandcamp and Patreon help, but those platforms are pretty small compared to something like Spotify. It’s probably easier to get your name out there because of social media/Youtube, but I don’t think it usually makes up for how little money they make from listeners. This is also ignoring piracy.

Regarding Palestine, a number of groups have done stuff on stage or donated money and so on, but there don’t seem to be a ton that have written music specifically about the war. I’m guessing this is partly due to a lot of record labels supporting Israel on top of just so much other horrible shit going on in recent years. You could probably find more stuff if you looked for music by people from the countries directly involved.

Pretty much the same situation for Ukraine I think. Bands like Jinjer are vocally pro-Ukraine.

It’s much easier to find one-off songs about a specific issue than like entire albums right now AFAICT (again probably partially because of how much crap is going on). A lot of groups also seem afraid to really hammer on specific points to avoid alienating fans I think, so it’s sort of just the state of music as well IMO.

It’s always laissez-faire capitalism until some big company has issues, then all of a sudden it’s state capitalism.

Anyway, supposedly the government doesn’t have a board seat, so it should have limited power. However, who knows what the unspecified “limited exceptions” are for it to be allowed to vote. I don’t really think this makes much difference from the status quo other than the US being able to pressure Intel slightly more easily and further tying Intel to the US. However, it’s probably something to watch in case the government starts trying to vacuum up other shares to gain majority control, voting power, etc. If something like that happens, I’d be wary of using consumer Intel products.

Lmao joining north korea in having an “encrypted” messenger pre-installed I see.

Some distros are more fragile than others. Stuff like not having the Nvidia drivers installed by default (I’m assuming for the llvmpipe issue) are sometimes discussed in installation guides. IDK if Ubuntu has one since I don’t use it.

Blink-based browsers (like Vivaldi, Chromium, etc.) IMO kind of suck on Linux (or at least Wayland). It’s probably worse with Nvidia cards since Nvidia is still sometimes flaky on Wayland.

The LibreWolf issue is maybe not an issue at all. I’m assuming you mean RAM, and if so, browsers just like to eat as much memory as they’re allowed to eat. If you open up something else and it needs the memory, LibreWolf will likely let go of some of it. There are probably some knobs you can dial in LibreWolf (or Linux kernel settings) if it’s really an issue for some reason.

I only really have issues when I’m trying to set something up that’s not already configured by the distro (or if I’m doing something particularly weird).

Very good C++ development skills

Personally, basically no one I know uses the app stores on windows or macos much. These app stores are actually functional in that they have proprietary apps and allow purchases. There is basically 0 chance Linux will become popular if you can only install things through an app store (especially those that make it hard/impossible to buy proprietary apps). Additionally, desktop Linux is not particularly secure anyway. Flatpaks are helpful here, but most require manual tuning of their sandbox to actually be secure, which the average user is 100% not gonna do. On top of this, what do you do when an app is not available in your curated app store? Do you download it directly online? Do you trust some random repository you find online that can be filled with who knows what at a later point? Or do you just say “oh well sucks to be you I guess?” If you download it directly online, then it may not even have dependency information. If it doesn’t embed dependency information, then it’s basically useless to your average person. It also has the problem you mentioned of someone downloading the wrong executable. Likewise, the other two options are IMO just not viable.

IMO, the only way for a package manager/app store solution to work is:

1. The platform is built around it from day 1
2. The platform has a large number of developers submitting their packages to it (as opposed to the distro maintainers having to track down changes themselves)
3. The app store has payment methods
4. The app store has proprietary apps
5. The app store has a large number of reviewers that can check the apps submitted in a timely manner
6. Probably bundling dependencies with the apps.
7. The app store has a functional review system with users actually leaving reviews.
8. Going along with the reviews, going through the app store (as opposed to using the package manager directly) may need to be a requirement to encourage reviews, at least at first.

Basically, it needs to be an iOS/Android situation, with a similarly large company backing it. I should also note that it’s possible to install malware on iOS/Android, just harder, and the scope is usually less severe because of sandboxing.

EDIT: Also, it’s entirely possible to do one-click installs in a “safe” way, by requiring that developers get their apps signed by whoever makes the distro (like macos gatekeeper or whatever it’s called).

EDIT 2: I should also note that just being “different” is enough for people not to use something. If something basic, like the way to install apps, is different enough, people may just decide they don’t like it. My relatives would likely do this, for instance.

• Needs to come pre-installed on computers.
• Pre-installed distro needs to support one-click installation (like .app or .exe).
• Pre-installed distro needs to have be easily searchable (for problems, and e.g. searching “chrome DISTRO_NAME” needs to pop up with a link to the one-click installer).
• Pre-installed distro needs to run perfectly out-of-the-box, no fiddling with drivers, no needing to issue a random shell command for some random issue.
• UI needs to be intuitive. Probably something like KDE. Could maybe do Elementary or GNOME with dash-to-dock or something.
• Updates should be easy. Ideally apps can self-update or the apps will indicate if they need an update and have a button opening up an updater that can update all your apps/the OS.
• Updates for minor programs need to be hidden/rolled into OS updates. Most people aren’t gonna want to see that glibc updated.
• Better management of stuff like VPNs (probably not important for the average user, but e.g. NetworkManager’s GUI support is kinda shit).
• If using GNOME, need to have app indicator stuff pre-installed (if I’m being honest, the fact it’s not built-in is absurd).
• Needs to come with good basic apps. Some of the default apps included with DEs are kinda shit. There is still no truly good mail client IMO (at least that doesn’t look dated AF).

Probably more.

EDIT: Something like Lutris should probably be integrated into the OS. Installing non-Steam games is a minor hassle at the moment IMO.

I don’t think that number is surprising. Living in China e.g. 40 years ago would have sucked, so as mentioned in the article you posted, living conditions have basically continuously improved for people. I expect that number will drop in the upcoming decades (although IDK to what extent). It’s worth noting the studies were basically pre-COVID.

Also, pointing out that China has other political parties is worthless since they basically can’t do anything.

I find it sort of amusing that your example for the UK is the Online Safety Act given that China has the GFW. Like, I find the Online Safety Act problematic (along with a number of other things the UK has done), but the scale is barely even comparable lol.

It takes 0 effort to find other sources if you actually try to look this sort of stuff up. I feel like you’ve basically decided the answer and are just looking for people to validate your opinion.

Given that most of the people I know who go to (or went to) what you’d call moderate churches also voted for Trump, I’d say your view is at best flawed.

Truly so shocked. Anyway, pretty obvious since the biggest reason these companies refuse to even release the server component (as opposed to making the game playable offline) is that they can then either “remaster” the game and release it again in like a decade or just release it again with maybe a couple features added and call it v2.0.