I could tolerate well-behaved static image banners, but you know it would all be distracting videos at the least.

Is it really that big? I thought a bunch of folks tried it for a week then stopped–especially when they realized you can’t delete your account without also deleting your linked Instagram account (assuming you have one).

I don’t own Minecraft (nope to Microsoft-owned software) nor would I have a reason to do 3D gaming on a battery… are you gaming at a café, the library, or something?

I have a 1½-year-old laptop AMD Ryzen 6860Z processor & get 9 hours on the regular running NixOS doing programming/browsing/chat. That’s not quite 8 hours with 30% to spare, but good enough that I don’t worry about carrying my charger (but being lightweight GaN, normally keep it in my bag just in case). Apple folks have this tendency to think all their hardware is massively better, but even if it’s ‘better’, it’s often just by a small margin that doesn’t make a big difference–especially when you factor in cost.

I mean the IBM PC was standardized but you are welcome to install whatever video card or as much or little RAM as you want which means developers can’t specifically target your setup (with fewer testing Linux), but a lot of things not requiring the bleeding edge run just fine. Unattended upgrades is a good idea, but that is if the distro supports it—and that’s still a better experience than Microsoft Windows updates.

How to Kill a Decentralised Network (such as the Fediverse)

That’s adorable

If it’s set up correctly. The biggest selling point of a console is that it boots you to “play game” mode as the default & games have better expectations since the hardware is standardized. That said, in the case of Steam, there’s nothing to say you can’t install Linux & have it boot directly into Big Picture mode (but you’ll still need to remember to get software updates for the OS as they aren’t integrated like a console).

Yet folks often say their $0 software is free software because gratis. Words evolve/change & only mean what the folks think it means. If anyone wanted to take over a word, they could. To say it’s not open to interpretation is silly. To assume the ideas they first put out long ago never need a revision or update or were infallible missing no changes to software/society is a religion. Right now we see folks come to terms that outside GPL, a lot of code is being used for AI training models & then sold while not giving users a hint at who wrote it or where to get the source. These ideas probably need to change & projects like Peer Production or Blue Oak or License Zero feel they want to actually take on your enshrined terms like “free” & “open source” because there is not a better word to describe what they are proposing, then I don’t see a problem other than possible confusion (but folks might be confused either way like saying those licenses are nonfree just because a for-profit entity can’t use even if individuals, collectives, nonprofits can).

Build it m8

Don’t do Minecraft when Minetest is open source. It’s not meant to be installed as vanilla per se tho as mods are for building gameplay and vanilla is just a sandbox/canvas to build Minecraft-like or addjacent games. Especially if you can get him on PC, I could be a hopskip away from creating his own open mods (as opposed to the content farm of underpaid “devs” for Roblox which have wild stories if you look it up).

Veloran is also a good alternative for free software with an adventure MMO aspect that might appeal to the guy.

Being projects without a profit motive & a strong community where the players are the developers is a safer route where you would never expect loot boxes, microtransacitions, dark/addictive patterns because those aren’t fun & money isn’t an incentive. With the source available your son is more than welcome to read it to figure out how games work, contribute ideas/code, & learn to make mods which are all great, real-life skills learned while accidentally gaming & trying to make the game better for yourself & friends—and if he’s not a future coder, there are assets & stories to build, or just playtesting a friend’s mod.

Most distros are running the same software. The biggest difference is your package manager & community. Personal preference is NixOS but that ain’t beginner-friendly even if the rollbacks from bad states would help. Arch isn’t as difficult to set up as it used to be & has been more stable than a lot of distros in my experience so I wouldn’t discount it but .pacnew files can bite you if modifying in /etc instead of in the home folder (when possible). Of the things folks normally suggest as a first go, Fedora would probably be my pick (not yet had a problem) as everything Ubuntu-based still rubs me wrong for support & leadership.

Kinda weird the default reader mode doesn’t have black as background options given how prevalent AMOLED screen are on mobile devices.

Naturally. Is there a term like greenwashing or sportswashing but for free software?

Unfortunately given the stalemate of the mobile duopoly & service providers like banks thinking attestation is okay & what you run on your hardware is their business, Linux phones will have a hell of an uphill battle to take on. Wild to me is hearing the average Joe is happy their phones now don’t let them do whatever they want & they like the attestation since they don’t trust themselves with operating the device. These are the masses that will obviously be catered to, but maybe eventually be the only ones supported as banking websites age with little maintenance & receive no feature parity.

Nothing would make me more happy. I really wish it weren’t such a pain to deal with the telephony. You check devices on postmarketOS & while some devices can boot, it’s usually the actual phone part that isn’t working–which is kind of an important part. The open hardware phones work fine, but their specs are ancient while being as expensive as flagships. I still have eventual hope tho as device needs have started to plateau.

This is why I don’t trust Rich Communication Services (RCS) being developed by the big tech giants. I can almost guarantee it’s meant to meet minimum legal requirements otherwise Google, Facebook, et al. would have reverted their services to XMPP federation on a protocol with now even more years of battle testing.

Good catch! The Lemmy UI isn’t straightforward. I thought I needed to upload a separate image for the post—not that you choose between URL vs. image despite the UI seemingly allowing both. Fixed!

Ones with voice activation & stuff do this already. TVs will pull a lot of power when ‘off’ since they’re not off.

I had read a story once that if I recall correctly, one manufacturer would send the signal back thru the coax cable to the cable box just in case to make sure your data was captured somehow.