Ad hominem isn’t when you insult people AND make an argument its when you insult people INSTEAD of making an argument.

User initially believes that this is only a Linux issue because its almost entirely discussed on forums frequented by technical people who often use Linux whereas forums full of Windows gamers are equally effected but ignorant of the topic.

It’s a much higher risk than average because games are often abandoned within one year of release and still run as long as 10-15 years later and connects to the internet and other randos on the internet. See the Call of Duty games that allow you to take over the computer of anyone who connects to your online match. It greatly degrades the security of its users.

Technically lots of things people call “malware” don’t actually do any of those things. For instance they may hijack your default search engine, pop up ads, or otherwise monetize your computer at your expense. The category that was invented by ass coverers is “possibly unwanted program” but outside of those who worry about being sued by scumbags people colloquially refer to both what you call malware AND PUPs as "malware the root of which is “bad” after all. Language being descriptive not prescriptive I think this broader definition of malware is fine.

Do you remember when Sony released cds that when inserted into Windows computer auto ran an installer that installed a rootkit that made it impossible for Windows to see any processes or files that started with a certain sequence of characters instantly turning any malware that named its files or processes similarly powerful rootkit. Oh and it installed a cd driver that made it impossible to copy their music.

Suggested removal was a full reinstall of windows.

If they change the deal they should have to offer refunds. This makes it an expensive choice after the fact.

No its common for anti-cheat on Windows to have full root permission to your entire system Windows users are just on average less intelligent, less concerned about privacy, and, more ignorant about technology. This doesn’t mean using Windows makes you stupid its just the OS of choice for the stupid and ignorant.

You have a right to speak but not a right to an audience that doesn’t want to listen to you. I think certain groups are accused of harboring pro Putinistas because in fact they do actually feature them.

Most users prefer to defederate from socialist instances because “tankies”.

To the degree that people bother to defederate from anything (most users don’t) I would assume its because apologists for Putin and China are about as odious to talk to as MAGAs

There are a lot of people not worth attending to. If you do spend your time listening to these folks you don’t hear new ideas you hear the same bad ones over and over. It would be lovely that having noticed that someone is a persistent holocaust denier he could be added to a list that would disappear not only their contributions but their votes as well for thousands of users.

Is it hard to imagine noticing that an account you generally trust has voted and matching their vote, even subconsciously?

Not only is it not hard to imagine its easy to imagine the benefits of using this information automatically. I could imagine a client side script which re-ordered content based on who I trusted who had up or down voted it.

So I have users A B C D E F who are known to me who have voted on a given post. D and E are idiots I disregard their votes. F literally hates everything I love so I count his votes inversely. A and B are fantastic I count them x10 I tend to agree with C so I count his x2.

Not only can I potentially re-score threads and comments based on whom I trust I can if I really trust someone’s opinion apply their weights as well, and the weights of the folks upstream.

What is supported is … what is supported. Wherein the manufacturers assert that their hardware supports Linux, OEMs assert that it supports Linux, Linux developers assert that it is supported, or user reports assert that it is supported. The old school way is to plug the exact model of hardware and the word “linux” into your favorite search engine but there are actual hardware compatibility lists too.

For something to be “stock” has no meaning whatsoever and one doesn’t have to guess if something is supported one can usually find out.

Man i wish, to this day, no matter the distro its like russian roulette with a revovler loaded with 5 bullets

So there are absolutely millions of Linux users. Either we are all masochists living in constant frustration because we are brothers in brokenness or few long term Linux users have an experience that is similar to yours and are simply trying to help you avoid non-obvious pitfalls that may otherwise lead to a shitty experience

A) First off “well supported” herein means that your hardware is known to be well supported by Linux not that its common, good, expensive, or useful. If you are having a shit experience then there is a good chance its actually not well supported.

B) Lots of “stable” distributions ship with old kernels often as old as 2-3 years old. This means that hardware that came out within the last 2-3 years isn’t supported at all and even older hardware for which support was added recently wont work as advertised. There is no profit in running either the kernel that came out 10 minutes ago or the one that came out 3 years ago. This to me seems to be a common issue. Just run a recent kernel.

C) The barrier to entry to create your own distro is incredibly low. The effort required to make a good one is a lot higher. If you stick to the major distros that have stuck around over the years you will have a more consistent experience.

D) X11 is less experimental than Wayland and less hassle

E) Simple environments like XFCE and Cinnamon and window managers are more consistent and predictable than gnome

F) Flatpaking all the things brings exciting new challenges not forseen by the developers who don’t actually distribute flatpaks. Stay away from unofficial flatpaks and if the developer suggests a system package or an appimage use whatever the developer recommends.

If all this advice seems awfully complicated it could be shorted to buy hardware that comes with Linux and run Mint.

If you really want to have a go of it you should either buy well supported hardware next time you buy or even better buy hardware that actually comes with Linux by an OEM that has already done the research and selection and then don’t run a kernel older than your hardware. Stick with boring well supported stuff neither bleeding edge nor ancient.

It’s great that you can at this point pick hardware out of a hat and have a lot of it supported by Linux but it doesn’t mean you should buy hardware this way if you want to have a good experience.

A tale of 3 adblockers

ABP allows “acceptable” ads that are acceptable insofar as they meet certain standards one of which is paying them money effectively renting your eyeballs to advertisers.

Ublock Origin: A powerful and performant ad blocker by its creator

Ublock. After the above dev tried to pass the torch to the loser who now controls this he instantly edited information removing all information about the person who actually created it and fund raise off it to the point where the original dev renamed his fork of his own work Ublock origin after it was taken down on behalf of the scumbag who now runs ublock.

In short there is no reason to use anything but Ublock origin