By using Fedora, one helps Red Hat/IBM in different ways:

• With more usage of Fedora, Linux enthusiasts cater to that distro more and more, and Red hat benefits from all that feedback and large customer base. Fedora gets better and Red Hat stands out over the competition.
• With larger customer base, Red Hat’s board approve to allocate more resources to the platform, increasing its competitive advantage.
• With more users of Fedora, Red Hat can find more qualified professionals that grew up using already Fedora, increasing its human capital competitive advantage.

Customer base, paying or no, is a tremendous competitive advantage… that is why Microsoft winked at piracy across the globe for 2 decades so companies purchased their solutions since millions of users already knew how to use them. Of course, once the competition was out, Microsoft started to hike prices tremendously.

Of course, the development of Fedora, since it is FOSS, benefits all the community, but it also feeds the monster in the process that, at the moment they want, they pull the rug on the community that, at that stage, won’t have any companies that can take the lead anymore.

The moral here, if behind Fedora is a company that did bad things for FOSS, that it is owned by a company that contributes with the IDF, and both are based in a country that any day may ban Red hat technology to be distributed to any foreign country of their choosing… why choosing Fedora when plenty of alternatives are equally comparable, more ethical and less prone to manipulation.

That was 3 years ago. I understand they made a mistake (twice) but ok since then. I think most of the Manjaro criticism is no longer warranted. All distros had made mistakes.

For those of us that despise Red Hat, sorry, but increasing the user base of Fedora, dramatically helps Red Hat’s marketability and profitability (and IBM’s). These companies not only make decisions bad for the FOSS community but way too happy to do business with a country massacring kids as we speak too. Now, I still recommend using Fedora since, as you say they are not straight IBM and they are at the vanguard, yet, for those with a conscience on these matters, there are as equally comparable offers out there.

OpenSUSE Tumbleweed is pretty solid and 98% of the refinement of Fedora, that in my opinion, it is the most polished of them all. Now, using Fedora supports companies like Red Hat/IBM so it is a no-no for me.

The only thing OpenSUSE has is that is independent so does a few things differently than Debian or Fedora based ones, but after a few retouches that you will learn in no time you will be at the level of Fedora. It is perfectly OK for beginners, just that there are a few things differently, sometimes for the better like many utilities from YAST, but will be different from what you find in most non OpenSUSE forums. Again, is minimal, 95% of the staff is the same. Unfortunately, it does not have the costumer base that Ubuntus/Mint/Fedora has, but the supporters are technically highly committed and competent, they just need to improve in their marketing arena that is what is holding them down.

Another KDE that I like is TuxedoOS. It works perfectly in non Tuxedo devices and very stable in my experience… I even had better stability experience than Kubuntu, and that says a lot.

Did not play enough with Manjaro and will try in a few days. It had some bad press but I think is more due to diverging a bit from Arch philosophy of instant updates than anything else. CachyOS I recommend only for latest computers or those willing to adjust things a bit once in a while.

For older devices, MXLinux KDE is the ideal in integrated graphics chips.

I hear you.

The Catalan police (Mossos), and I had always supported its creation and certain independence from the rest of police forces in Spain, has growth to become a bit too militarized for my taste.

I am not following their work on drug dealers, but the job they are doing with “terrorism” is appalling. There are cases of genuine terrorism but the majority, overwhelmingly majority, are not what they are selling to the media, and they have been doing this for more than a decade already… in brief portrayed disgruntled Muslim immigrants as “terrorists” for sharing files. I presume is half malice, half in a competition drive with the other police forces in Spain to gather recognition and medals. But I should not complain, in the US there is a lot of that too, I was just expecting better of that young and, supposedly, modern and agile police force.

Of course they would get GrapheneOS phones but does not make user a suspect, they also carry cash rather than credit cards, but not all people with cash should be a suspect!

The mayor problem in Barcelona is being the pickpocket capital of the world and the unregistered Airbnbs! Both are relatively easy to address (in conjunction with the legislative and judicial system), but are have not been tackled for 2 decades already. And please, don’t start suspecting guys with Nike sneakers and cross bags as pickpocketers now too! There are plenty, plenty of genuine methods to go after the bad guys than cheeking their phones or shoe wear… gosh, even civilians are tired of pinpointing at them to end up being completely ignored by that police!

For the new people on Linux, think of my impression playing with the different OS;

Similarities between Windows 10 and macOS is around 15%.

Similarities between Windows 10 and Linux Mint is around 20%.

Similarities between Linux Mint and Ubuntu is around 95%.

Similarities between Linux Mint and Fedora\OpenSUSE is around 90%.

Similarities between Linux Mint and Arch\CachyOS\Manjaro is around 85%.

And with Flatpaks/Snaps I would even now narrow the difference in the Linus OS as 95, 92 and 90% similarity. For what linux cannot do for you, unless it needs high processing or gaming anticheats, a Virtual Machine with Windows will just cover you without any problem.

What makes look different in Linux is the desktop environment (KDE, Gnome, Cinnamon…), no much the distro per se. Find the distro environment you like after playing 20min with it, and choose the Linux flavor you are ideologically/persuaded with the most… don’t worry about the rest.

I see how you feel with your Peertube song.

Of course, Lemmy is an amazing FOSS tool, just sad many people (if so) are a bit toxic… Of course, I was blamed in the past as troll, bot, pro-putin, pro-china, pro-european, pro-american… and few actually get involved in a insightful conversation. The way i see it, Lemmy (or any of these mediums) are just entertainment and our work should be in the real world, with your neighbors and physical communities.

Let me know if you find a better venue… I am also disappointed in Lemmy. Is it so hard to find a place where people try to understand why things are one way and another before slapping each other.

I’d lived in a very swing state, in a very swing county and thanks to that predicted elections like no pollster did (even Trump in 2016 as he came down a escalator and every media laughed at him)… I saw no more malice in an average Trump voter than a Kamala one, I find a portion of them both as equally racist (some 30% I would say), one just is more vocal and explicit while the other chooses to express the racism passively aggressive… Two black family moved into our street and one Trumper told me that he does not like the “blacks in front” and a long time Democrat neighbor told me instead… that she was going to move to a better school district “because demographics”… what is the difference?

Screw me! I feel bad because instead of welcoming those now disenchanted MAGA, we are shunning them away and pushing them toward Musk’s new party and the like. We did same mistake after Trump’s 1st term too.

The Proton CEO is quite active in twitter and participates in podcasts. Well, one day he praised one action of the Trump administration on antitrust and a whole community attacked him for “praising Trump” when he did only a nomination for Attorney General for the Antitrust division. I highly doubt he is a MAGA supporter and listening to him for 30min on any of the multiple appearances he was on, will confirm you that. Several things concerns me on Proton, the CEO’s ideology ain’t one of them.

Unrelated to this, I wish people was more forgiven of Trump voters, it is not the monolithic the Left tries to portray it is. Trump sold himself as fighting the establishment, being anti-war and pro-antitrust (many small business owners supported him). People voted for him even suspecting he most likely was lying. Many people, both in 2016 and 2024, voted for Trump because Hillary was very pro-war (for instance she say she would attack Russian military directly in Syria) and Kamala proudly said she would not change anything on Biden’s policy in the middle of Gaza’s massacres. MAGA has many racists, many! (Democrats has is share too, but usually quieter but one can notice them at the grocery stores!) But what made Trump win was desperate disfranchised Americans with no other alternatives that promised Change. Europeans should keep quiet too… in the last elections they voted as different as they could demanding change to end up with Ursula von der Leyen for another term. Democracies in both sides of the Atlantlic are heavily ill and people, in desperation, vote for whoever promises change, independently of anything else.

Coming from Windows, OK with a bit of tech journey and into gaming here is my take in no order of preference.

1. TuxedoOS if you are inclined to Debian/Ubuntu side. Slow updates but it has latest KDE and very stable in my experience.
2. If you just want set and forget (minimal updates) Linux Mint (Ubuntus fall here too) Now, it is not very appealing aesthetics.
3. Fedora. Probably the best overall, but if you have beef against IBM/Red Hat, ditch it, its superiority is very marginal. Gamers like the spin Nobara, some performance increase but minimal.
4. Arch is not that unstable as portrayed, but one time in a critical time is bad enough, even if very rarely occurs. You assess your risk. The popular baby today is Arch’s CachyOS due to catering to gamers.
5. OpenSUSE’s Tumbleweed is maintained quite good and very close to Fedora in being perfect overall, but fewer people behind and less support. I would only go with it if you have a specific reason why (German, Yast tools, rolling release but stable,…)

At the end, like many people say, it is likely you will hop… until one day you find that distro hoping is pointless and that all are actually very close to each other and could easily coexist with any of them all. The difficult and uncompromising aspect usually is with the desktop environment like KDE Plasma, Gnome, Cinnamon…

Of course… for us normies… GrapheneOS is the way to go. Very high targeted individuals in the West should however consider HarmonyOS. Of Course the Chinese government has eyes on that one but not specifically targeting you… unless they use it to trade intel on someone of high interest for China but no much collaboration between West and China intelligence agencies today…

True, popularity increases the chances someone auditing. But, to a point. Ideally audit should be performed with every single update and on the servers, and there the premise of more eyes does not hold true no more. Then it comes trust. In a company like Tuta, the people behind showed their faces from day one, the same people are there, is a tight team so harder for a bad apple to do something. Considering both Tuta and Proton were good from inception (and I believe it may be the case), it would probably would be easier for an intelligence agency to penetrate Proton than Tuta, just for the structure that appears they have from outside. Now, Tuta made a horrible mistake once! In the Russian invasion of Ukraine, independently of one’s take on it, Tuta made the “Standing with Ukraine” (March 2022); that was a mistake, it may many doubt if privacy still their paramount over any other ideology. Maybe they have change since since no statements on Gaza… or maybe they agree with what is happening… who knows… that is why they should not make any statements at all, or clarify that while they have their ideologies in no case, ever will compromise their stands on privacy. To be fair, Proton did the same… nothing on Ukraine but on Gaza “We unequivocally condemn the terrorist attacks by Hamas against Israeli civilians […] We also condemn violence against civilians in Gaza”; so I guess both are comparable here! My trust for both is slim, as a company, and even their individuals.

Some of those mentioned likely are compromised, but cannot figured out which. The thing, is to diversify our risk and the privacy minded to use different platforms (Proton VPN and Mullvad VPN for instance).

The good news, is that if an agency is compromising something, they will likely won’t use the intel gathered in court cases in order to leave it open to future prey, so that is good for vast majority of users. The very few that are relevant enough should not trust even the genuine privacy tools and resort to enhanced methods and combining methodologies.

My impression, and just impression, is that I would trust **Tuta **more than Proton (and not because Proton’s CEO that many interpreted wrong anyways) On VPN… a tad more trust on Mullvad. Signal, I would not use it for high stakes communication but OK for most people. GrapheneOS seems okay and we know for sure it does not leak info on a daily basics, but we have to be careful, it could have an obscure code dormant waiting for a trigger or could easily send data to an unsuspected server, Ironically, if I were Snoden, I would feel more comfortable using a Huawei Mate with HarmonyOS than a Pixel 9 with GrapheneOS… of course China spies too massively, but it has far less beef with Snoden than the US does, therefore not of much interest to Beijing.

Remember that overwhelming majority of FOSS goes without any audit, let alone a comprehensive one. This is what some trusted party should put AI checking ASAP all the FOSS out there!

Again… if Sanchez did more (and I don’t think he is such a great guy, but at least he is right here), his shaky coalition would fall and elections would be called. I think he will still win, but polls says the Right would win being Israel’s beloved VOX the king maker and you will see Spain participating in the genocide like UK or Germany does… there are your “results”!

Again, Spain should do far more, I ultimately trust on Spaniards here, but I understand one may want to proceed more cautiously here.

I don’t know beepers, but any small or middle size country, in this convoluted world, should either heavily diversify in weaponry (Pakistan today) develop their own (France 1960s and Sweden 1980s) or just heavily and unequivocally declare themselves neutral but develop enough defenses to become a pain in the ass (Finland 1950-1990s or Switzerland 1900-2010s). Any other way, you will end up heavily exploited to the bone, when not dragged into an unwanted war)

To help understand what is happening in Spain:

1. This government is a a very precarious situation, even before the ongoing genocide. It is form by a delicate coalition. Now, Spain has traditionally been very sympathetic for the Palestinian cause, and the majority of parties reflect that sentiment.

2. Spain is a NATO country so as such it needs mainly US weaponry that US, oddly, to say the least, assigns Israel to be the distributor of critical parts.

3. Spain has an army military elite and a Police force (Guardia Civil) that is very linked to the Franco dictatorship so these tend to quietly push their weight for the Israel’s side of things.

4. Grande-Marlaska is the Interior minister in this coalition. He is from the ruling Socialist Party, but he is well known for years to be very right-wing on many aspects, among them, to side with Israel and working to undermine Spanish position on Gaza. He is the ultimate person to authorize purchases many of these purchases we hear about. The president should had fired him long ago, but, I presume, would severely risk the coalition and cause votes to leave to the Right.

5. Since a decade, there is a very right-wing political that, like in most on Europe, is disrupting the political panorama. Nothing bad, per se, but this political party (VOX) was very, very strangely was finance early on by the “People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran”, a anti-Iranian organization… why are anti-Iranial organizations doing financing extreme-right wing parties in Europe should been raising some eyebrows but did not. What I do highly suspect is that these groups are not being financed by disgruntled Iranians but some other entity with deeper pockets and with even more eager to see a regime change in Iran.

6. Spain police forces, like in most of the world, tend to exaggerate claims of terrorism arrest. Let’s not even go that most these terrorist groups have actually links to some western intelligence groups, but overwhelming majority of arrest are for " distributing terrorist links", aka to pass links of joining Al-Qaeda in Syria (oh, the irony!) or passing videos that you would have found on Twitter anyways… it is a bit like when peer-to-peer file sharing was deemed as clear copyright violation and sent to prison but that you find exact music now in YouTube and composers still get nothing but this is now legal and YouTube lauded as a success story.

7. Now there is a case of an attempt of assassination of right-wing politician (Vidal-Quadras) that very early on was blamed on an Iranian agent… there is no proof at all that Iran is behind, probably the only intel on the individual was provided by the CIA or Mossad and happily the Guardia Civil takes it without any further question. Of course, the Cui Bono here never applies in these cases… why would Iran attack politicians of the country in Europe more sympathetic to Palestine and even Iran is never asked… same as why “Islamist” ISIS never attacks Israel but only to countries that Tel-Avid has in the bull-eye at the moment and the occasional attack to Europe to make them remember how bad Islam (ironically, to blame the countries that ISIS is actually attacking!!!).

8. In Spain, awkward things are happening since Spain position on Gaza. In spite economically performing good in an ailing Europe, nation-wide blackouts happen for first time, bullet trains cannot run because someone “steals” copper lines, private calls gets release (always in only one side, that is!), etc.

So yeah, that is why Spain says one thing, but them a contract with Israel gets signed, and Spain gets shunned for not wanted to spend more in military… Lets be frank, the overwhelming majority to purchase US weaponry… I would love to Spain dedicate that extra defense spending in diversifying its weaponry on Chinese J-35 (1/2 operating costs of F-35 anyways) and you will see if increase defense is actually Europe’ s rational or the facade behind a massive Money Laundering.

I don’t use Brave, still with the more insecure Android Firefox variant (Firefox for Android is subpar in security), but I am glad Brave do want to expand here and for many users it is for sure the best option. No need to insult, whether you agree or not with them. If it is open, it is open and everything else should be secondary and for individual to choose on their own. Go Brave! Hope many more come too.

I haven’t play much with them but this is my take:

Deepin. (Just released v25) Based on Debian. Community distro. Very well done and very modern look. It is heavy though and the beta I tried had glitches. Being primarily developed in Chinese though one can tell English was added later. If they only dedicated a bit more effort on languages it would be amazing. It is as much different from Linux Mint as it gets… for better or for worse, but I like their take.

Ubuntu Kylin. Institutional cooperation with Canonical. Haven’t tried it. It is just Ubuntu catering their offer to the Chinese market. If you like Ubuntu’s or Mint and you language is Chinese, this is for you.

OpenKylin. Fully Independent (No Debian, Arch…). Community distro. Its usage for now seems to be more for institutions though.

There are others but for niches.

China, of course, it want to get independent from MS and Apple so in the next years is going to push heavily for alternative OS so it will be interesting to see what, and for sure, our FOSS community will benefit from that as DeepSeek benefited the AI.