Due to its proprietary nature, finding software that can properly read those files can be tricky.

LibreOffice is the usual go-to for folks wanting an office suite, that respects privacy, and FOSS. It can read docx files, but it can mess up formatting. Still, for many it’s the preferred choice. It’s got the best reputation.

Now if formatting REALLY matters, take a look at OnlyOffice. It handles those MS formats so much better. It’s not a bad suite, but it’s hard to beat the good reputation Libreoffice has gained.

Each to their own preferences. Some of these sources disagree with each other, and that’s a good thing. The worst place to belong, is within an echo chamber. Always think for yourself, and try to understand where others are coming from (why they came to the conclusions they did).

As for Louis… honestly, I prefer his tempo. It feels more genuine, less like he’s putting on a show for the camera. In the tech world, take Craft Computing, LTT, or Jays2Cents as examples. All have gone on record to admitting to putting on a show, changing how they talk, etc, while on camera. If Louis is putting on a show, I gotta admit, I’m impressed. Hats off to the guy.

Personally, I like Techlore, NBTV, Firewalls Don’t Stop Dragons, Luis Rossmann, The Hated One, The PC Security Channel, ThioJoe, and (sometimes) Linux oriented channels like The Linux Experiment do some good privacy/security stuff too.

First computer, I got was via a trade. I was about 12. At the time I knew next to nothing about computers, with desktops being a thing at school (in one room). Something like this in a home… that’s rich people stuff. It ran Windows XP, and was almost certainly a Pentium (don’t know which).

I remember making several trips to transfer the monitor, desktop, and accessories home. That thing was HEAVY, for me back then. It must have been about 3 miles before I carried everything home. I connected everything, booted it up, and everything worked perfectly… Then five minutes later I found out the importance of the internet… optical games worked fine, but no porn… My next purchase would be a USB 2 mobile internet dongle. How else was I going to do all that valuable “research”.

About two years or so later, it wouldn’t turn on (the PC). There wasn’t any shops near me that could fix it, and I thought what would be the harm in opening the side panel, and taking a look. Suffice to say… I made things worse. Can’t recall what I did, but the power supply went bang, thankfully no fire. I ended up throwing the computer out, and selling the accessories and monitor. I didn’t want to own a desktop computer, again for years. That loud bang scared the living hell out of me.

I only later got back into computing, because I was kinda addicted to video games, heard PC gaming was better, and slowly aquired several games from relatives (Crysis, Total War Empire, etc). That computer I purchased, new, with cash I earned from trading with folks/shops (still haggle, to this day). My next computer was AMD, a A6-3600, I think. No graphics card, though I would later haggle for a GTX 960. This computer was where I started to get really interested in IT. I wanted to learn why my old computer bit the dust, and figure out everything I could. It was more than a porn and gaming machine. That computer taught me more than most IT lessons ever did (still can’t believe using Google Search, constituted as a “lesson”).

20xx

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Some people like to rag onto Canonicals bad decisions. These include:

1. Putting ads in the terminal
2. Use of Affiliate links in the DE
3. The forceful use of Snap
4. The proprietary Snap infrastructure
5. The feeling of being abandoned, in favour of the server market (lack of desktop innovation)
6. Lens search, that allows company (eg: Amazon) tracking.
7. Anti-privacy settings enabled, by default.

Yeah, YT is the last holdout for me. It’s literally the only Google service I willingly sign up for. I’ve tried Piped/Invidious, but they don’t match YTs quality.

any technical solution short of DRM is provably impractical and unworkable.

Don’t give them ideas.

Sadly, yes. A Proton team member on Reddit confirmed it a couple years back:

Folder/label names are visible to the server (for filters and other reasons) as are email metadata. Message and attachment contents are encrypted and not visible to the server.

https://old.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/hxomoy/are_mail_folderstags_encrypted_or_private/fzc6wry/

Do note that this is ONLY true for Mail. Calendar, and Drive does encrypt folders/label names.

Tutanota. I used to use Proton, but they don’t encrypt folder names, which is a deal breaker. Tutanota does, and they’re also a privacy respecting, reputable, decent service.

Adguard Home. I find it to be more feature complete, compared to Pi-Hole. Nicer GUI, more options, built in DNS-over-HTTPS/TLS, better client controls & detection, more domain information, better domain list blocking, and so on.

I moved from NextDNS, to Adguard Home. All self hosted, and accessed with a reverse proxy.

I think we are constantly progressing in that field. One issue for latency was that controllers used to contact your device, and then the server. Now they can connect directly to the server. Things will improve, like it or not.

For right now, I think the biggest hurdle is with ISPs.

1. Data caps can be quite common, in many countries. Essentially creating a huge limit on how much you can (if at all) play.
2. Most people’s router, and access point hardware needs upgrading. A lot of the stock router AIOs from ISPs are really bad. Creating a bottleneck before the data even reaches the servers.

Another hurdle I can see is companies profit sharing. Everyone wants a large cut, so I’d expect multiple streaming options… and many failures, like what we’re seeing on the movies/series streaming model… just with games it’ll be soooo much worse.

Did you get this sorted? I know the following works on 11, and it wouldn’t surprise me if it worked on 10.

First unplug the Ethernet cable, and when it asks for WiFi, press “Shift + F10”. In the opened command prompt type “OOBE\BYPASSNRO”. This will make the installer go to the legacy OOBE (Out Of Box Experience). Finish setup, before finally connecting to the internet. Don’t worry you’re not doing anything dangerous. It’s a simple registry edit.

For all those who’ve lost their jobs, I’m sorry, and hope you land on your feet. For Epic…

Too much work, for so little gain. I’d expect it if they ever release a Tf3, though.

They’re Evil Arseholes, what’d you expect.

Games that just come out could be an issue regardless of distro. Sometimes Wine/Proton needs to fix a few things… no distro is going to help, in that regard. I suppose a more regularly updated distro COULD help with getting updates faster… but it’s usually nothing you cannot already solve with Pop. ProtonUp-QT is a great tool to help get you the latest Proton versions, including the Eggroll fork. It’s available as a Flatpak, so it’ll work on most modern distros (including Pop).

If you must switch to a more regularly updated distro, you have a couple of options. Nobara (based on Fedora) will give you a nice middle ground between your current setup and Arch. Speaking of which, Arch is a great distribution, with fantastic documentation. That being said, it IS NOT new user friendly. It WILL break, and you WILL need to look stuff up. You’re on the literal bleeding edge, of Linux. The Arch forums can also be quite toxic, in comparison to what’s available on both Pop/Ubuntu and Nobara/Fedora. If neither is appealing to you, consider OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. It’s very up to date, but I often find it more stable than Arch.

1. KDE Project
2. Wayland
3. Open source drivers (especially Nvidia)
4. Lemmy
5. Mastadon
6. Scribus
7. Nextcloud
8. Firefox
9. Tutanota suite
10. Wine

The only thing that comes to mind is PeerTube. I’ve never used it, but I’ve seen it suggested a few times in the privacy community.