Linux users can’t even agree […] so how am I supposed to pick one with any confidence?

Easy. You make a post like the OP, count the positive mentions of distros in the comments, and bam, you have your distro of choice. It’s called the Linux newbie roulette and works kind of like the magic hat in Harry Potter that sorts you into your house.

For the unfamiliar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJYOkZz6Dck

(CW: gore, subtitles)

So, I think it’s pretty stupid to argue whether “convicted felon” should be in his opening lede line for Wikipedia.

True though that may be, I don’t think it’s surprising that this would happen, and since making the post I have been falling down a rabbit hole of finding out how Wikipedia is handling situations like this, partly through taking more than a glancing look at the talk pages for the first time ever, and it’s fascinating.

Currently my deepest point of descent is this sub-thread on the Admin board about the “consensus” boxes on top of talk pages being an undocumented and unapproved feature.

Not yet, but you probably will be able to in the future.

Right so WhatsApp and messenger are gatekeepers and they must allow interoperation with who anyone who wants to ie me running my own signal instance?

There are several stipulations on interoperability in the new regulation (Ctrl+F “interop”). To my understanding it is stipulated that they have to make interoperability possible for certain third parties, but how to go about this is not exactly specified on a technical level - meaning the specific way to implement this is left to the gatekeeper. So your Signal server may or may not be able to depending on how exactly they go about this.

They also need to interoperate with signal hence if a works with b and c works with a why wouldn’t b work with c?

No they need to enable interoperability period. Says nothing about Signal (the software) per se. Meta has announced they plan on implementing it based on the Signal protocol (not Signal messenger software, not Signal server software).

Cos if thats hoe it works or if im not allowed to interoperate with WhatsApp or messenger in the first place then this juat seems like its handing the monopoly away from the companies to the government and giving the people fuck all.

To my knowledge the aim of the regulation is exactly that, to allow anybody interoperability with these “core platform services”. The status quo is that the regulations has been announced by the EU, it has gone into effect, and Meta has announced how they will implement interoperability to comply. Once the implementation is available and then found lacking in regard to the regulation it would be up to the affected third party to sue Meta over it.

In Germany, Mein Kampf is banned except for educational purposes, eg in history class.

Strictly speaking this is incorrect, although the situation is somewhat complicated. There are laws that can be and were used to limit its redistribution (mainly the rule against anti-constitutional propaganda), but there are dissenting judgements saying original prints from before the end of WW2 cannot fall under this, since they are pre-constitutional. One particular reprint from 2018 has been classified as “liable to corrupt the young”, but to my knowledge this only means it cannot be publicly advertised.

What is interesting though is how distribution and reprinting was prevented historically, which is copyright. As Hitlers legal heir the state of Bavaria held the copyright until it expired in 2015 and simply didn’t grant license to anything except versions with scholarly commentary. But technically since then anybody can print and distribute new copies of the book. If this violates any law will then be determined on a case-by-case basis after the fact.

Not with Signal messenger, the company running it hasn’t been designated as a gatekeeper under the DMA rules. You can see which services will be affected on the Wiki page (only WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger currently).

Signal protocol ≠ Signal messenger

AFAIK you could always have selfhosted a Signal server, you just can’t interact with the “normal” Signal messenger and its network.

No, the DMA has nothing to do with RCS, at least not directly.

Yes, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger were initially just XMPP servers, but have since had proprietary expansions.

In the context of the DMA both of them will be forced to make interoperability with other third-party messengers possible, since Meta has been designated a “gatekeeper” under the new regulation. Meta has announced they plan on doing so via an implementation of the Signal protocol.

There are some provisions in the Digital Markets Act that go in that direction. It only took effect roughly 3 months ago though, so remains to be seen if it works out as intended.

Do the lights provide the same info as the beeps?

Yes, but whether you have lights or just beeps depends on your board. I think yours does not have the lights, just the speaker pins.

So the circle is where a little speaker should be attached:

Sometimes these come with the case, but in your case not apparently or the PC guy would have attached it. You can buy these pretty cheap (one or two bucks) and they look like this:

When you have one attached and start the PC the mainboard will run some tests, and if it detects a problem there will be a pattern of beeps coming out of the speaker. You can look up what this pattern means in the handbook somebody linked above.

What the fuck kind of argument is this? Courts aren’t supposed to play politics, they are supposed to enforce the law. And if you want to do that in a genocide case you have to prove intent. Gallant made several public statements that can interpreted in that way.

pet open source projects that no one else ever seems to contribute to, not […] software that holds up civilization

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If you rise anywhere above lever 5 or so, the difficulty ratchets up so much it makes the main quest nearly impossible to complete.

Didn’t Oblivion already have the difficulty slider? You could just adjust that, no?

I know level scaling is a big topic in the industry, but for me, the way it’s implemented nearly ruins what is otherwise a mostly great game.

Two of the first RPGs I played were Gothic and Gothic II which released approximately alongside Morrowind and Oblivion, and they just had no dynamic level scaling at all, so I don’t really see the appeal either. A tiny Mole Rat being roughly the same challenge as a big bad Orc just breaks immersion. If you were to meet the latter in early game it would just curb stomp you, which provided an immersive way of gating content and a real sense of achievement when you came back later with better armour and weapons to finally defeat the enemy who gave you so many problems earlier. Basically the same experience you had with Death Claws in Fallout New Vegas when compared to Fallout 3 - they aren’t just a set piece, they are a real challenge.

The games had their own problems, for example the fighting system sucked, and I’m told the English translation was so bad the games just flopped in the Anglosphere, putting them squarely in the Eurojank category of games. But creating a real sense of progression and an immersive world were certainly not amongst their weaknesses.

So WINE was just imagined into existence? Or maybe it was a wizard with a magic spell?

GP is simply wrong on this one. While it is an open source project with a lot of volunteer involvement, there are companies like CodeWeavers and Valve which directly or indirectly contribute to development. You can get support from CodeWeavers AFAIK, but that means paying them.

Why do people get so uppity when I simply ask questions? I never claimed that anyone owed me anything. I never asked for anything.

Well you did ask for something, which is replies to your questions. And your reaction to those replies, whether intended or not, comes off as “uppity” as well. Hence the downvotes and hostility (not to say that I support that from either side of the conversation).

I am unwilling to learn.

Then why are you wasting peoples time with asking questions?

I’ve wasted hundreds of hours trying to learn to use Linux for basic tasks after everyone assured me it was “so easy” and not gotten anywhere. I’m done trying to learn.

Running software on an OS it wasn’t made for is anything but a basic task. Try running various Linux software on Windows and you will see. If you want to run software made for Windows easily the way to do that is using the version of Windows it was created for.

What people mean by “basic tasks” is usually browsing and office, and there is Linux-native software for that.

Someone posted Zorin OS elsewhere, which appears to be exactly that.

Not really. It has deeper integration of Wine into the system by default, but it is still a Linux OS running a compatibility layer for Windows software. This will not save you if you are unwilling to learn, there will still be various problems. Some software will simply not work, or only partially work, or require additional configuration to work.

In summary, if your definition of “basic tasks” is running arbitrary Windows software then doing it on Windows is the way to go.

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pandoc.org is probably what you are looking for, but you might have to create a custom reader/writer or find one on the internet.

I sometimes forget that this picture exists, and then I happen upon it in places like here and it just smacks me in the face how perfectly it encapsulates the total and utter loss of decorum in politics. I mean it was never perfect obviously, but in past times there was a somewhat reasonable expectation of politicians being civil and them losing their office if they were publicly caught out not to be. It was rare, but it happened. Yet here you have the supposedly “most powerful man in the world” just dropping every pretence and hustling for some company in a flagrant abuse of his office. It’s so brazenly corrupt. And the worst thing is this was just another Tuesday for Trump, mild shit-storm, on to the next fucked up thing he did. Society never even had time to realise what a historic moment this was. It was just dropped on the pile.