> Can we please have someone make and maintain a safe, good, minimal and reliable Windows distribution like Alpine Linux?
First: "safe" and Windows never ever matched. Not in Windows 98, not in Millenium, not in Vista. Not ever.
I, reluctantly, after having confiscated my mother-in-law's Windows laptop and replacing it with a Chromebook about two years ago (which still works fine for her btw), ordered her a new desktop PC six months ago, running Windows 11.
Six months.
Six months is all it took for this piece of shit to become infected to the point of being unusable. Malware over malware took over: whatever 0-click or 1-click exploit in Edge that took over the machine and tells her to call indian scam center to help her "get her PC rid of viruses", blinking left and right, covering half the screen.
In other words: good old Windows. It's 20-fucking-25, nearly 26, and Microsoft still cannot ship an OS that's not rooted when a grandma is browsing for less than six months.
Pathetic.
Windows is a mediocre piece of insecure (and now spying) turd.
I fully agree with you: reliable Linux distros are the Windows replacement.
And as we've reached a point where everyone except some part of the corporate world can do everything they need from an Android smartphone and these same people are just fine with a Linux distro on their laptop or desktop, people can be switched. And some are. And the numbers of "desktop Linux" users are slowly but surely growing.
I don't care about the snarky "2026 is the year of Linux on the desktop". Linux conquered everything: all the servers, all the routers, 500 of the world top 500 supercomputers, etc. Linux shall conquer the laptop and the desktop too.
And those who don't switch have two choices: MacOS (pricey hardware) or be slaves to that turdery on bits that Windows is.
P.S: actually I don't even care: be it Linux or MacOS or BeOS or Atari's TOS: anything but Microsoft.
Windows security is just fine. The problem is that many users are willing to uncritically install anything they get asked to, even to the point of directly installing malware when "Microsoft support" contacts them asking them to do so. Absolutely nothing about Linux or any other general purpose OS protects against this threat vector, and if Linux had the market share Windows does you would be saying the exact same stuff about your grandma getting rootkits on her Ubuntu box. Mobile devices protect against this scenario by not trusting the user and heavily restricting what apps can do, but that's not a good model for a general purpose computer.
You can lock down Windows too, you can restrict it to Windows Store only, you can allow only whitelisted apps to be installed, you can lock down user permissions, ...
I gave her an iPad Owh, 10 years ago? And I’ve never had to troubleshoot her system ever again. No spyware. No viruses. Nothing.
The worst that happened recently is that the Starlink antenna had te be realigned after a particularly heavy wind blew it off the roof almost.
Oh and her printer needed new toners after printing for x years without problems.
If you want inkjets, buy those with ink tanks. More expensive up front, but operating cost is so cheap. And no more "you have to replace a whole cartridge just because Magenta is low"; if Magenta is low, buy a bottle of Magenta, and fill.
For laser printers, buy those whose toner cartridges are separate from the drum, and those whose toner cartridges can be reset mechanically. And refillable.
Mine is... 15+ years old? I replaced the toner once. And it doesn't have Ethernet or WiFi, so I bought Printopia for my iMac (to which it's attached) to enable AirPrint.
Forget about trying to change this from the perspective of thoughts. Cognitively understanding that you should "just" stop worrying about what other people think about your work might not bring you far.
Instead, realize that anxiety is a bodily phenomenon and as such needs to be addressed with the body. That means: Breathing techniques, exercise etc.
> Instead, realize that anxiety is a bodily phenomenon and as such needs to be addressed with the body. That means: Breathing techniques, exercise etc.
It is not a bodily thing, just there is a bodily feedback loop: you feel anxious, it leads to a bodily reaction, your senses register it, you feel more anxious. Sometimes dealing with the body and breaking the feedback loop is enough, but for me personally it works for 10 minutes or so. If I hadn't overcome the psychological reasons of my anxiety, I feel myself anxious.
> Cognitively understanding that you should "just" stop worrying about what other people think about your work might not bring you far.
May not bring or may bring. It depends... People are different, so different methods are best for them. I deal with things mostly in a psychological ways. My general method for anxiety is to make my anxiety into a fear, by finding the thing that makes me anxious (this step is standard way of psychotherapists to deal with anxiety). Then I imagine that the thing happened and how will I adapt. Mostly I find out that this thing is not as bad as I perceive it, it cannot kill me, it cannot hurt me physically, I can deal with associated social costs, or if I cannot... For example sometimes I can reframe the situation: my goal is not to send the rocket to the Moon (with 10% chance of a success), but rather to do a test launch, to find out how my rocket perform (here we get ~100% chance of a success).
I need to accept the possibility of a failure, and understand that the possible failure is not terminal, it is just possible and acceptable setback. People tend to dramatize and say that some failures are not acceptable, but if people really had a possibility of an unacceptable outcome (lets say it is a painful death for all involved and their families) then the most rational thing to do would be to stop the activity that could lead to this outcome. When I allow myself to buy the dramatization I face anxiety issues.
> > That means: Breathing techniques, exercise etc.
It also means alcohol, drugs, shrooms, ketamine, MDMA, Research Chemicals, uppers, downers, amplifier substances , smoothering substances, focus enhancers, dissociatives...
I mean the modern society seems like coming up with some trends such as the war on drugs, the vice taxes and all the patronizing BS, only to discover that there is a reason why those things exist and we indulged in them for as long as we have been around in the first place
I think some of those substances can have positive in a very narrow set of circumstances. Being vigilant and only using them in those scenarios can be just as hard as the hard solutions you were avoiding in the first place, like sleep, diet, exercise, cleaning up your routine, etc. I'll add some color on how some of those can go wrong, hopefully this saves someone else from having to learn it first hand:
Alcohol - messes up your sleep, without which your mind will never be operating as clearly as it could. If you frequently mix it with other substances, it'll also turn into a trigger, making you crave said substances every time you have a drink. Use with moderation.
Shrooms - these are really nice, but like most psychoactive substances, they'll definitely get in the way of focusing on hard tasks. Doing something fun gets more fun with shrooms, doing something hard gets harder. Use with moderation. Indulge, don't escape. I'd give the same advice about LSD.
Ketamine - has an extremely broad profile of effects depending on dosage. You can mitigate this a bit by correctly measuring and dissolving it in nasal spray, but even then tolerance builds up very quickly and you end up compensating by doing more. It has a small dosage window where it'll be an indulging drug, just adding a pleasurable shift to your perceptions, but then as soon as you go over that window, it will turn you into a little dissociated zombie, unable to hold an interesting conversation with someone who isn't on the same ballpark of high as you are. It can cause serious damage to your urinary tract. Indulge, don't escape. Try to use once per month at most.
MDMA - can be amazing at low dosages, but evidence indicates it is neurotoxic in most doses you'll run into in parties. When it starts to come down you will want to do more, so if you're trying to be careful make sure you have measures to prevent you from doing so. Hangovers can be brutal, specially on higher doses. At higher doses it'll make you confused and mess up with your short term memory, but your social confidence will still stay high, so you can turn into an obnoxious person rambling about something for the third time in half an hour to whoever is unlucky to be nearby. Indulge with a lot of caution, don't escape. Use lower doses. Give it a 3 month break between uses.
Research chemicals - unless you are the researcher, stay away from these. Some drugs have very different effects to others that are chemically very similar and often impossible to differentiate with standard test kits you'll be able to buy and use without being a chemist. Reliable information on their effects, dosage, interactions is difficult or impossible to find — not only for you, but also for your EMT or doctor, in case you need medical assistance.
Uppers - addictive, can cause re-dosing, will fuck up your sleep and your appetite. Suppress orgasms (and often erections). Stress your heart muscles and your arteries and veins. When taken for productivity, will give you short-term gains that turn into holes you'll need several weeks to dig yourself out of. Use with extreme caution.
Amplifier substances - in my experience, there's no such thing. You can do substance X today and have an amazing "amplified" time, and then do the same dose again a week later in a different setting and have a real bad time, constantly in your head, seeing the negative interpretation of everything. The things which make it more likely for a substance to be an amplifier can't be fixed with more substances: how well are you sleeping, eating, exercising? Are you mulling over some difficult conversation instead of just having it? Are you surrounded by people you like who are good to you?
while they do have therapeutic effects (some, I wouldn't say alcohol does), I don't think they should be proposed as methods to relax stress. Too many downsides and are not sustainable as regularly used substances. Yes you do feel great in a night of MDMA but the feelings you have the following days almost negate the positive aspects.
Reading this article makes me wonder. Whenever I am too stressed, I become very self-conscious and I interpret everyday things and normal nuisances under the umbrella of "See, this is how big of a failure you are, you pathetic loser". Is almost as if there's another voice - not my voice - in my head who tells me this abusive stuff, sitting on the side and being judgemental.
That sounds a lot more like "automatic negative thoughts". I don't think it's considered a form of psychosis, even if arguably it's sort of similar (you're hearing a voice that isn't there telling you things that aren't real).
I use to have this, the book "the power of now" explains how to minimise and remove it.
remember that the internal monologue is not (the whole of) you. I managed to get rid of of my imposter syndrome by getting rid of that constant internal voice
The size of the mini is really the best, but the external monitor support is very disappointing. Do jailbreaks etc. allow for native monitor resolutions or are we limited to the iPads screen resolution by hardware?
I'm reading here and else comments suggesting things like "don't get overly attached" or "don't define yourself by the role you fill" or "don't base your identity on your job"
But how do you "not" do these things?
It seems like I am doing these things automatically and I don't even know how the alternative world where I'm not doing these things looks like.
One thing that worked for me: think about what you’d do in retirement. Beyond video games/tv/your vice of choice.
Then start doing that now. Probably can’t do it to the same extent. But you can usually approximate it some.
You’ll be surprised at how life-giving it is, and that’s because it was a real desire buried under a mountain of “should.” And how hard it can be to even figure out what you want to do, and actually follow through on it.
Also the addition of "how hard it can be to even figure out what you want to do". This is imo a huge thing.
The decision paralysis and fear of doing and being what YOU authentically want - not somebody else, not some rules, not some abstract expectation what your future partner want you to be like, not what your mother/friends/teachers/mentors wants you to be like, not some "rational person" as described below, but you and you only - brings you pain and avoidant behaviors.
The avoidant behaviors come with a compounding cost on top and you can spend so much time not actually doing what you want.
I’ve made a few apps that together generate gas money every month and practice music almost every day, along with getting instruction from a very good teacher.
Next step is buying out time from my day job to build my own business further. Also learning more market research, and marketing in general.
I think many suggest that we shouldn’t define our work and identity by our employer or specific job role. Instead, focus on building your expertise in the field and career in general.
This approach allows you to avoid becoming overly dependent on a single company, unlike those who are focused solely on advancing their careers within one organization by relying on trust and loyalty. Those individuals often find themselves vulnerable, risking their positions over minor inconveniences or corporate decisions that are beyond their control.
By building your identity as an expert in the field, you create a more stable foundation for your career, regardless of the dynamics within any specific company.
This would be great when using a TV as remote display via AirPlay or Windows Screen-Mirroring etc. Unfortunately these things never works satisfactorily for me.
Wow, it must have been pretty intense feelings seeing Microsoft reveal exactly the same thing that you've been working on for months. Would you like to share what you experienced and how you coped with it?
Honestly, I don't even know if it's a coincidence or done on purpose. Initially, I'm just a simple developer who shared my bugs on Reddit and other platforms to find solutions to my problems. When I saw that Microsoft had the same functionality and the same name, my first thought was that there was no point in continuing this project because I would never be able to compete with them. Originally, I wanted to launch on June 27th, and I talked about this situation on Reddit. That's when I received a lot of feedback, which really warmed my heart. So, I decided to open-source my project, create a landing page in two days, and now I'm gradually building the project and making it publicly available for everyone.
There shouldn't be much coping considering that Rewind has been a thing for a long time and is already a giant.
I also work on a similar app (AI-less, though) and my initial though was, nice, more eyes on this sort of apps, I might get some additional sales as a result.
