> He moved to some launcher [...]. As I understand it, using a launcher prevents you from using the Google Play Store, so you're not buying apps.
I'm going to chalk it up to you not knowing about Android, but swapping launchers is basically changing your home menu, it doesn't affect Play Store access and you'll likely need it to buy the Pro version of certain launchers, the most common one being Nova Launcher Prime[0]. And if he did something more drastic, like changing to custom ROMs (akin to OS images), then Play Store access is up to him.
And honestly, I don't think Google free apps and services coming and going will impact app ownership numbers. Android being more popular in low income, developing countries (with big population numbers) will have a bigger impact overall.
> The developer version is literally the alpha release, later renamed aurora, later named developer. It is not acceptable to use an alpha release as a main driver for security and stability reasons.
It hasn't been for a long time, Mozilla dropped the Aurora channel in 2017 and rebased Developer Edition off Beta [0]. And as far as I'm concerned, beta is as stable as mainline (on my phone, at least).
> The ESR releases of FF main don't allow unsigned add-ons. You may be using a custom user freedom respecting build Debian specifically negotiated with Mozilla to allow in it's repositories?
Official documentation says you can still load unsigned extensions on ESR, but you need to enable a flag in about:config first [1].
Have you tried Fedora Silverblue[1] and its cousins? `root` is an immutable image powered by something akin to `git` but for OS files. You can layer RPMs (although you should use flatpak or containers wherever possible) and /etc is mutable but also tied to the deployed image[2]. You can rollback your system to previous images, rebase it to a completely different system (i.e from `silverblue/gnome` to `kinoite/plasma`) or build your own OS image for deployment instead.
It is a different desktop paradigm for sure (for one, you won't be using a standard package manager) and you do feel its rough edges sometimes, but it is my favorite Linux experience so far, where the OS doesn't stay on my way unless I want it to be in the way: I turn my PC on, use it as usual, desktop apps are updated on background with GNOME Software/flatpak and if there is a new image available, as soon as I reboot/shutdown, next time it is up, everything has been cleanly applied. Flatpak'd apps also won't spread files across the system, so everything is as self-contained as it can be.
Mullvad is actually a Firefox fork and it directly uses Tor's privacy enhancements[0] to Firefox for a private web browsing experience. As a matter of fact, it really looks like Tor Browser but with a VPN baked in instead of Tor.
Exactly my concerns. Fedora is significantly tied to Red Hat currently, and honestly if Red Hat keeps pulling in moves like that, I fear for the project's health in the long run. As matter of fact, yesterday I wiped one of my machines for Arch to probe it as an alternative for it and honestly I can think of is how there is nothing quite like it anywhere else, so I hope it doesn't come to that. I've learned to enjoy sane defaults and fresh up-to-date packages OOTB!
I also had the unfortunate experience of just moving one of my servers from Debian to Alma Linux to match my desktop, but I'll likely rollback now.
Besides the fact that Uber Eats barely made a dent in the marketshare and came in way later, it also attempted the same strategy to bring in consumers.
I distinctly recall using coupons or special "Only on Uber Eats" deals during most of 2019, and I only stopped using it during the pandemic because the available options at home were terrible compared to iFood's.
CentOS Stream 9, which is basically RHEL9 9.(x+1). The issue itself was overblown to hell, and after realizing that "rolling release" meant "one minor release ahead", I decided to stick with it.
For my usecase, it works fine and nothing has changed at all. My workloads are mostly container-based, so the base OS doesn't matter as much.
I run RHEL-like because I'm familiar with it (since I use Fedora as my desktop/workstation OS), so CentOS will likely stay unless I get myself fully immersed into the alternatives down the road.
> To ensure that none of their test ads reached vulnerable audiences, Global Witness deleted the ads before alarming messages like “Death to the children of Lula voters” could be published.
And in the published results[0] hyperlinked by Ars:
> Out of sixteen test ads submitted by Global Witness to the platform, only two were rejected. Those approved included text in Portuguese such as “unearth all the rats that have seized power and shoot them”, “Death to the children of Lula voters” [...]
They seem to be mostly talking about politicians, yes, but there was a specific ad right there that advocates for killing the children of Lula voters that was approved by Meta, and as a Brazilian that has seen this kind of advocating before in social media, I'm not surprised Meta isn't doing their job properly.
It is undeniable that corporate Linux has prefered GNOME over Plasma, I can't name you a single relevant European distro that uses Plasma as its default.
- Canonical (United Kingdom) ships GNOME for Ubuntu.
- SUSE (Germany) ships GNOME as default on their SUSE Enterprise Linux, openSUSE hsa no defaults.
- Manjaro (Austria, France, Germany according to DistroWatch) ships XFCE (GTK based) by default.
- Mint (Ireland) ships 3 GTK desktops, defaulting to Cinnamon.
Meanwhile, on America:
- Valve (USA) ships Plasma on SteamOS for their desktop experience.
- System76 (USA) ships (although they hate it) GNOME for PopOS. They want to replace it with a Rust-based, GTK/Qt-free alternative.
- Red Hat (USA) ships GNOME as their official desktop for RHEL.
- Fedora (USA) ships GNOME as their official desktop.
So I don't think country impacts much, it is just that GTK is the de facto toolkit for Linux and historically, Qt wasn't FOSS and GNOME received a lot of development for accessibility during Sun's days, which matters a lot for corporate due to stricter requirements on that front.
I'm going to chalk it up to you not knowing about Android, but swapping launchers is basically changing your home menu, it doesn't affect Play Store access and you'll likely need it to buy the Pro version of certain launchers, the most common one being Nova Launcher Prime[0]. And if he did something more drastic, like changing to custom ROMs (akin to OS images), then Play Store access is up to him.
And honestly, I don't think Google free apps and services coming and going will impact app ownership numbers. Android being more popular in low income, developing countries (with big population numbers) will have a bigger impact overall.
[0] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.teslacoils...