Not hot and trending, they've been calling gay people that for a long time

You did say "I don't use Windows" which sounded like you were saying you didn't know if what they were saying was technically plausible or reasonable, and without knowing what you do or don't know about Windows or DOS, figured I'd respond with the presumption that it's possible you're only really familiar with *NIX systems (which is not a judgement).

I find it kludgey and unnecessary to shut down that way, but it's not exactly a bad idea, and it does not require admin rights.

And there's no reason it wouldn't be supported: when you run the file, it opens it in a terminal window, it's exactly like if you manually opened it and typed it from a technical point of view.

And if someone malicious has the ability to edit a file on your desktop, they could do a lot more dangerous things, pretty much anything you could put in the batch file, more or less directly.

Really, the only issue here is that you'd always be force closing your programs when you shut down which increases the odds that eventually they might corrupt one of their files... Not a huge risk, but non-zero.

I can't speak for them if they're joking or not but it's something you can absolutely do. *.bat files (short for "batch", as in a batch of commands to execute in sequence) are the script files for the Windows command line, and can be executed by double clicking on them

Probably just habit on their part, it's no different than just putting 0

Starfield wasn't an MMO...

Yep. Linux is as easy or often easier to install than Windows. The main difference is people rarely install Windows, it's just there, by default.

The Big issue, I think, is the tyranny of the default.

The rest of the usability issues will get fixed with greater adoption rates if they come.

But yeah, once you get over the hurdle of going against the default, the deluge of choice is overwhelming, much like why Mastodon and Lemmy didn't see huge usage spikes when Twitter and Reddit went to shit, but Bluesky did.

The problem is, Ubuntu from my understanding will try to install the snap version even if you explicitly are installing the deb version, including replacing a deb version with a snap when you update.

I've not experienced this personally as I stopped using Ubuntu before they started doing snaps, maybe they've gotten better about that, but I don't trust a corpo run distro to not enshittify at every opportunity, so...

Mint is basically Ubuntu with a lot of the questionable decisions fixed (and uses Cinnamon instead of Gnome, so it's a bit more Windows like).

It doesn't have snaps (though they provide instructions to add them if you want), it uses apt for packages and I believe pulls from a mixture of the Ubuntu repos and their own. It also has Flatpak out of the box and the software center does both, and clearly marks which you're going to install with an easy drop down to switch if both are available.

Flatpak has been pretty solid for me overall, though there are occasional gotchas.

Honestly, I'd recommend going with Mint, pretty much anything that works with Ubuntu will work with it, and it's better put together in my opinion (and doesn't try to sell you a pro subscription by implying your system will be insecure if you don't, which Ubuntu does). I know you're not looking to switch, but I've honestly been very unimpressed with Ubuntu for the last, oh, decade or so

This. I've been saying for a bit now that we need our own tea party movement to push the DNC left

Why not? He already illegally ran in 2024, and was illegally inaugurated...

No, but most of us would be sceptical of how he'll implement it, if it ever comes to pass at all... He's announced a number of things I've actually agreed with and I can't think of a single time he's not found some way to fuck it up

I'm all in favor of this, though he'll find some way to fuck it up, if it happens at all and isn't just a way to siphon money out of the government for his buddies

Sysadmins too

Not to mention the power requirements for transferring funds digitally

Was going to say this exactly

Mid second quarter even

The fact that it's in retaliation for her speaking out about human rights violations, when they have a clear policy against retaliating against employees who speak out about human rights violations

Well, then... Maybe I'll switch, I've been adamantly using the one in the Mint repos

I love it, but I'm a bit worried that using his name could make it harder to get enough people onboard... Not that it would be easy normally... But maybe I'm wrong, maybe he's more generally liked than I realize (outside of online spaces anyway)

I'd take it a step further that by "by enthusiasts, for enthusiasts", they're really meaning "it's for the elites". They like that it's hard, they had to work to learn it and they'll be damned if anyone should get it easier, and also it's a way to flex on people.

I may be overstating this person's take on it and reading more into it than is there, but that's my general view of this enthusiast (elitist) mindset, and really, it isn't doing anyone any favors.

Regular joes can't really hurt the direction of this ecosystem; corpos are limited in the influence they have over it, and anyone can exclude their contributions (even systemd can be left out still). But more people using it means more resources available to improve things and more interest in that happening. It also means more direct support for mainstream programs rather than just a hodge podge of companies throwing out minimally usable versions as a proof of concept and not bothering to go further with the work of Wine, Valve through Proton and Steam Deck, and CodeWeavers, to pick up the slack and try to get things to mostly work right.

Anyway, tl;dr, I agree with you... The Gentoos and Arches aren't going away just because there's more mainstream interest, if anything they'll get more enthusiasts to join because they got the itch from the easier distros, much like a gateway drug.