The selling point for me right now with Plasma is how well rounded it is. It’s also currently the only desktop env offering HDR support, which means it’s basically a must for me.

That’s literally the whole point of GIMP 3

It is also worth considering that yes, MS and Google have definitely dominated the market through superior products, but the standards they’ve pushed for and established have also made it difficult for other players to enter. If we wanted to say that the federated nature of email is dead, I think that’s a fair argument still.

Hosting your own email server is quite difficult. You have to jump through a lot of hoops to land in anyone’s mailbox without assistance. If you want to make a mailing list, you basically need to use a mailing service, lest you get blacklisted by major systems owned by MS and Google. Much of this is a byproduct of spam, by which I don’t blame Google and MS for doing their best to protect against, but at the same time they have more or less neutered some core aspects of what made email accessible.

Doesn’t seem to apply to Canada (yet)

I don’t know about the latter half of your statement, but my main reason for its use is pretty simply just that there’s more music available, and it doesn’t take all the time it normally would to get invited to a good music tracker. If anything, specialized Torrent trackers that could offer the same volume of music are a much bigger pain go deal with.

Yeah, I don’t think this one is a priority for the IDF boss.

Soulseek is a P2P file sharing system centered around music in particular. It’s pretty direct. Unlike a torrent where you’ll have multiple seeds for a single source, you’re connecting directly to other individuals for the content. It generally operates under the expectation that you’re also sharing something, and some users may opt not to allow downloads to people who do not also allow downloads from themselves. The downside to this system is you may need to wait for that person to come online before you can start a download, while with a torrent, other seeders can fill that gap.

It’s survived as a pretty big platform for music hoarders to source hard to find material, but it’s so dead simple to use and it has a quick and reliable search. Nothing secretive about it, it’s basically just another P2P network that has more in common with Napster than the Pirate Bay

Can I introduce you to soulseek? I promise it’s going to serve way better than torrents for that kind of stuff.

I like CDs, but I guess I can’t really call myself a kid anynore though, being in my mid twenties. I typically use Spotify for discovery/casual listening but but an album on CD or digitally through Bandcamp when the option is presented to me. I went out of my way to buy a 25 disc CD changer.

Vinyl have definitely become way more popular for physical music purchases, but I like the smaller footprint of a CD.

I do think the vast majority of people use Youtube Music, Spotify or a similar service though. It’s inexpensive, has family plans and optical media players just aren’t common anymore.

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The launcher is a fair point. Though for me at least, not having the spotlight-esque search hasn’t been a problem. Appearance is an odd one, since the best part of Both Gnome and KDE is the wonderful flexibility in visual customizability. At the end of the day, I suppose I’d happily use either. Right now, I think Plasma’s big features for me has to be window snapping and, once 6.0 releases, hopefully HDR support.

Maybe I’m missing some of the nuances between KDE and Gnome, but I’ve enjoyed the out of box experience with KDE far more than Gnome. That said, perhaps I’ve simply timed my switchover to Plasma such that I missed its teething pains. I say this as someone who used pretty much exclusively Gnome over the years.

What would you say sets Gnome apart?