Yeah; that’s not much time, and I’m not a lawyer, but this seems a complicated legal question. I just assumed any tool that circumvents any sort of digital lock would be hosting in countries that DGAF about US laws. Even better if they have a .onion address to avoid any network blocking attempts, like z-library.

You had me until multi-account Outlook access. Why not just use different browser profiles?

That said, the Outlook application is necessary for lots of things, like saving email files (record keeping) and mail merges, but the number of accounts has never been a problem for me. I have 9 active email accounts spread across three/five different platforms (depending if you separate corporate vs. free), and I use web apps (by choice) for all of them, aside from popping Outlook open for the aforementioned mail merges and digital record keeping for email files.

But absolutely true for Excel. It frustrates me so much when I’m stuck on a computer with even slightly outdated versions of the Excel application. SORT, FILTER, TEXTSPLIT, and so many other functions are so much simpler than the many workarounds I used to kludge together.

But fuck Teams. The application is just as garbage as the web app. Those two fail/crash ten times more than all the other apps on my computer *combined". I’ve crashed three times in a single meeting. It must be vibe coded, bolted together, janky, spaghetti code.

I was very supportive of Beehaw defederating from lemmy.world early. It’s lovely.

My (major Canadian) Bank app (TD) has always just worked, no matter the state of my bootloader or root, and I’ve never bothered with Magisk Hide or anything like that to try to dodge root checks.

Eh… I was also going to say Heroes, but I think it jumped the shark partway through season 1.

The “Save the Cheerleader, Save the World” story arc is some of the best television ever, but it rapidly goes downhill from there. Then in season 2, they tried to get fan involvement in the story and, predictably, it was terrible.

But for anyone who hasn’t seen it, you’ll know the story arc I’m talking about, and it’s obvious when it ends. Well worth watching up to that point!

In a just society, there can be no tolerance for intolerance.

Which ones? It’s pretty easy to pass Strong Integrity.

With a web browser and user agent spoofing, that’s basically how it works. I don’t want any Facebook/Meta apps on my phone, so I use a desktop Google Chrome rule for all Meta URLs in my browser and user the web versions. Mobile is slowly taking over, but most things have a web version.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t work for everything. The Quest 3 requires an Android or iOS device to set up. At least an old cell phone on a throwaway Google account works for most of these, since they don’t need to be used often.

2025 is (finally) my year for Linux. I’ve used Linux periodically fire 2 decades, but I’ve always used Windows as my main boot partition on my desktops/laptops.

I recently fucked up my Windows install, which is a whole other story, but point is I need to reformat and start fresh. I’m so sick of Microsoft’s shit, and I’ve been super impressed with Linux on my Steam Deck, so I’m going to be installing CachyOS soon.

My wife’s aging laptop is being killed by Windows bloat, too. Works great until Windows decides it needs to lock up 100% CPU, 100% memory, and 100% disk bandwidth to install a Microsoft Edge update. (True story.) She doesn’t even want/use Edge. This machine is used 100% for media streaming and web apps, so Linux is a perfect fit.

I have a friend in a similar situation. Both my friend and my wife I’m thinking an immutable distro will likely work best for them.

The big thing that’s been holding me back for years is that my desktop rig is my work computer, and I need OneDrive and the latest desktop version of Excel, but I’m so sick of wasting time with Microsoft’s bullshit that I’m just going to install debloated Windows 11 in a VM. I just need those two apps, so that’ll be plenty.

Wow. How ignorant do you have to be to move to Russia to avoid your children being taught about acceptance and inclusion (LGBTQ+).

But I doubt Fox News is picking up this story, so the people who need to hear this the most never will.

CD-Rs were more expensive than DVDRs because of RIAA lobbying to get a cut of every CDR sale since they were “only/mostly used for music piracy”. DVDRs did not have this tax on them.

I knew about the Debian > Ubuntu ordering, but I take it Debian is still often used as a desktop environment, which is what I thought.

Oh, that’s very good to know. That’s a big limitation. That might make moving to Linux at all DOA for me. I’d likely need to do everything for work in a VM, but then what’s the point?

Unfortunately, I’m tied to Excel 2024. I make heavy use of new functions, like SORT that aren’t available in any other desktop app, and the web client doesn’t allow for VBA scripting, so it’s not suitable, either.

oh, shit:

The main one I see is if you need to install some proprietary VPN client it gets annoyingf

You’re right. I have a crappy work-supplied Windows laptop that has exactly that installed. It would be nice not to need to boot into that when I need to work on the server from home, but it’s not a deal breaker.

No other specific non-web-based software is needed for work, aside from the aforementioned OneDrive and Excel 2024.

Edit: Your last paragraph is exactly what I’m asking about; I’m capable of doing slightly involved tinkering, but it would need to be something that I can Google Fu through each step of someone walking through most of the steps. I don’t know it at all well enough to go completely “off script” and just tinker with confidence.

It sounds like you’re suggesting that going for something mainstream and getting it to work for games is likely a better option, particularly for someone with limited Limits experience?

Good to know! I use it at work for a server; ngl, my non-Bazzite distro search hasn’t been extensive, except getting to the point that I think I don’t want anything Ubuntu-based.

Thanks for the reply!

A few thoughts:

I was thinking Win 10 EOL won’t matter if the VM has no Internet access. Linux would sync the files for me, so the Windows VM can just run Excel (and maybe Word, since I’m setting up Office 2024 anyway) using the files synced by abraunegg’s onedrive, so it doesn’t need internet access. (Assuming there’s a partition format that works well for both Windows and Linux that I can use for onedrive, which I assume is a “solved” problem by now—i remember this being hard 20 years ago.)

And his package apparently works in Fedora 42 with docker, which I assume should work fine.

But yeah; maybe what you’re suggesting makes more sense. And that VM definitely would need web access, then, so Win 10 is a non-starter. The database work I do is likely easier in Linux, but that’s likely easy enough to get data files out of the VM for just that work, I would expect.

Another question now comes to mind; I’m going to look this up now; how hard is it to copy/paste between Linux and a VM? Edit: As I’d hoped, this is also apparently a solved problem and sounds easy to configure.

IIRC, that 70 US citizens deported by ICE statistic was from prior to Trump II. The current authoritarian secret police have definitely more than doubled that number in 3 months, I reckon.

I feel heartbroken for my Ameribros. We were so close, once. But I started boycotting you when you reelected Bush in 2004, pausing only briefly for a few years before the Tea Party took over in the Obama years. My passport expired over a decade ago and I haven’t needed to renew it.

I hope you all make it out of this okay! And that you don’t take us down with you.

Hit the nail on the head.

Millions and millions of print books are destroyed all the time, and very rarely is anything of value lost. Libraries, thrift stores, and used book stores get inundated thousands of books donated to them, most of which nobody wants. Unless you, personally, are going to take on sorting, transporting, and storing dozens of duplicate copies of books in poor condition, and have some purpose for them (presumably?), then get off your high horse about the destruction of bulk-purchased used books.

Individual copies of mass-published books are not precious. Only rare books are important for preservation. And, even then, digital copies are much more practical for long-term storage than physical books. Anna’s Archive’s preservation project as a shadow library is only possible because data storage is very cheap, infinitely replicable, and practically free to transport.

Actually, no. Not according to the research. (Which I can’t find right now; just in a quick break.)

Essentially, somewhere (?) had the whole region take vacation at the same time, if possible. (Not essential services and obviously vacation businesses, lol). They found much greater benefits when there’s a large chunk of the population all off at the same time, and makes everyone happier (even those who have to still work).

They think the reasons are twofold:

1. We’re social creatures, and being able to connect with people meaningfully depends on them also being available at the same time.
2. When the region is on “vacation”, everyone gets more relaxed/chill, even those who are still working. Basically “vibes”. (They were a lot more technical in the study, lol).

Sorry I can’t link it, but something like “everyone who can be is off from July 15-August 15” would have big societal benefits.