heliumlake

Ardour is probably the most full-featured FOSS DAW out there. I know they used to require a small choose-your-own payment to download it from the site, but it’s available in pretty much every Linux distro repository.

If we stay engaged and committed to lemmy, then it will survive. There's already a lot of growing activity here, let's hope it's the flywheel the platform needs.

I use adblock wherever I can as ads have only become more annoying and intrusive over time. It's incredibly frustrating going to a site and having three banner ads covering 60% of the screen, or seeing an unskippable ad interrupt a YouTube video every 90 seconds. It's wasted time I will never get back, and it feels like theft of my life. I wish I could have adblock everywhere outside of the internet.

Simple and clean UIs are an improvement over what's now considered "modern web design" meant to manipulate your attention to particular things. It feels like the agency is taken away from the user. I am loving the fediverse for this reason and have been a fan and user of FOSS apps for over a decade because the design goals of the software match the actual use-case of the app without trying to tie you in to something else. No distractions, no advertisements, no walled gardens. Just, here's the app, here's the functionality, it's been delivered. Now use it as you see fit without an ulterior motive from the developer or their investors (or lack thereof.)

Intellectual property law is such a farce. It's wild that he was on the hook for THAT hefty of a prison sentence just because he downloaded academic articles which should on principle automatically be in the public domain.

I appreciate it friend. Just had a conversation today about it and I'm feeling better. Thank you. :)

I'm really tired of the political class roping in entire nations in to conflict over things only rich and/or powerful people give a shit about. Most of the working and middle class just want to live their lives in peace without some game-theoretic geopolitical showdown happening at every turn in history. And this all over what? To say that our part of the map is bigger than yours? To say that we have access to these resources and they don't? What's the fucking point? We are all human and desperately need a better way of organizing our global society than stupid shit like this.

It's wild how quickly reddit went from being beloved despite some missteps to an absolute pariah on the internet.

This is exactly how I’m feeling right now.

Fedora’s implementation of Gnome is near perfect. I also think Tumbleweed ships with Gnome integrated very well. Used both for some time, but I’m trying out Gentoo as a learning experience at the moment and Gnome seems to perform much better since you can compile it a bit leaner. However the default apps in the meta package have me trying the minimal Gnome on my laptop and adding exactly what I need.

I'll try to answer as best I can.

Windows is a proprietary operating system. This means you are unable to view the source code and have to trust Microsoft that it isn't doing anything malicious. This goes with any proprietary program you purchase or otherwise use. Trusting Microsoft is however a tall order. They have a notoriously terrible track record when in comes to privacy. Telemetry, keyloggers, injecting ads in to the desktop, etc. For someone like me who values privacy and is concerned with commercial creep in to my personal spaces, this is intolerable.

Conversely, any Linux distro is comprised of primarily free software. This means a majority of the operating system has been viewed and audited by many people, and any privacy concerns or exploits will be brought to attention sooner than later. Linux has a fundamentally different design and political philosophy than Windows. Contrary to its name, Windows is the black box you can't peer into and Linux lays all out to bare. Should you need a program to do something particular to your use-case, and it is free and open source, you may make those modifications with no legal repercussions. Depending on the license, you might even be able to share those modifications with other people so they might benefit as well. It's essentially the spirit of sharing vs. competition. Linux is a community of people wanting to make great software for others to use. Windows is a commercial product designed to lock you in to a cycle of consumption for the benefit of Microsoft, and Microsoft only. If you willingly give them your data for the sake of your own convenience, they will sell it.

For your use-case, Linux Mint sounds like a great place to start. VS Code is available on Linux, and is super easy to install on Ubuntu/Debian-based distros like Mint. I'm not sure about Vegas, but despite what I wrote previously, there is nothing wrong with using an operating system for a tool you need as long as you accept the conditions that will come with it. YouTube can be viewed on any platform easily, and Steam has come a long way with proton for gaming on Linux. I personally use macOS for audio production because the tools I need are there, but use Linux for the bulk of my computing needs.

Ultimately, which operating system you use is a personal decision. I'm not going to tell you to use something you don't want or need. I just hope you look in to whether open source software can meet your needs for your use and consider what you are agreeing to when you use commercial operating systems.

I hope this was helpful, and I'm happy to answer any questions you might have!

Still scroll reddit for certain communities, but the conversation here is refreshing and I find myself participating more, that's a good thing. Lemmy needs sustained engagement more than a honeymoon phase. We will see once third-party apps shut down.