PixelProf
Most Linux distributions are free (free as in beer and free as in free speech and freedom to modify). Some are backed by big corporations with questionable activities (e.g., Ubuntu owned by Canonical adding ads and data tracking by default).
Federation is a different concept (relating to the interconnecting of content platforms, such as email or Lemmy).
Linux itself is the underlying kernel code which programs talk to act as a mediator between software and hardware. Each Linux distribution is basically a software suite built on-top.
Arch is specifically notable for having a very fast software update cycle.
In contrast, Debian is a distribution with the "slow and stable" mantra. Software officially supported and distributed for it only receives updates every few years after extensive stability testing. The goal is to never have a random update break anything. This also means it is slow to receive support for new hardware unless you manually install it. It often supports running newer software but it won't be nicely managed by the OS and you'll be doing manual work to maintain it. The consequence? I have a new graphics card, and booting into Debian just gives me a black screen. I needed to use the terminal to download and install Nvidia's driver myself.
Arch isn't so concerned with stability. It's still tested, but their goal is to make sure new hardware and software advances can be used right away. Think weeks instead of years. This means it will support newer hardware and any news about Linux advancements will be on your machine before long. It also means that sometimes things slip through the cracks and one piece of software might break, or break another one. You might need to pay attention to Arch news before updating to see if there are any incompatibilities before updating.
There are different distributions building on top of these. Arch itself must be installed from scratch, a tricky process. Debian is more streamlined. Ubuntu is built on Debian, having lots of stability, but has alternative software repositories to keep things a bit more up to date. Arch has variations that make it easier to install.
Arch gives more flexibility in what you install and more control of your system. Debian has lots of flexibility as well. Ubuntu has a bit less. Mint is a popular choice, built on Ubuntu, and it removes some of the "chaff" people complain about being added into Ubuntu.
Linux distributions can run on basically anything. A smart toaster might run Linux. If it can run Windows, it will probably run a Linux distribution with a quarter of the memory usage at double the speed because Windows hogs resources with unnecessary and unkillable software in the background.
It's tough as a computer science professor from a related perspective. Lots of students arbitrarily hating anything AI related because of this, including all of the traditional techniques from the 60 years prior to the rise of LLMs and diffusion models, and others misconstruing or discounting any AI class that isn't LLM or diffusion related.
I never like to say technology is inevitable, as the inevitability argument is one of the best marketing tools major companies have to justify their poor ethics and business models (see: the gig economy founders, the "Momentum" mindset). It's clear, though, that there is quite a paradigm shift occuring.
Any solutions to replace something like Virtual Desktop to wirelessly VR a Quest 3, or any word on attempts to get Steam Link VR working on Linux? It's basically the final ligament holding onto the Windows dual-boot on my non-work PC. I've been waiting for the day I can purge Windows since using Warty in elementary school.
Thanks for the heads up! App error it seems, tried to clean it up.
Not op but https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/poilievre-to-run-in-alberta-byelection-1.7525104
Basically he asked a con in the highest % of con votes to step down to trigger a by-election. It's an area where the other parties don't even campaign, they just hand it to the cons.
There are already talks of "liberals rigged the election" so that he can deflect and not make it a personal failing that he lost a riding that's historically always been conservative and lost a 25 point lead in the polls in a few months.
Interesting points, maybe a book I'll have to give a read to. I've long thought that information overload on its own leads to a kind of subjective compression and that we're seeing the consequences of this, plus late stage capitalism.
Basically, if we only know about 100 people and 10 events and 20 things, we have much more capacity to form nuanced opinions, like a vector with lots of values. We don't just have an opinion about the person, our opinion toward them is the sum of opinions about what we know about them and how those relate to us.
Without enough information, you think in very concrete ways. You don't build up much nuance, and you have clear, at least self-evident logic for your opinions that you can point at.
Hit a sweet spot, and you can form nuanced opinions based on varied experiences.
Hit too much, and now you have to compress the nuances to make room for more coarse comparisons. Now you aren't looking at the many nuances and merits, you're abstracting things. Necessary simulacrum.
I've wondered if this is where we've seen so much social regression, or at least being public about it. There are so many things to care about, to know, to attend to, that the only way to approach it is to apply a compression, and everyone's worldview is their compression algorithm. What features does a person classify on?
I feel like we just aren't equipped to handle the global information age yet, and we need specific ways of being to handle it. It really is a brand new thing for our species.
Do we need to see enough of the world to learn the nuances, then transition to tighter community focus? Do we need strong family ties early with lower outside influence, then melting pot? Are there times in our development when social bubbling is more ideal or more harmful than otherwise? I'm really curious.
Anecdotally, I feel like I benefitted a lot from tight-knit, largely anonymous online communities growing up. Learning from groups of people from all over the world of different ages and beliefs, engaging in shared hobbies and learning about different ways of life, but eventually the neurons aren't as flexible for breadth and depth becomes the drive.
The other side is also reserving their criticism for those people, so the net result is that the only people who aren't receiving hate are the fascists.