AllyTheProtogen

I haven't seen SystemD actually do anything. May have missed it though. What I did see is one Canonical employee make a proposal(more like an example, not one they'd actually use) on a privacy friendly SystemD check, but I haven't heard much past that, and someone else made systemd-censord as a joke.

The way I view it though, is that we can ditch things as long as we want, but unless we absolutely clog the in boxes and call logs of state legislators showing that people won't stand for this, nothing is going to work. And we'll eventually be trapped anyways. And even if SystemD made an age verification service, distros could just not ship it. But Linux and *BSD distros choosing not to comply is gonna do jack shit. Telling companies like System76 to block and not sell to people in affected states isn't financially viable and states wouldn't care in the slightest.

If these do get passed though, and wording is made so that all software HAS to implement age verification or follow some sort of standard, what then? Sure, companies and distros could block those states if it's just one or two. It'd be stupid and risky, but they could. But what about 5 states? 10? 30? What about all of America? What about all of the EU? What then? We shouldn't be getting mad or stop using these products because the orgs behind them are being smart and doing minimum compliance since they have to to stay alive. We should be directing all of our attention at the people writing these laws, and try to stop them.

Do keep in mind though, that while there are plenty of people outside the Linux and general FOSS community mad about these laws, we are a small minority inside a pretty significant echo chamber. The outrage over all of this seems way louder to us than it actually is. Sad to say that, but it's true. The vast majority of people don't care and are fine to live in a surveillance state.

Just my two cents. I just see too many people getting mad at the groups that have no choice to comply(and are thankfully doing it in the least invasive way they possible can) instead of the actual people in charge of these laws.

Edit: Just looked at OPs blog post, and the github PR they link to was denied, but the person who closed it made a reasonable argument that it's just a JSON config that, like I said it could be, can just not be implemented by a distro if said distro chooses to. They aren't actually making an API, they aren't making any policy changes, it's just there if it needs to be. Seems like a nothing burger, especially since things like Devuan, Artix, Void, etc exist.

So this is going to just completely ignore artistic intent, isn't it? I mean, ray tracing already does kinda ruin that, but in it's own way that devs can kinda get around. But this is just on a whole new level. They claim developers will be able to configure things, but AAA studios are just gonna see this and go "NEW HYPER REALISTIC STOCK HOLDER PLEASING GAME NOW PLEASE! FUCK THE ARTISTS!" and it's just so disappointing.

Can't wait for it to pop which causes so many things to crash and burn. That and I'll be able to purshase RAM and a new SSD again

Of course there is some nuance to it. However, the massive ethical and environmental issues that come alongside AI and crypto usage just make any good use of them moot. Along with the fact that nobody is using them for those good uses, since those don't rake in money, which is what companies want. People need to use their brains and need to think for themselves. AI is entirely antithetical to that.

At this point, whether or not you support such harmful things like AI and crypto aren't differences in opinions, they differences in morality and (especially with AI) empathy. It's one of those things where I just can't be around someone who even takes a "neutral" stance, because it means they don't care about the planet and people around them.

Praise be Waterfox, Librewolf, Floorp, etc

The OG OneShot Linux port is known to be extremely broken since it was really poorly developed. Even after applying a fix to get it to boot, it relies on old standards to do things like changing your wallpaper, so those features often won't work.

I'd highly suggest getting OneShot Wold Machine Edition which a remake/remaster of the original which takes place in a fake PC with a fake desktop that allows all those features to work in an isolated environment. Doesn't have a native Linux version, but the dev explicitly tested on Proton to make sure everything worked properly(specifically for the Steam Deck, but same difference).

Love the touch of the Ubuntu font, lol. Honestly amazing

There are so many little things I want to buy just to put Linux on them lol. I've been eyeing the Fairphone 5 because the creators merged all the drivers for it into the Linux kernel and it(along with the Fairphone 4 and hopefully 6 in the future) is fully supported by Ubuntu Touch, being one of the few phones where it has a 100% support rating. Well, excluding GPS and VoLTE(although they're issues on all supported phones), but GPS just requires you to restart whatever app you're using and then it works and VoLTE has a patch incoming to fix it.

It'd be so fun to daily drive a Linux phone, since all I do on my phone is call and text and maybe browse this place and Bsky, the last two can be covered by Waydroid, which is built into UBTouch.

That is a possibility, but it doesn't work for groups or DMs, disables E2EE, and not only will your friends be talking to you through a bot, there's a chance you could get rate limited, especially if you send lots of images and videos. Small chance, but a chance

Not entirely sure. But Stoat, like Matrix, is decentralised. Although they're decentralised in the same way as Bsky is, where you can run your own instance, but things won't carry over and discoverability without noteriaty isn't exactly possible. But I think it works in their favour making it so that they can't exactly be pinned down and forced to add age verification. Not quite sure so take it with a grain of salt, but I'm semi-confident that they'll be fine.

For those looking for alternatives, Stoat and Matrix are really good choices. For Stoat, it has a really good discord feel, but ATM they're going under a rebrand(for legal reasons that aren't entirely clear as of now), and this has caused them to take down their iOS app. Though, it should be back up relatively soon. In the mean time, their website does adapt to mobile screens, so it's a good alternative until they release their new iOS app. It has voice and video calls, screen sharing(on desktop), and pretty generous upload sizes(forget the specific number, but you're actually able to send clips now, unlike Discord).

Funnily enough, when Discord revealed this awful situation, lots of people flocked to Stoat and not only crippled their servers to the point they had to disabled things like typing indicators, their email provider marked them as spam because they were sending out so many account verification emails. Everything should be relatively fine now, and should be solved by the time Discord actually rolls out age verification, as they'll have fully scaled up by then if I had to guess.

For Matrix, it is the far more privacy focused of the two. Some people(me included) might even call it a bit too privacy focused. This is because if you lose your encryption key(which, tbf, is hard to do), you lose access to all messages that were sent with that key. But either way, modern apps like Element and FluffyChat support voice calls through VoIP, pretty big file uploads, and read receipts. You'll likely miss a couple things Discord does like screen sharing, but that should eventually™. It's also completely decentralised, meaning it can't implement age verification, even if it wanted to, since someone would just create a new server for people to use, or you could just create your own for your friends to use.

Don't let Discord take your info. What they're doing isn't OK, and is meant to collect personal data, not to protect children. Yes, it'll be irritating to move to another app, let alone convince your more carefree friends to move over, but this is a huge breach of privacy, and from Discord of all people. They say they won't save your ID or other government info, but just 4 months ago, they had a data breach of over 70,000 IDs that they had supposedly deleted. That very obviously does not scream trustworthy, at least to me.