cabbage

Yeah, I think you’re right, and I think that’s exactly why it’s a blind spot for me.

On several occasions I’ve also lent an old laptop to friends when theirs broke, and all of them ended up using Linux for months no questions asked. They later went back to Windows because of the Word grammar check, but other than that it just worked for them.

But of course, if you can’t get your drivers to work it’ll be a completely different experience.

If you’re ok Arch I guess it at least signals a willingness to learn! I would never dare to go there haha.

Yeah. I’ve double checked that my last few laptops worked well with Linux before buying them. But I don’t buy very flashy technology, so it was never really any question.

My printer is from Brother, and it’s just plug and play. At work it’s all web print and has been since I started working for pay, really.

A test could be to start by using Libre software on Windows.

Switch to LibbreOffice or some other alternative instead of Word. Gimp, Inkscape, and Krita for graphical stuff. Whatever proprietary software you use, check if it exists for Linux; if not, see if you can find an alternative you’re happy with.

For the people I know, Word is the biggest deal breaker.

Dumb user here. I completely disagree with this.

I was using Ubuntu for a few years, now I’m on Fedora. I don’t really know how to do anything. For my needs it’s just very easy.

Maybe my needs just aren’t sophisticated enough for me to encounter all those problems I’m supposed to be having. But I’ve been using it for years and my experience is that it really just works.

Wall-E had people ordering liquid fast food on their iPads and having it immediately delivered by drone. So fast food on a space station, but not a conventional restaurant experience i guess.

Sure it can, you just need to buy yourself a few Supreme Court Justices. They go cheap these days!

Doesn’t the SCOTUS agree with him? Or did I misunderstand those clowns?

Well, it’s expensive technology to develop, and there’s no other business model behind it than surveillance. So I think it’s fair to expect the surveillance part of it to be difficult to neutralise.

A Fairphone with /e/OS would do.

I don’t currently run /e/OS on mine - for now I’ve just disabled the Google app instead. But it’s a solid option, and last time I used it my banking apps and everything worked with no problem.

I guess we could compare it to ageing. People clearly get more fragile when they get older, and more likely to die from all causes. The common flu or falling in the stairs suddenly pose huge risks once you’re 90.

Smoking has a similar effect on you as ageing, except that it’s reversible.

Haha, yeah - the deonthology hating child in my example came across as a little more reasonable than I perhaps wanted it to.

That said, I’m kind of a fan, even though I agree it’s morally bankrupt. Most of my moral thinking revolves around making up excuses for Kant.

Sounds like just about the kind of argument a filthy literate like yourself would make.

I think a big part of the problem is that liberalism dates back to the 17th century, and western civilisation is kind of built on top of it.

As a result it could fit pretty much anywhere on the political spectrum. I consider myself pretty leftist, but of course I’m a fucking liberal. I take issue with inheritance and I believe in taxing billionaires out of existence, but that’s completely consistent with liberalism. And so is disagreeing with me.

I guess a central thing about liberalism is refusing patriarchalism, which would explain why the stalinists and the trumpists alike get upset by it.

As a non-American with political science training, I think this is key to why I have found this particularly baffling.

It’s like if you were having a casual conversation about pretty much anything and some overgrown child suddenly jumps in and starts screaming you’re a filthy deontologist. Like, uhm, sure, but I’m not sure how that’s relevant, and I also somehow doubt you know what that word means.

I mean… yeah, probably. John Locke is influential as fuck.

I have seen people argue that they will never vote for Harris, because she’s just part of the same rotten establishment etc etc. Mostly from the same people who use liberal as a slur. They seem to be very loud around here.

I might be ignorant though. Have anyone established/respected in the circles around Sanders/the Squad used the term “liberal” in a similar sense? Or is it mostly by faceless folks online?

So when self-proclaimed leftists use as a slur it’s not even in relation to support for private property rights?

I guess, if you’re a proper communist, you could use liberal as a category of leftists who don’t want to abolish property rights. As for the far right crowd, it could be a slur for anyone who doesn’t want to abolish all other rights.

If a self-proclaimed “part of the Democratic coalition” is dismissing whatever arguments you make by weirdly comparing you to John Locke as a slur, chances are they are they are not, in fact, part of the Democratic coalition. The fact that they are borrowing their slurs from the conventional fascists should be telling enough.

They might even share employer.

Genuinely useful. I keep getting called a liberal online as a slur whenever I discuss politics, mostly by the accounts of people who could very well have been on a Russian payroll but are probably just deranged.

I was wondering what the fuck they were on about.