Can I start with Gentoo or is that too easy?

I would say that security and privacy are also very important. That’s something you can’t get with Windows.

Congratulations! Next you might want to learn about the Free Software movement: https://youtu.be/Ag1AKIl_2GM

So, yeah, sell me on Linux, please.

Windows has spyware, so that should be enough reason to not use it for someone like you. You will have to spend some time to learn GNU/Linux, but for most office tasks it shouldn’t be difficult, especially if you are good with computers. Most popular distros already come with a PDF viewer and Libre Office, so it should be able to do almost everything you want out of the box. VLC player can play all common video types and is easy to install. Libre Office might have issues with some Word documents though, so you might need to look into that. A web browser (usually Firefox) and probably some email client will be preinstalled as well.

You might need to check if your printer and scanner will be supported out of the box or if extra drivers from the manufacturer are needed (then check if they are available on their website). I think printers will probably work fine out of the box, but scanners might require extra drivers (this depends on the model - there are models that don’t).

If you need more motivation, look into the Free Software movement: https://youtu.be/Ag1AKIl_2GM

GNOME also has an app that lets you do encrypted incremental backups very easily.

It is possible to be entertaining and ethical at the same time. Someone else will take their place.

I would venture that the majority of people see it as an investment of one sort or another. I think the insane market cap, and the devestating effect the recent crash had on its reputation and use, are evidence of that.

You are right, but it doesn’t matter what most people think. I mean we should educate them about it, but their opinion is irrelevant.

Most cryptos have fundamental problems that I don’t see being fixed, eg it’s deflationary properties, BTC’s wasteful PoW, ETH skirting/crossing the boundary of being a security, etc.

Etherum has already switched from proof of work algorithm to less wasteful proof of stake. So it seems that at least that problem can be solved.

This is like the one thing they are good for, and Monero is the best at it. This is an arguable point though, others may say that this is a negative due to the implications and governments have cracked down on privacy enhancing tools like Tornado Cash for this reason. I personally value privacy to an extent, but do not see the need in my life to use Monero. I certainly wouldn’t fault you for using it, though.

You should be able to buy any of the popular cryptocurrencies anonymously. They won’t make your payment history private like Monero does, but you will still be anonymous when paying.

I think adoption has stagnated. And look at El Salvador, they basically had to force crypto on the populace and they use their own proprietary wallet, nullifying privacy benefits. And again, it is treated as an investment by the government there who are buying BTC to speculate.

I don’t know exact stats, but it’s bigger than I expected before I started looking into it. There are a lot of crypto ATMs now in cities, which you can see at https://coinatmradar.com. There are also some stores and restaurants that accept crypto, especially in the US (https://coinmap.org/view). You can also find some online services on https://cryptwerk.com. El Salvador is certainly messed up. Bitcoin probably isn’t even a good choice, because of its big transaction fees. Other cryptocurrencies are faster, can handle more transactions and have smaller fees.

Yeh this is dependant on your country. Here in Australia every crypto transaction is a capital gains event 🙄

Damn, that’s crazy. So you can’t even buy something without paying an extra tax?

No problem, take your time :).

They were fine with Linus investing in companies and then reviewing their products or competing products and I don’t see that as a result of sloppiness. They haven’t even addressed it in their apology video.

Also moving too fast is not a valid excuse for misleading millions of people for years.

Linus is not the only one to blame. The people who work there could have done something to stop the unethical behavior or quit. But some of them stayed there for years and enabled Linus. I can’t look at those people and not think that they aren’t incompetent or corrupt.

What they did should be the standard. Serious reviewers should check on each others work and point out errors on regular basis. It’s the only way to stop corrupt/incompetent reviewers from misleading people.

But Steve didn’t contact Linus to give him time to prepare an explanation in which he would blame everyone else and say how sad he is! It’s just a poor $100M company, they are just humans and they make mistakes. :D

They have been misleading millions of people for years and getting away with it. I hope this company is done. There have to be consequences for this kind of behavior.

What Gamers Nexus did should be the standard. Serious reviewers should check on each others work and point out errors on regular basis. It’s the only way to get rid of corrupt channels like Linus Tech Tips and I suspect they were just one of many.

Even The Linux Foundation has a twitter

Because Linus Torvalds doesn’t care about the Free Software movement and user freedom. It’s why his kernel is still on GPL2.

He could actually still log in and use terminal (https://youtu.be/0506yDSgU7M?t=760). So couldn’t he have just reinstalled the desktop environment? :D

Hey, remember that time when Linus promoted a kickstarter scam? https://youtu.be/VHjmlQdzpW4

They have been misleading people for years with inaccurate test results and reviewing products when they have a conflict of interest.

Yeah, it was the worst video about GNU/Linux I’ve ever seen. The whole idea was stupid from the beginning: let’s be ignorant and try to use a new operating system we don’t know anything about, spend 5 minutes on research and definitely don’t ask anybody for help.

Linus’s issue was caused by some new bug in Pop OS, but he ignored the warning message and even typed “DO AS I SAY”! But of course the conclusion had to be that GNU/Linux is not ready yet. I’m pretty sure he could have just downloaded Steam from their website instead.

The most annoying part was the response from the community. Instead of criticizing his ignorance and incompetence, people were praising him for finding a bug 🤦.

And that’s versus decentralization in “currency” which provides me? Trustless? Stores of value? How can I meaningfully make use of any of it?

You don’t have to trust a bank or some company. Nobody can deny you access to your money or prevent you from using it. It’s not something you make use of, it’s just a property of cryptocurrency.

If the ledger forks off, it essentially creates a new coin.

So what? This is decided by the people who use the network, not by a central authority.

The standard way to obtain coin is now not through mining because mining is too resource intensive (by design) but through a centralized exchange anyway because you can’t trust random strangers on the Internet.

But using the currency still doesn’t require trust. You are wrong though, since there are decentralized exchanges too and they don’t require trust. I’ve already told about Bisq. Other ways of getting cryptocurrency are buying it from an ATM (done that) or accepting it as payment for your work (this is rare, but I’ve heard of it).

Seems like a meaningless buzzword that’s summarily explained as being advantageous to the people that made the original coin and nobody else.

It is not. You should read about it before making up a conspiracy theory.

There’s multiple problems with the way crypto bros like yourself talk about crypto but one of the problems is that you conflate a bunch of concepts around currency, markets, currency exchange, investments, payments, and ledgers simply because crypto technology is a giant, indecipherable mess that didn’t meaningfully distinguish between any of these concepts.

This is ridiculous. Cryptocurrency or any other technology is not an indecipherable mess. It’s nothing new and we know exactly how it works. You can read about it on the internet. There is no conspiracy to make it difficult to understand. I event sent you some links. I haven’t said anything about investments, so no idea how that’s relevant or what it has to do with this technology, since that’s not its purpose.

I have “basic” and even advanced knowledge about cryptocurrency. Monero isn’t even as private as you’re pretending, and Bitcoin (and most other coins) are not private at all.

I’ve never said that Bitcoin was private. I’ve said that it can be used anonymously unlike any other form of online payments (except other cryptocurrencies). Monero is probably the most private online payment option that exists.

Just a brief search will show you the multiple exploits that can compromise monero privacy, and while there are other coins that claim to solve those problems it doesn’t get you around the fact that every transaction is stored forever and that is a design requirement for these types of crypto coins.

There is nothing that can let you figure out someone’s transactions with 100% certainty. Governments could try this and they might be able to track some targeted individuals, but not everyone. This is better privacy than any other payment option provides. There is a whole video series about Monero’s security, but I haven’t watched it yet: https://youtu.be/WOyC6OB6ezA

So now we’ve pivoted again from mainstream usage to some hypothetical country where the government asks for every transaction you ever do… But also in which the citizens have unfettered Internet access, and it’s still not clear what you’d be doing on there that isn’t criminal.

We haven’t pivoted anything. I use cryptocurrency to increase my privacy online. But each country has different laws and there are countries with corrupt governments.

I also think there’s a way to make digital cash, but I highly doubt distributed ledgers are a good way to accomplish that. Seems like any good version of digital cash would be easily usable and exchangeable offline, easily verifiable without going back through the history of the planet first, and not carry with it a complete transactional history as a functional requirement.

I’m sure it would be easy to create something centralized. But if you want decentralized there might not be any other way. This video explains some of it: https://youtu.be/bBC-nXj3Ng4

Ironically enough scammers today already use things similar to the above as actual currency right now, they call them Amazon gift cards.

Yes. Unfortunately some of them make their victims buy cryptocurrency instead.

The “decentralized” bug has bitten you so good that you don’t see how an alternative, actually useful form of digital currency could be created with a central signing authority (or several). IMO “decentralized” is yet another “feature” that serves no meaningful purpose.

You could say the same about the Fediverse. In both cases it’s not true though. In cryptocurrency decentralization is there to eliminate the problem of trust. It’s a trust-less system, because it doesn’t rely on central authority. You accuse me of bias for no good reason. If there was another form of online payment that provided anonymity, I would use it. But there is no alternative right now. I would love to use GNU Taler, but it’s not used anywhere. You have made up your mind about cryptocurrency without having basic knowledge on the subject and you accuse me of bias.

I’d recommend buying drugs in person and in cash.

I don’t buy drugs, but people who buy them online use Monero. Thanks for the recommendation though.