A few things (disclaimer, I‘m both a Linux and mac user. Linux on my gaming machine, mac on my work machines):

• Privacy is a big factor. Microsofts track record is bad, even among non FOSS companies.

• Bloatware and Ads. Microsofts insistence on pushing OneDrive, Edge, 365 and bing are annoying to say the least. Why do they think I’m going to change my mind about that after a minor update?

• The UX is less than stellar. Why does the OS have 4 different UI styles for different programs that sometimes even do almost the same thing but not entirely, so you’ll have to use both versions?

• It’s almost impossible for me to keep my desktop tidy short of not using it. I’m dependent on macOS stack feature. On Linux I never had enough random files for it to be a problem.

In short, Windows just annoys me. While Linux and macOS go out of my way and let me just do my stuff, Windows just constantly pulling my attention away from what I advertised want to do and that was even when I was using my PC solely as a gaming machine.

Edit: formatting

Of course. Silly me. I‘m not an native speaker, so excuse my mistake.

So my instinct was right but my judgement was not.

No, “an” is correct, since the next word begins with a vocal sound.

Although it would be funny if that’s just a troll.

You got it the wrong way round. It’s awful because it is the most popular os. If you look back at Windows XP or 7, they were clean, consistent and a pleasure to use. Everybody had XP, then 7 and by then it was too late and everybody was used to it and Microsoft can do whatever they want now and people will just take it because they’ve always used Windows. No need to put in effort.

The regular chats are encrypted though, just with an (encrypted) server in the middle. Telegram also claims in their FAQ, that no one singular person has the power to decrypt and the keys are stored such that no singular government could force them to give up any data.

How far that is true is a different question though.

What?

Does anyone know why there are barely any WebKit based browsers? WebKit is open source and at least Safari works really well. Is it hard to work with? Do people just hate Apple that much? Is there some limitation?

I do, generally. But there have been situations where I couldn’t. And most of my friends that are using my server don’t. Dunno why.

The problem is, most user don’t want to pay. And every time mozilla tries to monetise differently they get community backlash…

Technically blink is based WebKit but yes. However, they were forked 23 and 11 years ago respectively, so it’s safe to assume they evolved into their own thing. But they probably do still share code, yes.

My Jellyfin server does and on Firefox it needs to transcode to h.264

Yea, but Webkit was forked from KHTML 23 years ago and Blink was forked from WebKit 11 years ago. In the mean time they all definitely evolved to become their own thing, even though in the beginning they were the same.

Yes but: HEVC is the standard for UHD content for now, until AV1 gets much broader adoption. And judging from how long HEVC took to be as broadly available as h.264, it’ll still take a while for AV1 to be viable for most applications.

I suppose Mozilla is already doing that as best as they can.

They could, probably. My guess is, that it’s either a limitation of resources, the issue of licensing fees or Google‘s significant financial influence on Mozilla forcing them to make a worse browser than they potentially could. Similar to how Firefox does not support HDR (although, to my knowledge, there’s no licensing involved there).

The biggest problem most people have with Mozilla is said influence by Google, making them not truly independent.

Because there are only like 3 browser engines: Chrome’s Blink, Firefox’s Gecko and Apple‘s WebKit. And while they are all open source, KHTML, the last independent browser engine got discontinued last year and hasn’t been actively developed since 2016.

There’s need in the space for an unaffiliated engine. Google’s share is far too high for a healthy market (roughly 75%), WebKit never got big outside of Safari (although there are a few like Gnome Web, there’s no up to date WebKit based browser on Windows) and Gecko has its own problems (like lack of HEVC support).

So, in my book, this is exciting news. Sure it‘ll take a while to mature and it is up against software giants but it‘s something because Mozilla doesn’t seem to have a working strategy to fight against Google‘s monopoly and Apple doesn’t have to.

Not too long until Windows 10 joins the list and that’s gonna be a real nightmare because there are so many PCs still running Windows 10 that run perfectly fine but aren’t “capable” or running Windows 11. People won’t just throw away their PCs and they can’t upgrade to 11. Sure, some will try Linux but too many won’t and they’ll be easy targets.

I really hope you’re joking because that’s a security nightmare.

I think Mint is mostly for the “I have a PC that’s a few years old and want something easy and reliable to replace Windows with” crowd. Because it works great for that. It’s the perfect beginner distro.