I’ve spent uncomfortably long trying to figure out what “figma balls” means, or what the obvious answer is when I eventually ask “what’s figma”.

In this case they are clarifying that it isn’t just a handheld device OS, it is a full desktop OS.

Garuda is great. I tried Bazzite on my nvidia based laptop and had problems getting it to work well (to be fair to Bazzite, this was well over a year ago when Bazzite was very new on the scene - I have no idea if i’d have the same problems today). Replaced it with Garuda (which I had been running on my desktop) and it literally “just worked”. And, frankly, I’m a linux idiot. I basically just read the messages that pop up occasionally and do my best to do things like they say (for example, I try to remember to run updates before the system has to tell me “hey, it’s been a bit. Would be best if you would update me soon”).

Speaking of being an idiot… I don’t even know if I HAVE to download the “dragonized” version to get all the gaming bells and whistles just as easily, or if I can use their KDE plasma version that doesn’t have all the theming and still get the “gaming” tweaks? Since my system works, I don’t want to install a new version just to find out, but I feel like I could convince other people to try it more if they got the same functional experience without all the purple glowing stuff out of the box.

SSD died that had windows 10 on it. During the re-installation process I got fed up with onedrive and skype popping up every reboot despite being told not to start with windows multiple times. Attempt to disable, the next round of windows update brings them back. I didn’t even have the absolute basics up and running before I lost all patience for it. Downloaded several distros, setup like 10 different USB sticks to boot them all. Cycled through them for a bit poking around and testing out. Landed on Garuda Linux kinda by chance, but it has been great. It was so refreshing to have a computer feel like it’s mine again.

FuriLabs was looking promising, but the new version of the phone is a downgrade in a lot of categories, and the old phone is not available anymore. Disappointing at the moment, hopefully more hardware options in future from them.

Your username is a downright lie and you sound like you haven’t actually used windows since 7. Keep drinking the microsoft propaganda, you are clearly the target audience after all.

Is it bad that I automatically don’t take them seriously just based on their links to socials? Didn’t even go for a Bluesky (let alone anything federated) and going for twitter and instagram like it’s still 2019.

They are also working to similarly kill custom ROMs. Just recently the GrapheneOS team mentioned that Google is no longer making their hardware drivers Open Source, and so compatibility with new phones means reverse engineering their own drivers - which is a big reason that custom ROMs support such narrow hardware options already and very often come with limitations and/or features that just don’t work. At best, they figure out how to make it work, but it takes time and updates can lag significantly behind.

We have a lot of options on the software side for avoiding google (or android), but very limited options on hardware. We need open source mobile hardware support ASAP.

As far as I can tell, it’s just de-googled android… It is going to have the same eventual problems as any LineageOS, e/OS/, or GrapheneOS phone will have.

Unfortunately we need to come to terms with the fact that 1) Android is not Linux after all of the bastardizations Google has done to it and the control they maintain. 2) We need hardware mfrs on board for fully Open Source drivers for mobile hardware.

Basically all of the Linux phone options I’ve looked at have been disappointing. You’ve got people making open source OS like Sailfish or PostmarketOS or UbuntuTouch, but they only work for pretty narrow (and old) hardware and they don’t get 100% functionality on basically any of the hardware. FuriLabs was the first one I’d seen claiming you could use all of the features of the hardware, but even then it is using a bunch of (basically) compatibility layers to trick android apps into running, so I don’t even know if that will work after Google gets done with their plans.

Yea… I’m really disappointed with the timing of FuriLabs new phone which is mostly a downgrade over the previous one. I’ve been window shopping phones for a couple of months and am at a loss for what to do. Even spent some time considering a dumb flip phone that can work as a wifi-hotspot and use a small linux tablet or something for the more involved stuff, but couldn’t find a good tablet option that wasn’t huge (would still want it to fit in my pocket) or come with the same problems.

This is hugely disappointing. They launched a worse all around phone and are trying to market it like good news. I was seriously considering them for my next phone purchase, but if this is all they offer when the time comes, I will have to skip it… The only “upgrade” is 2 more GB of ram, but the screen is worse (slightly bigger, significantly worse resolution), camera is worse, no headphone jack, not IP68… They also mention that existing orders for the old version are either being “upgraded” to this new version, or refunded. So it sounds like the original FLX1 is dead in the water. Very sad news.

This is strictly my personal experience and is not meant to negate someone else’s experience.

I disagree, as a middle user myself, I’ve had much less problems since the switch to Linux. I don’t own a VR setup, so can’t speak to that, but I have used basically everything else you’ve mentioned since switching without issues. Older software seems to work better on Linux than windows 11 in my experience. The rare stumble I’ve had was easily remedied by searching forums and wikis.

Most windows problems I’ve had to search for solutions in the last several years led to either blind registry changes, following some useless wizard that rarely fixes the problem, or a nothing-burger circle where the OP ended up either giving up entirely or re-installing windows to avoid the problem. I’ve very much had better luck actually fixing a problem in Linux than just avoiding it.

Thank you both for the explanation, all makes sense now!

Can someone explain this like I’m an idiot? Is this good for me or bad for me?

Did they hold a moment of silence when that minnesota dem senator was killed? Honestly curious if there is even precedent for them doing it even for a politician.

I’m sure they don’t hold a moment of silence every time someone in the US dies of gun violence, since they would never be able to speak…

I figure first thing I am going to do with a new OS is change how it looks to my liking anyway. What’s underneath is pretty great imo - it was the only distro I tried that actually had working nvidia drivers for my laptop “out of the box”. I couldn’t even get it to play games with the bazzite image specifically for asus laptops with nvidia gpus. I was not smart enough to fix it.

True, GOS team has not quit, but we don’t know yet what the consequences will be. They have said hardware support going forward will take more time than it used to. We do not know how much time that will take. We don’t know what functionality might be lost in the process.

Just because GOS didn’t throw in the towel doesn’t mean that they won, or that the fight is even over. No one knows what roadblocks Google’s next steps will cause either.

Google has all but officially declared that they look at custom roms and anything other than Google’s official android to be akin to piracy and hacking (something similar to a mod-chip from the old playstation days). They are actively trying to start an arms race between their prevention tactics and the FOSS community’s way around those tactics (or win it before it starts), just like with adblockers.

I agree with your sentiment entirely. Hell, I do really like F360, but it isn’t enough for me to go back to using windows.

In most situations, especially ones typical users are going to run into, I’ve found the alternatives to be much easier for me to learn and use. I fucking love Krita for the image editing I need an image editor for. From my experience, 95%+ people would have a better time if they weren’t blindly sticking to proprietary software they think they “need”.

Graphene team already did a blog post about the lock down of AOSP and how it will significantly hinder their ability to support future hardware, since drivers was a huge part of what was moved closed source by google. Those open source drivers was the big driving force for why Graphene basically only supported Pixel phones. They made it significantly harder for people using AOSP derivatives currently to upgrade to a new phone when it is time.

Spoken like someone that’s never actually tried Linux. Enjoy your electron start menu, shill.