I recognize many of the deficiencies of Gnome but on balance I still like using it.

I never migrated from Windows or Mac desktop. I got into Linux before WIndows 95 came out and although I had used Mac and Amiga desktops I never owned one myself. I have used tiling wms and plain wms with no desktop environment and I can find my way around on Windows 11 or Mac but I don’t like either as much as Gnome. KDE generally has a better foundation thanks largely to qt but I never enjoyed using KDE. Not surprised it is very popular with the new influx of Windows refugees. To me KDE always had a slightly dated Windows look and feel to it. It is still a very solid choice ofcourse.

Gnome hate became fashionable when they moved forward from Gnome 2 and some people never shut up about it. We get it. Your favorite band aren’t teenagers anymore and decided to make an album you don’t like. it is ancient history. Just use something else guys. Plasma is pretty damn good so use it. Whats the point of a free OS if you can’t accept people want the freedom to develop and enjoy like different computing experiences.

What is socialist to Linus is libertarian to Eric Raymond. In huge collaborative communities people need to learn to get along and be tolerant but if they can’t handle that they also have the freedom to fork so there is room for everyone to find their own space.

For people with experience with any mobile 12th gen intel and the framework 13 AMD, can you quantify what you think the upgrade is worth or would it be better to wait for a refresh to the “ai” series if that ever happens.

I look at the price for board/ram/wifi upgrade and struggle to justify even though I expect the amd cpu to be cooler/quieter and have much better iGPU. I know it should easily outperform the steam deck in raw performance so with some scaling it should be reasonable for some light casual gaming but I don’t have any experience with amd outside of desktop cpus and dedicated graphics. Every time I consider an upgrade it makes more sense to buy desktop upgrades and cope with the intel system for a few more years. I don’t have a good use for the intel mainboard as it doesn’t have much expansion, multiple ssd, pcie etc.

Most mobile/laptop devices should be encrypted by default. They are too prone to loss or theft. Even that isn’t sufficient with border crossings where you are probably better off wiping them or leaving them behind.

My desktop has no valuable data like crypto, sits in a locked and occupied house in a small rural community with relatively low crime (public healthcare, social security, aging population). I have no personal experience of property theft in over half a decade.

I encrypt secrets with a hardware key. They are only accessed as needed. This is a much more appropriate solution than whole disk encryptiom for my circumstances. Encrypting Linux packages and steam libraries doesn’t offer any practical benefit and unlocking my filesystem at login would not protect from network exfiltration which is a more realistic risk. It adds overhead.and another point of failure for no real benefit.

I isn’t even a Linux vs Windows thing but a competent at your job vs don’t know what the fuck you are doing thing. Critical systems are immutable and isolated or as close as reasonably possible. They don’t do live updates of third party software and certainly not software that is running privileged and can crash the operating system.

I couldn’t face working in corporate IT with this sort of bullshit going on.