And yet people will just shrug it off and keep using windows. And Microsoft loves that.

Dear valve. Please never ever go public. We will happily keep giving you money while you keep yourself a private company

To be fair, if they are like the example (static silent ads) they would be the least intrusive ads that YouTube ever had. To the point that I don’t even mind them. All of YouTube ads should be like this, not annoying, silent, and easily ignored.

has a tendency to crap the bed a few minutes after startup

Tell me you are an nvidia user without telling me. Either that is hard to believe. I use KDE daily for more than 8-9 hours a day, sometimes my pc goes for a full week without geting turned off, multiple apps tabs and servers on, themes installed, widgets on the desktop, I am such an extremely heavy KDE user you have no idea. Still, zero crashes. Sometimes something goes a bit “wut” like moving a window around gliches a liiiiiiitle bit, but it instantly corrects itself and goes back to being stable. And I am on Plasma 6.0.3, funny enough has been more stable than Plasma 5.

Update your KDE or use a distro that has better KDE support. Some distros fck up KDE packages and get it unstable. Fedora KDE is rock solid for example. Nobara has been great too and its now KDE by default.

Slowly more and more distros are looking over to a KDE future. GNOME devs being so incredibly hard to work with and this feeling of a huge community that is KDE and with how polished Plasma 6 is becoming, many distros are finally looking to at least give Plasma a try as a default. GNOME is well polished but there are so many extremely important and urgently needed features that KDE already implemented that are not even being discussed for GNOME. Many distros are getting fed up with how slow GNOME is into advancing their desktop. They take 2 years to change a few buttons around. And now that Plasma 6 has a 6-month fixed release schedule, it finally aligns with what distros want.

First Valve shocked the corporate distro world by choosing the seemengly less stable KDE as their default for the Steam Deck, which proved to be an amazing choice after all. Then recently, Nobara Linux, one of the most used Fedora distros, also switched to KDE as the default. And now Fedora is discussing into switching the main distro too. Qt6 is also a really flexible and promising framework and developers seem to have more fun working with it than with GTK4.

Recent switchers from Windows also largely prefer KDE instead of the minimalist approach, macOS-like GNOME. And linux has been gaining a lot of popularity and market share recently, and I could bet that a lot of these new users are not on GNOME, at least not on vania GNOME.

A great example is KDE having hit a HUGE record of bug reporting and feedback submissions, which means that more people than ever are using KDE actively and actually trying to help the project somehow. KDE has also been having a huge presence in social networks like YouTube and TikTok (especially because of its fun and interesting features that make GNOME look plain and a bit boring, needless to say GNOME vanilla wont convince a Windows user to switch…) which might speed up its adoption too.

Its a huge deal. If X desktop is the default, it shows that the distro developers and maintainers usually test and optimize more and better for that specific DE so your experience with the default DE will always be more stable and polished than non-official ones. Extra GUI tools that the distro makes usually are also better tailored to the default distro. Like Manjaro and all of their locale, kernel and other packages that are integrated inside the KDE settings. Or popOS and all of their utilities being integrated into Cosmic. Etc etc. More money and dev time is invested into the default DE.

Meanwhile I CANNOT be productive in GNOME. There are hundreds of maybe thousands of KDE features that make IT and dev work so extremely easy. I could make a 50 page comment just listing them. I can start with how horrendously basic and generic the default gnome terminal is.

But then KDE also is in fact good for average ex-Windows users because it has stuff where people expect it to, has features that people expect too (cough minimize/maximize buttons cough) and well yea KDE is better for average users.

So KDE is better for IT users and developers, and is also better for average users. And since it supports vsync off, VRR and HDR it is also better for gaming.

So wait is KDE better for literally EVERYONE? 🤔

We need Linux computers in store shelves. If someone buys a Linux pc they will just use it and most people won’t even think about it. Look at chromebooks. People buy them and use them and probably don’t even know what chromeOS is. They just learned how to use that specific computer. It goes to Facebook and YouTube and that is all they need it to do.

Most people actually don’t even know you can change what OS came with the computer. They think Windows is part of the computer. So they happily accept the idea that Windows 11 needs a new computer. They will probably use windows 10 wayyyyyy past EOL until the hardware itself fails, and/or just buy a new computer with windows 11. Most don’t know Linux exists or that they can install it. They think they need a “linux computer”. And then searching “download linux” on google or going “linux.com” (like I’ve seen many people do) doesn’t help people very much to be honest…

Sadly most users don’t know Linux even exists, or don’t know how to install it or don’t even think about trying to. Many people legit don’t even know they can change what OS came with the computer. They think its “part of the computer” like an iPhone or iPad. They just accept their fate and buy a new PC. Or ignore the warnings and keep using windows 10 until the hardware itself fails.

1 - buy one of those refillable ink tank printers that are now actually common and not expensive;

2 - buy ink bottles at aliexpress for $10 4x200ml ink or around that;

3 - years of ink for a few bucks.

If you have a cartridge printer, search on aliexpress for refillable cartridges for your printer and do step 2 anyway (you can usually refill those easily with a seringe).

Don’t feed their greed.

Streisand effect is currently very active on this one. Thousands of news outlets, many extremely casual and geared towards average joes who never new emulation existed, are now all being told that “this thing called yuzu can play switch games for free”. Nintendo is shooting themselves in the foot. Even if Yuzu dies, it will get forked and people who never knew emulation existed, now do, and look for alternatives.

The problem with AVP is that it constantly feels extremely lonely. The fun part about VR is playing stuff together, games, being in the same room even if others are in different countries, have funny full size avatars, interact in a “vr-chat” kind of way. VR is supposed to be a fun version of our world. AVP is extremely serious, too “professional” focused, and especially b o r i n g. All you do on AVP is exactly the same that you would do by yourself with your current devices already. Just even more isolated from the world. And even the most enthusiastic Apple users eventually get this feeling when using AVP. While stuff like Quest 3, Valve Index, PSVR2 all might look “cheap” and “not polished” at first, while using them all you get is “wooow” factor and fun. AVP, yes its well crafted and polished, but it does basically nothing and feels lonely inside it.

The bigger the screen, the more you notice because it covers more of your field of view. I would say 240Hz is the sweet spot. You can definitely feel the improvement from lower rates, but rates above it start to be barely noticeable. However I am fine with 144-165Hz if I wanted to save money and still get a great experience. Bellow 120Hz is unusable for me. Once you go high refresh, you cannot go back, ever. 60Hz feels like a slideshow. For gaming 60 is fine, but for work use and scrolling around I can’t have 60. Yes people, high refresh rate is useful even outside of gaming.

Funny thing is, while gaming, even if my monitor and PC can do it, I rarely let my fps go above 120-140. I limit them in the game. PC gets much quieter, uses less power, heats up less and its smooth enough to enjoy a great gameplay. I will never understand people who get a 4090 and play with unlocked fps just to get 2000 fps on minecraft while their pc is screaming for air. Limit your fps at least to your Hz people, have some care for your hardware. I know you get less input lag but you are not Shroud, those less 0.000001ms of input lag will not make a difference.

To be fair, 60Hz to 75Hz is barely noticeable even by those who are used to notice these things. If you can’t tell the difference, it’s understandable.

Then, the bigger the screen, the more noticeable high refresh rate is, because it covers more of your field of vision. So in a small iPhone screen it’s not easy for everyone to notice (and then there is the fact that iPhones rarely go to 120Hz anyway which is an absolute mess by itself but that’s another topic, so your 15 Pro probably rarely goes above a noticeable Hz change anyway).

However, if you get a 144Hz or above, 24" and above monitor, you will IMMEDIATELY see the difference against your 60Hz monitor. Even moving the mouse feels more responsive and accurate. Makes targeting stuff with your mouse easier. Reading text while scrolling is possible also. It unlocks a new world, it’s not only for gaming. Casual and work use also benefit a lot from high refresh rates.

Valve seems to be the only company on this capitalist world that actually understands that company profits cannot and should not grow exponentially forever without eventually destroying itself. All other companies don’t know or want to stop the greed ad are constantly pushing for more profits to see until where they can push the greed and milking without losing “too much” costumers. They even weight the amount of costumers lost vs the extra profits to see if its viable to lose those costumers and still profit, like Netflix. Valve does not work like this. Valve grew to a size, and that size is giving them stable and steady profit. And they are holding that size, slowly growing more here and there but nothing big. The biggest thing they did in like 10 years was the Steam Deck and they will not update it with a Deck 2 anytime soon. Valve plays the very slow, but steady profits game. This is how you win as a company. You try to keep yourself on a balance between good profits and good public perspective.