Is it really open source if it depends on proprietary service?

You might still have bluetooth to fix…

TIL indeed.

You’re saying it like they have a choice.

Besides, stuff like this should not be constrained by the boundaries of nationalities.

Why don’t you tell us your background & context, the ones that make you ask this question?

They would never!

Perhaps if you’re just trying out and experimenting, you shouldn’t use your main system. Try it in a VM, or even better, a spare computer. Then whatever stuff that you like, you trickle down to your main system.

In the case of DEs, I don’t like having multiple ones in my system, but only because I like my systen lean. So if I want to try out a DE, I’d just set it up on a test system, usually from scratch.

So far, I’m liking KDE the most, but for something more lightweight, I’d go with XFCE or MATE.

To answer your original question: Theoretically, it could affect your security as each piece of software could have vulnerabilities. In practice, however, it’s negligible, and if there’s anything major, it would usually get addressed quickly.

Last but not least: When you’re just starting out, you wouldn’t want to be focusing too much on security. Following the general guidelines should suffice for most case. Just focus first on getting all the functionalities you need. Security usually means restricting access, including to yourself, that means doing it too much could make things not function properly. Securing things prematurely (i.e. before you get things working) could only frustrate you, speaking from experience.

I’m definitely all for Ukraine winning, but this is bullshit, basically the red scare all over again (but for tech).

Either that, or face the mother’s wrath

One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

You’re saying that, and yet even Leah Rowe is sick of that.

Also, try not to take my words out of context. We’re talking specifically about the project mentioned in the article. Tell me, what value has canoeboot and GNU boot provides?

Coming from a (pragmatic) fan of GNU projects.

They’re a bunch of idealists that are detached from reality. Kinda reminds me of myself back when I was still in college.

As a coreboot user, I’m laughing as well.

To me, this highlights the fallacy (and arguably hypocricy) of their thesis.

Proprietary products.

I am a big fan of free & open source, and I believe as much as possible should be open source, especially the essential ones, but at the same time, people need to get paid.

Sounds like a hella inefficient 2.0L.

Don’t we love these organic interaction?

Network printer will change your life for the better.

You seem to be comparing a distro release to a new game release. It’s not. A distro is not always exciting because their top priority is having a working system. This means dealing with all the boring stuff.

It feels like there’s a shortage of meaningful innovation

You can look at this in another way: Linux distros are getting mature

are these distributions doing anything beyond repackaging the latest software?

You’re saying it like packaging the latest software is a trivial task.

typically featuring little more than a newer kernel, a desktop environment upgrade, and the latest versions of popular applications

If you don’t think these are meaningful to you, I don’t know what is.

Try phoronix.com if you want a more cutting edge reporting. They’re quite opinionated, but they’re usually on point about the exciting stuff.