https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish

OP has a reasonable concern, Microsoft has had a troubling past history, and embrace extend extinguish hasn’t gone away, just look at the office file standards shenanigans.

It’s certainly the case that the purchase of github is intended to create a platform that has network effects (making it hard to leave).

Microsoft has proven many times that their participation in FOSS tends to come with a catch or an intent to subvert.

Yes Mint is a good choice for your migration. It has been put together in a way that makes it intuitive for a windows refugee. The menu layout has the “start” (mint) button bottom left with your apps in there.

The system apps are named obvious things like “software manager” and it has default apps installed to get you going.

Being derived from Ubuntu it is the best supported platform for commercial apps/games but with Ubuntu’s weird choices (snap etc) tidied up.

It’s the most recommended linux distro for beginners for a reason. It’s a solid reliable well thought out platform

scientists and researchers, is that they throw more money at it.

You seem to be using the present tense there rather than the past tense. Are you sure that’s still true. I was under the impression the Bibulous Bumbling Bill had slashed research budgets (among other things like medicaid) in order to fund billionaire tax cuts.

Not to mention the attempts to proscribe what can be researched that Harvard is currently litigating

I suspect the families of the dead civilians in Kyiv are even less happy

Sure, but the business case for a nuclear plant straight up doesnt stack up unless you’re weighing some parameter other than the best interests of the public. The facts on the costs and timelines are sitting right there.

Build out renewables - you get faster power on the grid (a couple of years vs a couple of decades) AND the power is cheaper. LOTS cheaper.

Which is exactly why this is a bad choice

And yet Hinkley C was approved in 2010 and is still not finished, current cost is at 3 times the orginal budget and ETA is now 2030 from originally 2023 (and may slip further).

What’s worse is they contract in a fixed price for the power generated which is way higher than renewables can generate it for. So we’re paying more for our electricity.

China is indeed our largest trading partner but the Australian approach is a bit more nuanced. Previous experience has taught that China will try to control if they perceive weakness. We had a trade “dispute” (deliberate chinese sanctions) because they objected to Oz politicians discussing the source of covid. We diversified. But we didnt roll over.

There is a current conflict between the fact we have heavily aligned with the US post WW2 and them going fascist while the majority of our markets are in Asia.

We cannot simply kowtow to China, it straight up doesnt work and isnt respected. But we can no longer rely on the US as an ally and need to strengthen our ties locally.

I’m hopeful that Japanese & Korean defence overtures with Europe, and European ties with Canada & UK will draw together a “free world” defence alliance against the fascists and dictators.

Here’s hoping its only a cold war.

I’m saying the Marshalls are this body, they should be reassigned directly to the judiciary.

Which involves asking the oppressing person/organisation to hand over the capability to resist them.

“Please Mr Mugger, give me your gun, then you can’t rob me”

How exactly do you think that request is going to go ?

Arthur did suggest he’d provide an alternate contact point but not sure what that is

Depends on your settings. Firefox has a setting for delete cookies on exit. It is not on by default though

Ok we’re talking at cross purposes.

Yes, mullvad has a noble repo, it doesnt have a xia repo (which is the mint equivalent version name)

Attempting to add the mullvad repo using the old ubuntu instructions failed because noble =/= xia

Yes you can work around that but its not beginner level.

Op asked if Flatpaks was the answer whivh imho it isnt, the best answer is downloading the .deb

Really sorry, it’s too long ago to remember the exact error,

but IIRC

when you followed the ubuntu instructions for adding the repository it would kick an error because the command included a reference to noble and mint os name is xia so the contents of the osrelease when checked didnt match and it threw an error.

Could be wrong, I didnt document it.

The work around was to edit the commands.

All a moot point now as

a) the instructions now on the mullvad site don’t reference noble and

b) mullvad now appears to be in the mint store (which is how you should always install if possible

Not correct, only true if you’ve manually added the repo

Further to this, mullvad vpn and browser are now in the Mint store.

Download and install from there

EDIT

Apols, they’re not, I checked on the machine I had faffed around with to get the mullvad repo working. Please ignore

It’s reasonable advice. Mullvad is literally the only time I’ve found the ubuntu instructions to not work on mint

Where does mullvad say it’s not meant to be used on Mint ? I literally have it running on 5 mint devices.

Can’t see that on their website at a quick search

Saying it is not supported is not the same as not meant to be used

In fact to the contrary this references install for mint

https://mullvad.net/en/help/install-mullvad-app-linux

Got to the section that says

“Download and install the app”

For a command line explanation

Honestly though just download the .deb and double click on it out of the folder to get debi to install. It’s all gui and easy

Doesn’t always work - for example the mullvad browser won’t install on mint with the ubuntu instructions as OS version gets reported as Xia not noble (if I’m recalling the issue correctly it was 6-9 months ago)

Yes you can amend the commands to get it to work but it’s definitely not beginner level, I had to faff around for an hour or so before I worked it out

For mullvad vpn the client will tell you when there’s an update available by a very obvious flag in the app that you click on to download it then click/double click on the file out of the downloads to get debi to install it.

To answer the broader question, where ever possible install apps via software manager, that way they are updated with apt / update manager.

I would suggest using flatpacks sparingly as they are disk hogs.

Video is posted in the thread, and yes that’s a model 3 about to be crushed by a sherman tank.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lw4ZjhOukwU

Good lord