Thinking on switching to linux

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ethical, pro-human rights (no getting big checks from US army), etc… I find it concerning.

Why do you find it concerning? the software is still open source, and it's not like they're benefitting from user-count. Redhat makes its money selling support, if you don't like their business model, simply don't pay them for support, and you get all the benefits and none of the ethical qualms.

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Eehhhh… OP didn’t give any details. Maybe they want an IDE, maybe they think that pyCharm is needed in order to use Python.

I have no idea which they meant, but people make assumptions.

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I heard Amog OS is goos

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"Why do you find it concerning...?" Because with just increasing the user base, greatly benefits this corporation, even though we don't give a penny for using Fedora. This is why Google flooded schools with "free" Android netbooks and why Microsoft winks at hundreds of millions of pirated Windows... a larger customer base benefits you by suffocating the competition... this applies to both open or closed software. Red Hat is not just a corporation after money, I am 100% fine with that, it is just one that goes after military contracts therefore lobbies for military causes as a good PR with its buyer. IBM does the same... and Amazon, HP, etc. Not all American companies are like that, not at all, but these are. Then is the problem how the US, more and more, is relying in sanctions to hurt foreign entities and peoples... this can be not only by forbidding the export of software but also altering its content.

Open software is great and a reassurance that no altering can go unnoticed but let's be realistic, when is the last time some entity, let alone non-American) audited a entire package of Fedora, let alone every single version of it, or smaller software. Debian is a US based but highly global collaborative distro so malice is far harder to introduce and gone unnoticed. Mint is based on Ireland so hardly with an militaristic goal, either by maintainers, financiers or country. My current OpenSUSE is far more susceptible to tampering than Mint, but it still cannot reach the knees of Fedora on susceptibility.
We should look at Android and Chrome... It is free, opensource, but the fact that Google de-facto controls it, uses it to dominate the landscape, first by suffocating competition and then, to steer where it wants the technology to go to. Therefore that it is opensource is great, we can check the code once in a while,

I am one of the very few that recognize Fedora is ahead of Ubuntu deviates yet I think we should steer clear from it. To newcomers, I tell them the reality; in my opinion Fedora is the marginally the best linux distro, now, if ethics (and a little bit privacy) is one of the motives to move away from Windows, you should consider distros not so heavily relying on the US and Mint usually comes first in my mind for them. We don't want to get to the point that Fedora is so vastly superior to all the rest of Linux distros, that will be the only game in town... like we did by solely go after Android (I really miss what my Nokia N9's Meego could have become!)

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well said, but i wonder how much it will matter in the future considering that the kernel group itself has so willingly kowtowed to american hegemony in its recent expulsion of russian developers from the kernel maintainers group to align itself with american export controls.

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“Why do you find it concerning…?” Because with just increasing the user base, greatly benefits this corporation, even though we don’t give a penny for using Fedora. This is why Google flooded schools with “free” Android netbooks and why Microsoft winks at hundreds of millions of pirated Windows… a larger customer base benefits you by suffocating the competition…

This would make sense if redhat had partnerships with hardware vendors and was locking down systems. They've never done that and there's no evidence of a plan to. Furthermore, suffocating the competition when the competition is closed source platforms like what google is doing and microsoft is a good thing. Competition isn't inherently good, competition is good when it does good things. In the case of completely FOSS from the ground up software, there's no benefit to competition, it just means duplication of massive amounts of effort. If fedora started doing something shitty, there is no doubt that it would INSTANTLY be forked by hundreds of users to remove that, the same can't be said for windows or chromeos (yes you can technically fork chromeos but they have the software vendor locked on the hardware).

this applies to both open or closed software.

It could, but it doesn't when the software isn't vendor locked and is fully open source.

Red Hat is not just a corporation after money, I am 100% fine with that, it is just one that goes after military contracts therefore lobbies for military causes as a good PR with its buyer.

Again, as a user, how does this matter? Do you not think the military should run FOSS software? If you're anti-military it's not like proprietary software won't work there. I'd rather have the military running foss software than proprietary software personally. Somebody was going to do it anyway, what does it matter?

IBM does the same… and Amazon, HP, etc. Not all American companies are like that, not at all, but these are. Then is the problem how the US, more and more, is relying in sanctions to hurt foreign entities and peoples… this can be not only by forbidding the export of software but also altering its content.

Yes, the US is evil, but I don't see what that has to do with their military running libre software.

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I use LACT. It's very easy to use and works well.

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To be clear while that is true there are games that won't work at all on Linux, because of anticheat.

And sometimes you need to read protondb for tweaks so that your games run on Linux.

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Remmina is nice to manage remote access, see https://remmina.org/

I heard negative criticism of rustdesk in terms of security, can anyone confirm or refute this?

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Yes, and in fact, the complete jetbrains toolbox works fine on Linux. Setup is commonly done by simply unzipping an archive.

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Just here to recommend Zorin OS, in case Mint doesn't work out.

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I appreciate the fact that you went through your reasoning in such detail. Most of the time people are just like "use xxxx" with nothing more and comments like that are pretty worthless for someone with little familiarity with Linux.

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I have a friend facing some issues with his RX7700 on Endeavour + KDE.

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I feel that I am being misinterpreted here. Of course FOSS if infinitely preferable to most close source, even if FOSS was created by the devil itself! And I am neutral US army branches using FOSS or not, that is not a problem for us civilians per se; the US army just using FOSS when they have unlimited budget and have home-brewed closed sources available and still choose Linux just proves that FOSS is superior! Now, that Red Hat depends heavily on US government contracts (mostly US armed forces) should be a red flag for any person concerning about ethics (again, I say ethics and a little bit privacy concerns), not technological, at least no in the short term. However, in the long term, it is bad even technologically, since the advantage will be so vastly superior than most would be not be able to compete (or even fork it easily). Huawei, for instance, is the only with the tens of billions $ and human capital enough being able to fork Android, but even still, it is proven difficult for them... now imagine a country like Brazil, Mexico or South Africa, what is the chances they can fork it properly and continue with the same level of development... Zero. That is why, the rest of the world should favor early on Linux distros that are less prone to be compromised, while they still at par with the competition, before they become the only technologically and logistical option in town, both in market share and resources. It is just a principle, of course, I tell my audience that they can use Fedora and I understand it, it is technologically a bit better than Mint, yet not quite not as an ethical choice, nor good for the technology ecosystem in the long run either.
Also there is the fact that, favoring the platform that Red Hat, having a chunk of revenues coming from the US army, makes then more dependent of these contracts, and even secretly lobbing for its master. This reminds me of Mozilla... all these years taking hundreds of millions from Google was good for us, Firefox lovers, but co-created a unhealthy relationship that stiffed real competition to Chrome and, worse yet, suffocated any third competition to even try it... and here we are, an unhealthy browser landscape dominated by two trillion dollar corporations and practically impossible to compete against.

BTW, I am not anti-military, nor anti-US (I live in the US and most people and business are good hearten here). I am just anti any military going around and deliberately killing mostly civilians abroad and even cannibalizing on other priorities to do so (The US' foreign policy also deliberately targets civilians abroad with its policies). Switzerland has a relatively strong army but that is clearly defensive, (not that Swiss people are that nice, being landlocked and surrounded by larger countries makes one pragmatic, but still, that it is the aim.)

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Tailscale?

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Don't really use it for that, use it for side loading onto my iOS device

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Amd GPU and a quest one seam to be in the clear, so I'll look into it

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should be a red flag for any person concerning about ethics

I agree that it's a red flag... but in this case, I don't think that red flag really amounts to something, just because something is a bad sign doesn't mean it actually matters on proper analysis.

However, in the long term, it is bad even technologically, since the advantage will be so vastly superior than most would be not be able to compete (or even fork it easily).

It will always be incredibly easy to fork because they have to follow the GPL.

Huawei, for instance, is the only with the tens of billions $ and human capital enough being able to fork Android, but even still, it is proven difficult for them…

Forking android is extremely easy, the part of android that they're unable to fork is the google play store... which is proprietary. Redhat has no equivalent and if they ever made one, they'd instantly be abandoned because the whole point of their business model is being FOSS.

now imagine a country like Brazil, Mexico or South Africa, what is the chances they can fork it properly and continue with the same level of development… Zero

Literally anyone in their basement can do it, tbh, i don't know why you think this is difficult, android is a terrible example for this since it is mostly proprietary, sure the OS itself isn't, but google play services are the hard part, again.

That is why, the rest of the world should favor early on Linux distros that are less prone to be compromised, while they still at par with the competition, before they become the only technologically and logistical option in town, both in market share and resources

No, that's why we should favor the GPL to the MIT license, and FOSS to proprietary software.

Also there is the fact that, favoring the platform that Red Hat, having a chunk of revenues coming from the US army, makes then more dependent of these contracts, and even secretly lobbing for its master.

Except in this case their advantage is their free open source nature, which is literally the only reason the government has contracts with them.

This reminds me of Mozilla… all these years taking hundreds of millions from Google was good for us, Firefox lovers, but co-created a unhealthy relationship that stiffed real competition to Chrome and, worse yet, suffocated any third competition to even try it… and here we are, an unhealthy browser landscape dominated by two trillion dollar corporations and practically impossible to compete against.

we're purely better off for it. librewolf exists, servo is picking up funding if you don't like librewolf for some reason. The only reason firefox exists as a competitor is because of this antitrust situation, if we didn't use firefox because we were concerned about this, we'd have literally nothing. It's also a counter-example to this idea you have that forking is difficult... librewolf happened and it was easy.

BTW, I am not anti-military, nor anti-US (I live in the US and most people and business are good hearten here). I am just anti any military going around and deliberately killing mostly civilians abroad and even cannibalizing on other priorities to do so (The US’ foreign policy also deliberately targets civilians abroad with its policies). Switzerland has a relatively strong army but that is clearly defensive, (not that Swiss people are that nice, being landlocked and surrounded by larger countries makes one pragmatic, but still, that it is the aim.)

I'm openly anti-military and anti-US, but I don't think you've thought these arguments fully through.

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So true eldavi! The "Russian kernel maintainers" event was a big red flag for me. I know Linux had no choice to expel them due to the law, but the fact that Linus Torvalds did not thank them for the job done (if he kept them till then , Torvalds clearly has see their contributions as beneficial), and Torvalds did not try to reassure the audience that hardly any code is posted unsupervised in a open source... that was the main scandal for me, far more than the ban. I had known that Torvalds was a rude person, many maintainers are and I am ok with that, but that event showed me that not only easily folds to government requests, but that also he believes it is ok to do these things against people you don't like...

In his own words; "please use whatever mush you call brains. I'm Finnish". I don't think he referred to the Finland that thrived the most in its history during the period of maintaining a strong military culture yet NEUTRAL (1948-2023) and away from NATO, but he deeply meant the Finland that sided with Germany in the early 40s in order to stick-it to Moscow. Would he stop at firing developers or would be willing to do more for the cause? I bet many wonder.

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Thank you, feel free to DM if you want more info on any distros or have any questions. I could go on for ages.

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Thinking on switching to linux