They actually run a surprising amount of local software aside from the web browser. They come with the Play Store installed and run Android Apps natively. They’re basically what Android would be if it was made for 2-in-1 laptops.

Not to mention the Linux support. They are legit computers once you enable the Linux environment. I got by on that for a couple of years for my main computer… not what I’d recommend now, given Google being evil and all, but it’s doable.

Anyways, Apple is now offering a budget laptop that kicks the ass of any Chromebook at that price point, and thinkpads with good specs can always be had, so there’s no real need to get a Chromebook these days. Unless your kids’ school requires it…

Good riddance. I hate that so many communities moved from forums to using Discord. It’s such a ratty little pigeon hole for communications to go and get lost in forever. It’s a shitshow for anything other than instant, live messaging. And so many communities use it as their only real forum. The day that private equity and public investors liquidate the servers and sell off Discord’s IP after their future bankruptcy will be a very happy day.

I had to make a newsletter for work for a while, and the template I was given was in Publisher. It was a little bit of a pain sometimes but actually fun to use once you figured out its quirks. And it had some quirks- like, you know how you move an image 1mm in Word sometimes and the entire document gets lanky? Well, Publisher is like if they kinda fixed that but the regular word processing was actually the janky part. It’s a Microsoft office product through and through, and you can definitely tell.

And, like, what do you do on Linux about that key? Is there a way to just make it act as an additional Super key, or do anything at all without Logitech’s program?

Oh Gods, I learned the hard way to never roll back a package unless you really know what you’re doing. And I learned that lesson way back in 2013 or 2014, when I’d only been using Linux for a year or two full-time. Now I’m on a rolling distro and have everything as purely the latest version, and if I come across some weird thing that involves rolling back a package to an older version, I will simply not do that and will look for other solutions instead. Sometimes it’s as simple as creating a symlink so that when a program looks for libWhatever2.1.5 it gets quietly redirected to libWhatever2.6.0

While I do agree that their focus should absolutely be on the browser, I do actually really like that they offer a paid Wireguard-based VPN with endpoints in dozens of countries. I think that makes sense for them, given their mission and everything, and actually gives them a revenue source.

They still sold user data without being upfront about it until caught, and are still running a shady-ass business. They’re at the intersection of crypto, bigotry, and dishonesty.

Not using or advocating for Brave is pretty simple.