If you’ve found your way to the technology community on a federated lemmy instance, youre techy enough to take the blame for using chromium

You can also find secondhand thinkbooks for very reasonable prices.

I havent bought a brand new laptop in over a decade now, dont think ill be starting any time soon either.

You’re also on lemmy. You might be old, but you are also technically literate. Im not saying PM is bad, I used it myself for ages until I decided to set up my own domain for business reasons so moved to fastmail.

Its just for the type of oldies who use ISP provided mail dont like the change of leaving the ios default mail app to go to the protonmail app

Proton isnt great for oldies. You cant use default email apps and the like without a bridge, and last I checked they arent available for mobile or Chromebooks, which means they would have to use the first party app. Thats just another change thats not worth it for oldies who dont like change.

Also migrating away from protonmail is a nightmare. You cant when set a “forward all” rule.

I admire protons ethos, but the UX sucks.

An older family member of mine rang yesterday asking about what to do after they read the announcement.

I have been telling them for years to change to a proper provider but they weren’t interested. I told them this would eventually happen, but the change wasnt worth the hassle for them.

Now the change is forced and its just increased the stress.

Im hoping the prospect of only being a year for free then ad based means I can just get them onto fastmail or something that I can administer.

Im sure people do see these ads, and its definitely starting to go a bit far, but I cannot for the life of me figure out how. Ive never seen anything like this using multiple personal and work windows machines for ~10+ hours a day, every day.

Work makes sense, I believe its a couple of GPOs, but even at home when I boot a fresh image I tick like 3 boxes and just never see any ads.

The only situation I can think of is prebuilt machines and laptops with preloaded configurations that people dont bother to change, but even then im pretty sure 5 minutes in settings will sort it out.

I personally dont understand why mass adoption is a goal.

The “challenge” to bring users to Linux is simply making them want to use Linux. There are enough flavours and guides ranging from plug and play that anyone can use to build your own kernel and distro from scratch that anyone can find what they want in Linux… if they want it.

The truth is that for a not insignificant portion of computer users, the OS is a means to an end not a feature. Its “the computer”. A laptop that comes with windows 11 is a windows 11 machine.

If you want the average user to move to Linux, create an desktop environment with the option to look and behave like either windows or Mac, have a software compatibility layer for both that can run at the same time, buy a hardware company and include the distro as default and sell it to the masses at a loss to undercut all other options. Flood all consumer electronics stores with them.

Outside that, its not going to happen and I dont know why people want to make a competition out of it. Linux doesnt suit everyone and it doesnt have to. We see less GUIs as a good thing, id rather dev time from the solo/small dev teams go towards the functionality not making it look pretty. The majority of computer users dont agree with that though, and thats fine. I like being able to add/remove from my OS, most don’t and thats fine too. I like rolling updates, the uproar around windows updates with thousands of youtube videos dedicated to people stopping them indefinitely indicates many others dont. Our semi annual O365 update is currently rolling out at work, and people are freaking out that one of their outlook toolbars moved. Never mind its a 4 second fix to move it back, but can you imagine these people seeking out/installing/configuring/using a new desktop environment?

Its not an elitist thing. Id love more of my friends to use linux, but I cant make them want to use something. It either appeals to them or it doesnt. For most the appeal of a computer is the software it runs, and the OS is just a means for that.

Best practice in 2023 is a simple, sufficiently long but memorable passphrase. Excessive requirements mean users just create weak passwords with patterns.
[Capital letter]basic word(number){special character}

Enforcing password changes doesnt help either. It just creates further patterns. The vast majority of compromised credentials are used immediately or within a short time frame anyway. Changing the password 2 months later isnt going to help and passwords like July2023!, which are common, are weak to begin with.

A non expiring, long, easily remembered passphase like
forgetting-spaghetti-toad-box
Is much more secure than a short password with enforced complexity requirements.