Well, the kernel is not “just a program” in that it is not like the other programs on your system. If it was, you would “just” run it in your shell. The kernel cannot run this way of course because it is not a user mode program.

That said, if course the kernel is a program in the sense that it is a set of machine instructions that make the hardware do what you want.

And the kernel is designed to talk to hardware and other programs—to be the bridge between the two. It is not something an end-user interacts with directly.

I think it is a smart play.

They are getting lots of press in the places where the people that care go.

On their website, they focus on the benefits of their platform for customers. From that perspective, the new COSMIC is just a refinement on what they were shipping before.

And this is just the beginning. COSMIC itself is still fairly basic. And the “new” Pop!OS is based on an LTS base that is already 2 years old. None of that is a problem but it is not a hand they want to overplay.

They may actually make a bigger deal about the benefits when 26.04 ships. Things will be a bit more “industry leading” by then.

Individual business owners are free to pursue their own interests.

But so are consumers.

If a Canadian brand sells itself to the US, Canadians should abandon it. If that keeps happening, US companies will stop poaching Canadian companies.

If we had started this process sooner, HBC would still be in business.

I call him Mayor Trump

If you do not want your distro to force changes down your throat like Microsoft, maybe avoid Ubuntu.

“Stability” on Linux means two things. “Stable” distros like Debian or RHEL change their software infrequently. This is indeed stable. However, you will likely be unhappy with the old software and want to install newer stuff. Many of the ways this is done will cause actual instability (bugs and crashes). Also, old software may be missing features or hardware support. If you are a gamer for example, this could be a big deal—especially if you use NVIDIA.

Things are a bit better than they used to be with tech like Distrobox and Flatpak.

The frequently updated distros can actually be “more stable” for the same reasons as above. However, every once in a while some package is going to have a bug that may hit you before it is found. Arch or EOS are examples of such distros. They have massive software repositories that probably contain everything you will ever need. If you use one of these, check out the AUR (user contributed software repo).

Distros that fall in the middle, like Mint or Fedora, are what I would recommend for a new user. Compared to Windows, you will find them very tinker friendly and tweakable. Fedora is more Wayland ready (see below).

HDR is very, very new and is part of a change in core graphics tech from something called X11 to something called Wayland. From this point forward, Wayland is the better bet but, today, the quality of your experience is going to be very dependent of the “age of your software” issue above. For NVIDIA on Wayland, you want very up-to-date versions.

KDE Plasma is the most mature Wayland environment today, in my assessment. Others are coming along quickly. That does not yet help you now though.

Photoshop is going to be a problem for you. The most often recommended replacement for PS is GIMP. Unfortunately, GIMP has been on the verge of a major update for years. GIMP 3 has not shipped yet and most distros ship a far older version (2.10). Version 3 is a massive upgrade. However, you may still find it an unsatisfactory PS replacement. Some people use Photopea online.

Gaming on Linux works really well now. However, multi-player anti-cheat systems are Windows kernel only and so these games are going to be a problem. So, your experience will depend on what you play.

The other stuff on your list will work well. Linux of course has a lot more to offer, especially if you are a dev.

Good luck!

I am with you on that last line. However, I remain more hopeful.

As long as Linus keeps merging code, Rust will eventually win. And by win I just mean that it will overcome the haters sufficiently to render their resistance futile.

There is only so much support infrastructure needed before large chunks of Rust can be committed ( at least on the driver side ). We are not so far away from that. Once real code starts to appear the “show me” will drive adoption elsewhere.

Take this case, it all started over a bit of code. The subsystem maintainer refuses to take it. But it does not require any changes to existing code. It just has to be merged.

Linus can take it directly. If he does that, the Rust folks can start to use it. The sub-system maintainer will lose in the end.

At some point, the battle will be lost by those trying to block Rust.

It all depends on Linus. We will see.

Perhaps the fact that Google is keen on Rust internally is part of what Ted Tso does not like about it ( he works for Google ).

Many outside the Rust community see the enthusiasm for Rust as overblown. Perhaps they think that pushing back on Rust to create a brake on this momentum is restoring the balance or something.

One thing I have noticed, when devs push back on inferior languages, they are able to cite all kinds of technical reasons for doing so. When they cannot come up with reasons, perhaps that is evidence that the language is pretty good.

Ted’s rant basically says “we have more code so we matter more and that will be true for a long time”. I agree with the assessment that this kind of blatant tribalism is “non-technical nonsense”.

Nobody is proposing rewriting the whole kernel in Rust.

In US politics today, the main strike against Hitler would be that he was not a naturally born a US citizen.

Had he been born in Kentucky, he may have been able to unseat Trump. He would almost certainly be the front-runner vs Biden or Harris.

Can”t we just re-write Electron in Rust and then use it for everything else? /s

Xwayland has already been mentioned but this is an important point that not everybody may be familiar with. Xwayland is an Xserver ( actually a specialized version of Xorg itself ) that runs on top of Wayland instead of talking directly to hardware.

If you are running Xwayland, you can run X clients ( x11 software dating back to 2003 for example ) and they will appear on your desktop.

There can obviously be specific considerations around advanced software but moving to Wayland does not mean losing access to software written to target X. Qt and GTK support Wayland and will run native. Applications using other toolkits may still be running over X. As a normal user, you may not even know which applications are still using X and which are not.

This is for regular applications. Moving to Wayland requires a Desktop Environment or Window Manager that supports Wayland. So, GNOME and KDE users are fine but Cinnamon or WindowMaker users would need to switch.

I am pretty sure they do different stuff with the males than they would with a woman.