Well, much as I am reluctant to put on the jackboots, I suppose I'll have to do so when your prediction comes true. No hard feelings when we get to your place in line?

Or just order the assassination of Trump and anyone that supports him without trial, in the name of "national security". Immunity, official act, etc. See how fast the justices rescind their ruling.

Of course I am. But given the choice between creeping fascism and immediate fascism, which realistically is the only choice this election, I'll choose the one that still has options, however few, for at least a few more years, if only so other people have a chance to get out while they can or make preparations.

You do realize that if the USA goes to shit, the rest of the world will also go? Not because the USA went to shit, but because the shit-in-chief will be bound and determined to bring said shit to the rest of the world and cram it down y'all's throats while shaking hands with Putin and Kim? He already talked about withdrawing from NATO and telling Putin he has carte blanche to just roll over Europe, and don't be surprised if a few lobbyists in the military-industrial complex convince him that taking a second look at colonization of the Global South for their minerals might just be a good idea while he's at it.

Because DoD isn't concerned with the regular internet or unclassified machines as much as with the classified computers - those set up by Information Technician ratings and the Security Managers to handle SIPR and JWICS access. The Admirals, Generals, and O-6s are also often tech illiterate old men, and those just beneath that, and the E-7+ crowd, are often just as tech illiterate. Microsoft also has a lot of multi decade DoD contracts, which they get billions for. Microsoft can't sell the secure version because that just lets foreign adversaries reverse engineer all the possible vulnerabilities. Microsoft only cares about security as far as they get paid for it and can get away with. In the consumer market, that's pretty much zero concern - not profitable enough.

Really depends on your use case. Like @[email protected] said, casual users that use the OS as a browser and email client can use practically any distro. Users that do a bit more, like casual gaming on gold-rated Steam games, generally do fine with something like Pop!_OS or Linux Mint.

It's when you start going towards the more hardcore users, like really hardcore gamers that play obscure titles or have unsupported Windows-specific hardware, artists that need very specific unsupported programs for editing or recording, engineers who need to do CAD specifically in a Windows-specific proprietary software, or a tinkerer that's used to the Windows environment, that "become a sysadmin" starts being a reasonable complaint.

To be fair, the DOD uses a different version of Windows than you, me, or any average company, with a custom set of agreements with Microsoft, a bunch of debloating of Windows-specific apps and the addition of a bunch of military/government apps.

It's an always-on AI that sits directly on your device inside a built-in Neural Processing Unit, or NPU, which takes screenshots every 5 seconds and scans the screenshots for information - including passwords, banking information, and other forms of PII. It then stores all of that information completely unencrypted, in a format that has been proven almost immediately after the beta preview to be able to be exfiltrated within seconds, easily, by a very simple piece of malware. The company claims that all the information is only stored locally, and after the backlash, that the AI would be opt-in only, but we've seen what Microsoft does with their "promises" before.

Did you make sure that you opened the terminal inside the folder where your iso and txt files are, or at least navigated to that folder after opening the terminal? Basically, it'll say "file not found" if you run the CertUtil command while not "inside" the folder containing both the iso and the txt files. Same with running the gpg command.

Usually, if you just open cmd.exe by itself from the searchbar, you'll see something like this:

PS C:\Users\your_username>

If you instead opened the terminal inside the folder, you'll instead see this:

PS C:\Users\your_username\Downloads\ISO>

Or whichever folder your iso and txt files are located in.

CertUtil and gpg are pretty tunnel-visioned - they can only see stuff that's in the same folder as they're being run in, unless you give them specific directions to get to a different location. That's why it's easiest and best to have everything in a single folder and open the terminal "inside" that folder.

Again - all this verification stuff with the terminal is, in my opinion, optional as long as you downloaded from one of the mirrors on the website. But since you still want to do it, this is the easiest way to go about it.

All the directions are here: https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=291093

No problem, and again - if you experience any confusion during the process, just let me know! I also had to get help with installing Linux Mint myself when I first got started.

It should be fine. If you're truly worried, go here:

https://ftp.heanet.ie/mirrors/linuxmint.com/stable/

And click the version of Linux Mint you downloaded - it's probably 21.3 - and then download both sha256sum.txt and sha256sum.txt.gpg by right-clicking -> "save link as..." to download the files themselves.

After that, verify the iso you had in your downloads folder by following the instructions here:

https://linuxmint-installation-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/verify.html

Again, as long as you downloaded from one of the mirrors linked on the Linux Mint download page, you should be absolutely fine. This step is a just-in-case, for your personal ease of mind. It will, however, need you to open cmd.exe and copy the code inside the green boxes into the terminal and press Enter. There's a pictoral guide if you're doing the verification on Windows still, right here:

https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=291093

Let me know if you get stuck!

But should the CSAM post remain visible on Lemmy? Should the poster remain free to post more CSAM? Remember, you advocated for an "unmoderated free speech absolutism platform".