Did any distro give concrete reasons for why they have actively chosen not to package it, or perhaps they just haven’t given it much thought yet?

This is not what I would consider a “political reason”. A political reason would be something like refusing to package it because of what political party Howard supports.

There is plenty of software you’ll find in these repositories that aren’t under the GPL. CMake uses BSD, the Apache web server uses the eponymous Apache license, LibreOffice and Firefox use MPL, Godot and Bitcoin Core use the MIT license, and I’m sure there are plenty of other software licenses that I haven’t thought of yet.

It’s not really like they were evil about it though. Google attracted customers through its huge (at the time) 1 GB email storage space, which at the time, was unbelievably generous and also impressive in that it was offered for free. Outlook (Hotmail at the time) also drew in customers by offering the service for free, anywhere in the world, without needing to sign up for Internet service. Remember, at the time, e-mail was a service that was bundled with your Internet service provider.

Into the mid-2000s and 2010s, the way that Gmail and Outlook kept customers was through bundle deals for enterprise customers and improvements to their webmail offerings. Gmail had (and arguably, still has) one of the best webmail clients available anywhere. Outlook was not far behind, and it was also usually bundled with enterprise Microsoft Office subscriptions, so most companies just decided, “eh, why not”. The price (free) and simplicity is difficult to beat. It was at that point that Microsoft Outlook (the mail client, not the e-mail service) was the “gold standard” for desktop mail clients, at least according to middle-aged office workers who barely knew anything about e-mail to begin with. Today, the G-Suite, as it is called, is one of the most popular enterprise software suites, perhaps second only to Microsoft Office. Most people learned how to use e-mail and the Internet in the 2000s and 2010s through school or work.

You have to compare the offerings of Google and Microsoft with their competitors. AOL mail was popular but the Internet service provided by the same company was not. When people quit AOL Internet service, many switched e-mail providers as well, thinking that if they did not maintain their AOL subscription, they would lose access to their mailbox as well.

Google and Microsoft didn’t “kill” the decentralised e-mail of yesteryear. They beat it fair and square by offering a superior product. If you’re trying to pick an e-mail service today, Gmail and Outlook are still by far the best options in terms of ease of use, free storage, and the quality of their webmail clients. I would even go so far as to say that the Gmail web client was so good that it single-handedly killed the desktop mail client for casual users. I think that today, there are really only three legitimate players left if you’re a rational consumer who is self-interested in picking the best e-mail service for yourself: Proton Mail if you care a lot about privacy, and Gmail or Outlook if you don’t.

Okay bud. Have a biscuit 🍪

What are the implications of this?

For what it’s worth, English Wikipedia editors reached a consensus to deprecate (ban) it for unrealiability last year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_424#RFC:_The_Cradle

The following notes are present:

The Cradle is an online magazine focusing on West Asia/Middle East-related topics. It was deprecated in the 2024 RfC due to a history of publishing conspiracy theories and wide referencing of other deprecated sources while doing so. Editors consider The Cradle to have a poor reputation for fact-checking.

I have a script running that uses the Namecheap API to automatically get wildcard certs from Let’s Encrypt. I didn’t pay a dime for this. Did something change?

Nothing wrong with Boost Mobile, or any other discount telecom provider either. It’s not like the phone signals taste different lmao

It’s just a hallmark of “I bought the cheapest domain name TLD available”.

That’s not necessarily bad if all you need is something to get the job done, but there is a stereotype associated with it.

If you really wanted to, couldn’t you just compile it yourself?

TIL the version numbering scheme changed. LibreOffice 24 is the next major version after LibreOffice 7.

I’m going to toss in another recommendation for Linux Mint. The interface is very similar to classic Windows and it has a large user base so it shouldn’t be hard to find instructions online if you get stuck. Software-wise, Linux Mint 21.3 is entirely compatible with Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. Use the default Cinnamon version.

Coming from Windows, the only other very important non-obvious thing is that you should look for software on the app store application first instead of downloading packages from the Internet. Unlike the Microsoft Store, Linux app stores are often connected to a variety of software sources, and they will also update your software to the latest versions automatically whenever you download system updates. Almost all of the software you mentioned can be found in the app store. It’s very convenient!

🥴

Yes, because it’s easier to take care of octogenarians than people who might actually put up a fight to having their laptop batteries replaced with a pipe bomb.

SystemD will consume the entirety of Linux, bit by bit.

• In 2032, SystemD announces they’re going to be introducing a new way to manage software on Linux
• In 2035, SystemD will announce they’re making a display system to replace the ageing Wayland
• In 2038, the SystemD team announces they’re making their own desktop environment
• In 2039 SystemD’s codebase has grown to sixteen times its size in the 2020s. SystemD’s announces they’re going to release replacements for most other packages and ship their own vanilla distro.
• In 2045 SystemD’s distro has become the standard Linux distribution. Most other distros have quietly faded away.
• In 2047, SystemD announces they’re going to incorporate most of GNU into SystemD. Outrage ensues from the Free Software Foundation, which vehemently opposes this move.
• In 2048, Richard Stallman dies of a heart attack after attempting to clone SystemD’s git repo. SystemD engages in a hostile takeover and all resistance within the FSF crumbles
• In 2050, SystemD buys the struggling RedHat from IBM for $61 million.
• In 2053, most world governments have been pressured into using SystemD.
• In 2054, Linus Torvalds, fearing for his life, begins negotiations to merge kernel development into SystemD
• In 2056, the final message on the Linux kernel development mailing list is sent.
• In 2058, Torvalds dies under suspicious circumstances after his brand-new laptop battery explodes.
• In 2060, SystemD agents assassinate the CEO of Microsoft.
• In 2063, after immense pressure from SystemD-controlled human rights organisations, Arch developers discontinue development.
• In 2064, the remaining living Debian developers release the next stable version of their clandestine and highly illegal distro.

🤮

Well, it’s complicated, isn’t it?

Ubuntu is built on Debian’s skeleton. RHEL is built on Fedora. Many more examples.

Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu, but in a much deeper and more connected way than Ubuntu is based on Debian. It even shares many of the same software repositories.

The next closer level is how Xubuntu, Lubuntu, and Kubuntu are just slight variations of Ubuntu. People like to call these “flavours”.

Finally, you get to the closest layer—the thousands of people who have taken a stock Ubuntu installation and swapped out one or two components to meet their requirements. We don’t even think of these as distros in their own right.

It’s a continuous spectrum, and any labels we try to apply will be pretty much guaranteed to have fuzzy edges.

I gave up Ubuntu when they switched Firefox to a snap

What I predict will happen is that Microsoft will offer them Windows for free or bribe the relevant decision makers with free Surface Pro laptops (for “evaluation”) or other Microsoft paraphernalia.

I feel the best way to deal with this type of crap is to pretend like they’re some unimportant random person.

Hello. A request has been created. A member of our staff will respond to your enquiry within 10 working days.

Do not respond at all. When they send another email, auto-reply with the same message. Then reply this after their third email:

We have detected an unusually large number of enquiries sent from your IP address. To prevent spam, further emails will be filtered. If this is in error, please write to P.O. Box 12345, Somewhere, Some Country.

The P.O. box number given doesn’t exist. But international mail is slow so it will take them two months to realise that.