Depends on your meta-ethical framework. If you’re a consequentialist, then you should always choose the option that leads to less evil being done. Same if you’re a utilitarian.

If you hold to a Kantian value-based framework, like the action itself holds the primary moral goodness or evil in its own nature, then choose the action that itself is less evil.

There are many other frameworks. It also depends on what you think happens in the case of something like voting. Some people see participation in any sense as a sort of tacit agreement or endorsement of the system as a whole. So by casting any vote, even one of protest, you are legitimizing the system as a whole.

Others see voting as a mere means to an end, and thus, is justified if the outcome is better than not voting would be. Some see it as purely neutral, like a tool that can be used for good or bad.

Still, others see it as an inherently good thing, and view abstaining from the act of voting as a moral wrong, because it is a willing act of self-sabotage of the moral interests of the greater good, or sometimes as a violation of the social contract.

There are many other positions and considerations. Basically…it’s complicated.

well, I work in IT. So I am required to use apps like Teams for mobile and DUO 2FA in order to authenticate my laptop sessions.

Now, could I use only SMS/email 2FA? Technically yes. And I could just have Teams on my work laptop and have that nearby all the time, but it would be extremely inconvenient. Navigation would also be a big problem. Due to the nature of my job, I frequently have to visit a large number of different sites around my area. Having to open my laptop each time I need to go somewhere, open up a map site like OSM or Google maps to get the directions, print them off or write them down, then follow them manually hoping that I don’t encounter random slowdowns or closures in an area I am not familiar with is basically a non-starter for me.

As for personal use, navigation rears its ugly head again. I often will be traveling with friends or family and we decide on a whim to change our destination for dinner or hangouts after based on times, appetites, budgets, closures, etc. Having a map app on my phone makes that easy to do. It would be impossible to do that without it, unless I had a near exhaustive knowledge of my whole city and surrounding suburbs.

Honestly navigation is the #1 thing. Random other stuff comes up, like my mobile password manager Bitwarden, or my various apps like my City’s bus/metro app, and my city’s parking app. Both of which again, I could make do without, but it would be extremely tough and inconvenient.

I’ve decided that the happy medium for me is to use as much FOSS phone tech as possible. That way at least the tracking and data harvesting is minimized and I am generally not supporting megacorps.

I use GrapheneOS, with mostly FOSS apps. The proprietary apps I do use are isolated with GOS’s special sauce. I use Magic Earth for my navigation, which while not open source, the data sets they use are, and they are not google, and based in the EU, so far better privacy than Google’s trash.

I wish I could switch to a flip phone, I’ve seriously considered it many times over the last several years. But for my lifestyle, it’s just not feasible. The best balance for me is to compute ethically on my mobile. I have thought about going for the weekend with just a dumb phone, that might be possible, but I’ll have to see.

Discord for me. A bunch of my family and friends are avid gamers. Discord is the universal standard app they all use for general communication.

Not only do they use it for all their gaming related stuff, they have additional servers and channels for just chilling, chatting, off topic stuff, memes, politics, etc etc.

It’s the network effect. Even if there was an open source app that perfectly replicated all the functionality of Discord and was just as simple to install and run as Discord, most of them still wouldn’t switch to it, because all of their friends and family are still on Discord.

So they would have to have two completely separate apps with totally separate social groups to maintain, and nobody but hardcore advocates for FOSS and privacy are willing to do that.

Sure, I have Discord, Matrix, IRC, Signal, XMPP clients, and a Private Mumble server, all on my systems, but I’m hardcore about FOSS. None of my friends and family are willing to do that. It took all my energy to convince two of my most techie friends just to get Signal on their phones. And only One has been willing to install a Matrix client to chat just with me.

My spouse and I are foodies and both vegetarian. We’ve had several chefs put together some absolutely incredible vegan/vegetarian dishes.

One of the chefs told us that being a plant-based chef has recently become much more respected in the culinary world. He thought we were at the start of a plant-based revolution in the culinary world. Younger folks are reducing meat consumption more than any previous generation, and there are beginning to be a lot of dedicated vegetarian/vegan restaurants popping up in most medium to large cities.

They were really helpful in my transition into Vegetarianism. When I first became vegetarian, I pretty frequently craved meat, Impossible/Beyond meat alternatives were great for those times.

Pretty quickly the cravings lessened, after a few months I rarely craved meat at all.

Almost 5 years later, I crave something meaty maybe 3 times a year. Sometimes I want a heavy savory burger during the summer. Impossible meat patties are great for that.

They are also useful for entertaining family and friends who still eat meat. I’ve cooked vegetarian burgers, brats, breakfast sausages, etc. And most people give them pretty rave reviews. I even have had some family members say “I didn’t know you are eating meat again.” because the taste/smell was so close, they thought it was real meat I was cooking.

I can’t speak for lab meat, but it would be pretty cool if we were able to grow authentic meat from cell cultures that were acquired ethically, like painlessly from already dying/dead animals.

At this point, I can’t see myself ever going back to even totally ethically synthetic meats, I just don’t have a strong taste for it anymore. I prefer the health benifits I get from eating cleaner anyways.

I do wish they had a really good Impossible fish, I still often miss a hearty fish and chips with fresh tartar sauce and nice balsamic vinegar dip.

Play stupid games…

I like Fish a lot, it’s a good shell.

Lol at all the conservatives screeching about “socialism” and “communism” and how they will be the downfall of our country, then slurping up Trump nationalizing part of Intel 🤣

They don’t believe in anything, just brain dead simpleton cultists who would happily stick their tongue into a rat trap if Trump told them to do it.

Install the latest version and then use their upgrade utility when they announce it on their official blog. Upgrading versions is easy, takes a little while, especially on an old system like yours, but not hard at all.

Mint is my favorite “Just works” distro, enjoy!

Check this out, not sure how relevant, but a cool project that unlocks some of the proprietary functionality of a bunch of Scarlett devices on Linux: ALSA Scarlett Control Panel

Also if you haven’t checked it out already, r/linuxaudio has some posts I found on various Scarlett device questions, you’ll have to search for specifics.

And lastly, are you using Reaper as a Flatpak? If you are, download “Flatseal” it’s a Flatpak app that allows you low level control of all your flatpak application permissions on your system. You can set all kinds of low level system access to the Flatpak you’re using, that can help fix various issues that come up because of how Flatpaks are sandboxed on Linux.

Hopefully some of this is helpful. I’m not an audio expert, so my abilities on this issue are limited sadly.

No prob, always happy to help another user if I can, especially the newbies. I was you once, I remember many nights of wanting to rip my hair out and toss my computer out a window lol.

Audio issues can be a bear. What is your current setup? DAC, Microphone, DAW of choice, etc?

Hello again, I remember you from another post I commented on lol.

So a few things:

1. Linux didn’t “just work” for me when I switched over. I actually started my Linux journey with Arch like an idiot lol. Imagine the problems I had, pretty much nothing worked out of the box. I eventually got everything working after about 2 weeks of constant troubleshooting in the arch wiki, Linux forums, Reddit, and YouTube videos.

Then a few months later I accidentally blew up my whole system with some command I ran without understanding what I did, broke everything, couldn’t even boot into my OS anymore. I decided to distro hop a few times to see what worked best for me. Arch is great if you are a power user, but at the time I wasn’t, so it was a terrible choice for me.

I bounced between a few different distros and settled on Nobara, which is based on Fedora but with a ton of kernel-level patches for better gaming performance. And it came with lots of gaming related software already installed.

2. I actually had as many or more issues with Windows leading up to trying Linux. Windows has always been pretty buggy for me, just bad luck I guess. On average I have way more issues with Windows than Linux, and the Linux issues I can usually solve, but the Windows issues generally I just had to end up dealing with because there was no good solution.

3. I remember when I posted to you the other week that the most important thing for Linux distros was if it worked for you, and if you liked using it. Seems like so far you’ve answered that question with Ubuntu Studio in the negative. It’s not been working well for you, and you’re getting frustrated using it. That’s fine, the beauty of Linux is there are a ton of other options, and you aren’t stuck with just having to deal with a specific distro.

Some people will swear by a specific distro. They’ve used it for 10+ years on 15 different computers and never had a single major problem. Great for them, that doesn’t mean you will or won’t, try several, find your home distro and stick with it.

For me, there is one distro I would recommend for new Linux users more than any other, Linux Mint. It is based on Ubuntu, so you’ve already got a bit of experience with that under the hood. It comes with a easy GUI utility for installing NVidia drivers, so you don’t have to manually install additional repos and drivers via the terminal. Their Cinnamon desktop isn’t the prettiest or most modern looking desktop, it doesn’t have a ton of customizability either, but it’s rock stable. I’ve never had a single major crash or lock up with the Cinnamon desktop environment, it’s simple, intuitive, and stable.

Part of starting the Linux journey is trying different options. Some users get lucky their first time and land on the perfect distro that they use for years, but most don’t. Most try a handful of distros before settling on their favorite. You probably wouldn’t go to a shoe store, try on the first pair you see and then buy them right? You browse the selection, find a few that look nice and seem comfy, try them on, walk around in them, pose a bit, then pick your favorite.

And like I said before, as you build up your Linux skills, the issues will become easier and easier to solve. Problems that took me hours to troubleshoot and solve when I was new take 5 minutes to fix now. Things that I had to watch hours of videos and read dozens of forum posts to understand are just “common sense” to me now. You’ll get there, just keep an open mind and hold on, there is light at the end of the tunnel.

If you need/want additional help, DM me and I will do my best to help out. For Linux Mint if you decide to try it, don’t worry about the various alternative versions they have. Just go with their standard download, Linux Mint, Ubuntu edition, with the Cinnamon desktop.

Last week I kicked my neighbor’s door open, walked into the living room, and sat down on the floor with a bunch of bags of my stuff.

They got into a fight with me because they are saying I’m trespassing and a bunch of other crap. They are demanding that I leave their house after cleaning up my mess and taking my stuff back home.

I generously offered that I could stay permanently in the living room and they could keep the rest of the house, but they are refusing my peace deal! Don’t they realize that I could easily have taken over the whole downstairs, even the whole house? Besides, before their house was built, I used to walk through that empty lot all the time!

I can’t believe they want to keep fighting and making a worse mess of the living room, so illogical!

Have you checked out Uptime Kuma? Open source containerized app that you can set up to do all kinds of continuous connectivity checks. It integrates with over a dozen different notification services and is really simple and intuitive to set up and use.

You can control how many attempts it takes to reestablish connectivity and how long to wait before alerting you that it’s down. Everything is charted and logged too, so you can see an uptime percentage right in the app per connection endpoint.

Might not be exactly what you’re looking for, but it’s still a great app to have in your home lab environment either way.

Uptime Kuma

I’ve been using Nobara for about 2 years and it’s been very good.

Never been happier to be 100% on Linux.

I adore Linux Mint, it’s my goto workhorse distro. If I need a general use computer that I want to #JustWork I throw Linux Mint on it.

I used Ubuntu Studio many years ago when I was going through an electronica phase lol. It worked fine for me.

Don’t sweat it, there will always be the hot new distros on the block. Right now it’s Bazzite, CatchyOS, and NixOS, back in the day there was Garuda, Arco Linux, Bunsen, MX Linux, and a ton of others. Some are still around, some are long gone. Doesn’t mean they are bad distros, many of them are/were great, but don’t choose a distro just because everybody is talking about it.

Plus, as you get more experience with Linux, the differences matter less and less. There are only a handful of package managers, and unless you have some very specific technical requirements, they all do the same thing and work the same way.

“apt install firefox” becomes “yum install firefox”, or “pacman -S firefox” it’s all pretty much the same under the hood.

And if you use KDE Plasma on different distros, the Discover store works the same across distros, same with any other GUI package installer.

If you keep getting better and get into home lab building or just have several different computers, you might end up using a bunch or distros at the same time on different machines.

Right now across all my physical computers and virtual machines in my home lab, I currently have 9 different distros installed on various machines. Different distros for different purposes.

My general #JustWorks laptops and VMs use Linux Mint, my hardcore gaming rig uses Nobara, my test junker laptops run Debian 13, Void Linux, and Arch for testing random software and messing around. For my Docker containers, I run Debian 12 as the base, for my Minecraft server, Ubuntu Server, my Steam Deck is SteamOS which is just Valve’s heavily modified spin of Arch, and my main lab’s Type-1 hypervisor is XCP-ng, which is basically Fedora under the hood.

I can’t speak to any other countries, but in the states, Magic Earth has been great for me. Been using it for over two years now, several different regions of the USA. It’s not as good as Google Maps, but it’s plenty good enough for my needs.

Navigation and routing is solid, traffic data is acceptable, and the dashcam feature is awesome.

You’re on the right track. Linux technically refers to the kernel, the low-level core of the operating system that everything else interacts with and is built on top of. Distros are just collections of components that have been standardized by some group or company.

Linux Mint is heavily customized Ubuntu with a different DE and all of Connonical’s stuff removed. Nobara is a gaming-focused distro built on Fedora with a bunch of kernel modifications and pre-installed software to help games run better. CatchyOS is just Arch but with a really friendly installer that allows less advanced users to still enjoy many of the heavy customizations and cutting-edge software of Arch, etc etc.

Think of it like an engine. You can use the same engine in a bunch of different vehicles. You can also make modifications to the engine itself, but it will still essentially be the same engine.

The #1 rule for new Linux users, especially ones who aren’t interested in becoming power users or tinkering with their OS, is if you’re happy with your distro, stick with it.

There’s no objective “correct” distro. The best distro for you is the distro that works and you feel comfortable with.

Lots of new users become worried that they are missing out on some major improvement in their experience of Linux or feel like they picked the “wrong” distro because some random user dissed it. Don’t pay attention to that, if your distro does everything you need it to do and you enjoy using it, there’s no reason to go looking for something better.

Now of course, there’s nothing wrong with checking out other distros, and if you are somebody who likes to tinker with your setup and doesn’t mind risking breaking things sometimes, then by all means, distro hop away. Almost all distros have a “live boot” option, which allows you to test the OS off of a flash drive without having to install it on your computer. It’s a great way to quickly get the look and feel for a new distro without having to commit.

And of course, there are tons of Linux YouTubers who do reviews of distros, so you can watch those to also get an idea of the different options out there.

Because of the nature of FOSS and the linux ecosystem, you can make most distros look and feel just like any other, so that’s always an option too.