mp4 is not really a video format. Depending on how recent they are they’ll play a broader or narrower range of MP4 files, depending on codec selection.

But by that standard, Windows isn’t ready either…

What you read is true, and also total nonsense.

There is not too much point in discussing privacy and security without a threat model.

So once you put your threat model into focus, you can discuss how to mitigate those threats and pick the right browser for you.

Last time I had a PC with an optical drive, I used the built-in features of Dolphin, and using a different software for metadata. If you use KDE, it’s hard to find a good reason to do otherwise. It will usually get metadata from CDDB, but on the other hand for metadata It’s really hard to beat Picard or Beets.

Beets will also scrape the lyrics and add them to the metadata, beside acousticbrainz goodness, multiple genres from Last.fm, and more. Picard will do most of this as well.

OK, now I get it. Yes, my experiences with Linux have been ridiculously good for a long time, but that is indeed also due to being careful with what I buy.

Nowadays it’s generally gotten pretty easy compared to a few years back, but there are still rough edges there.

I also expect this is more of an issue with cheaper solutions? Because nothing I touched in the last 10+ gave me any real problem. With maybe the exception of getting NVidia Optimus to work?

For a company it wouldn’t be so unreasonable to say “we’ll transition to Linux over this period of time” and replace incompatible hardware as you progress. The hardware replacement will be a small fraction of your switching costs.

The company I work at has decided to be Linux centric a long time ago, and basically all laptops are years old refurbished Thinkpads that run just fine with no intervention and no hacking.

But the university where I worked at before had a framework deal with Dell, and while I was one of the few people using Linux, I never had trouble with hardware compatibility on those Optiplex and Latitude. To the point that when I was getting a new machine, I would clone the old partition and just boot into a perfectly working system.

I use Arch, BTW.

investment in stabilizing Linux enough to make it a feasible alternative

Do you care to elaborate? If I had to write a list of reasons why Linux might not be ready for your average cubicle… Stability wouldn’t be one of them.

Yeah, I work in a making very high end scientific equipment. Almost almost the whole operation runs on Linux. All laptops are refurbished Thinkpads, and most desktops are pretty old and slow from a maimstream POV, but they are just fine for the task, and then some. My “new” laptop I got last summer is a 2018 laptop which cost 300€ refurbished.

If I can do decent science on that, I’m not sure what everyone else needs a 2000€ machine for.

I’m sure someone does, but I expect really they’re few and far between.

I understand that Brave is a very good browser, from a technical standpoint, but it just feels annoying. For one, the constant crypto advertisement is a real turn off.

Firefox is also the only real mobile browser that lets me have extensions, so I can use stuff like uBlock or BypassPaywall.

And for some reason, to this day, I still end up accidentally calling it OpenOffice two out of three times.

It really isn’t.

It’s the Antwerp Port Authority in Antwerp, Belgium. Designed by Zaha Hadid. Pretty cool.>!!<

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Authority_Building_(Antwerp)

I saw several such hybrid old/new building combinations in Flemish cities. And they usually manage to pull it off.

Another example I liked is the STAM, the Ghent city museum. They also host a nice yearly jazz festival in the courtyard of that one.

https://stamgent.be/

My current laptop is 7 years old, and I Love It!

I still even play games with it. Not the newest stuff, but I have such a huge backlog of indies and not-so-new games that I could play for 15 years…

If someone told me this will be garbage in 3 years… I would hit them with the laptop. It’s a T470p, their skull is the part that would break.

I kinda disagree. If you need something to connect to the internet, it needs to be rather up to date.