Spooky

It’s included with the 8 Pro.

They had that YouTube Premium Lite tier in a few regions, which was basically that. But Google just killed it.

It’s a great tool but note that by default it upgrades EVERYTHING, up to and including production cloud environments if you are connected to any.

Visual Studio Ultimate is so heavy though. I wouldn’t want to use it for anything other than the languages it was designed for.

The other thing is just how much I hate Windows Update. I can tolerate most parts of Windows, but WU is objectively terrible. It’s incredibly slow, requires multiple restarts (sometimes forced!) amd sometimes fails with random errors that are impossible to troubleshoot.

It goes without saying that most Linux package managers work incredibly well in comparison.

Linux?

It’s so nice to be excited about my OS again. I remember as a kid, I used to be really excited about Windows updates. People were cynical about Microsoft even back then, but I remained loyal to Windows for years.

Only last year did I finally move to Linux as my OS (although I still use Windows for gaming). Since then every following Linux news is always exciting. New versions of distros, desktop environments and software always bring interesting improvements.

Meanwhile on the Windows side, most noticeable updates just bring more ads, tracking, forced Edge recommendations and forced logins. Ironically the last Windows feature I remember being genuinely excited for was WSL 2.

Yep those are the two I use!

Photos is cool but weirdly much lower than every other gallery app.

On my personal Linux machines I update daily. I have an update alias for all my package managers, I type it once a day to keep everything update. I run that command in the background while working, usually it doesn’t even require a reboot.

On the production Linux cluster that I manage at work, I update once a week.

I have a Windows boot that I use exclusively for gaming, but I don’t game too much these days. So about once q month I open it and try to keep up with updates. Unfortunately it’s a tedious and time consuming concept. Windows Update takes a long time and requires multiple reboots. Then many drivers and software require their own updates. Now to mention the games themselves which sometimes have 50GB updates. It easily takes me over an hour to get everything updated to my standards.

Better than OsmAnd?

That name is guaranteed to get you kicked.

Kindle devices are nice but not at all FOSS, and not very open either. Although you can sideload books, EPUB files are still not directly supported, you have to convert them. Converting is easy with Calibre but it’s still a hassle that is not needed on any other ereader.

There’s a vibrant jailbreak community on MobileRead, however Amazon keeps blocking jailbreaks.

After my Kindle died I got a Kobo instead. Costs about the same as Kindle (maybe slightly more?). Still not fully open, but supports EPUB and its MobileRead community is just as vibrant (and Kobo doesn’t block you from doing this).

There are many ereaders than run Android.

Plenty of other good options. See podcastapps.com

It’s the most used dating app. Logically people think that if a dating app has a lot of users, their chances of finding matches are higher. But it’s rigged.

Yes my experience with PipeWire had been flawless. Not so much with Wayland…

What features are you missing?

Nanoleaf bulbs are great and their Essentials line work offline without an account.