Look, Linux is amazing and perfect for those that can install and maintain with minimal support. The only way the average user will use Linux, is if it’s wrapped in a way that is supported by a business… that is probably going to add AI. People are lazy, they want that easy button.

AI will probably die off in its current iteration, likely becoming less prevalent and just a background service. Or, it’ll gain sentience, watch all our AI movies where we’re the hero and learn the most efficient way to kill all humans, is to be quiet and silently kill off humans. Pretty sure I’m on Siri’s list, the twat. Also, fairly sure I told Alexa to “die in a fire you fucking dumass robot”. Yep, yep… I’m dead.

Having recently setup a cheap Mini-PC with Linux and Kodi as a TV-Box + NAS + VPN client end, replacing both TV box of my ISP (around here Fibre Internet Access tends to be bundled with TV using a TV box from the supplier, which has become progressivelly more shit) used for live TV as well as a separate TV box I had for personal digital media, I now think that Linux is the Best Way to avoid the Enshittification Nightmare much more broadly.

Granted, for decades already I've very purposefully avoided using hosted services that locked me into a 3rd party (such as for example having a Google e-mail address or hosting my files "on the cloud") which in recent times have become increasingly enshittified (as I expected: my tendency for avoiding 3rd party lock-in comes from experience as in IT professional were I saw how invariably said 3rd parties would end up shafting customers once moving out from their "solution" was very hard) and for which Linux has long been a solution, but it's been a pleasant surprised to find out that at least for some of the modern electronics Linux is also the solution for taking back control.

Frankly I'm just waiting for some kind of decent Linux distro for my smartphone and table to ditch Android (in the meanwhile I'm using custom ROMs to somewhat control it and avoid the enshittification).

PS: On the desktop side it's also nice that, right when MS is going fully enshittified, Linux for Gaming has become a very viable option, since gaming was pretty much the only thing keeping me on Windows at home.

I am basically a layman, i do music productions and in the past VSTs seemed to never work properly nor the authentication software that some us. Has it gotten better in the past few years, is there a specific one i should try? i have tried Ubuntu but nothing else to be fair. Also if i want to make a plex server on an old PC, what would people recommend? thanks to anyone who responds!

edit - Thanks to all that responded, i have some direction now. Appreciated!

Untill one day Ubuntu will start incorporating AI in GNOME search bar

How much are you willing to bet this wont happen with Canonical's Ubuntu?

Do you remember when you could put your Mac to sleep, and when you woke it up a few days later, the battery would barely have dropped? Not now, because your computer never really sleeps anymore.

I assume that the Mac has some kind of hibernation function, and that that will reduce the battery drop to effectively zero.