Eugenia

Have you tried OnlyOffice? It has better compatibility with MS formats than LibreOffice.

Yeah, snaps won’t be able to access the “external” codecs (outside their jail). So either install the official firefox package from the firefox site, or chrome.

You need to install the codecs, there’s a way to do it on ubuntu, just google search it (and there’s an option during installation to do it too). The N150 cpu and its integrated gpu is not a problem for your codec problem, it’s a matter of installing the right software.

ARM was bought by the Japanese, it’s no longer European. RISC-V is the future.

That’s more of an inkscape replacement than a gimp/photoshop one. It’s mostly about vectors, not raster images.

The ads have become too long. Some of them are 40 seconds long, for a 3 minute video. That’s unacceptable. I have thought about it, and I think the best would have been a single 8 second ad, unskippable. But never more than that. That, I could take. But multiple ads (even if they’re just 5 secs each but you have to be vigilant to press “skip”), or long ads, or interrupting ads, are just too much to accept.

If society benefits from the democratization of art/books/etc then it’s not a loss, it’s a win for everyone. There were many jobs in the past that were lost because technology made them obsolete. Being a commissioned artist is one of these professions. However, there IS still going to be a SMALL niche for human-made original artworks (not made on ipads). But that’d be a niche. And no one stopping anyone from doing art, be it a profession or not. That’s the beauty of art. If you were to be a plumber, and robots took your job, you’d have trouble to do it as a hobby, since it would require a lot of sinks and pipes to play around, and no one would care. But with art, you can do it on the cheap, and people STILL like your stuff, EVEN if they won’t buy it anymore.

Nobody stops you to be an artist. You can still have a job that is still alive today, AND be an artist in your own free time. As I mentioned, I was a very successful collage artist (NYTimes pick for best book cover, lots of commissions, lots of print sales etc). I decided to leave the surrealness of collage behind because I enjoyed children’s illustrations more. Guess what, I don’t make a dime with my illustrations. I’ve spent $15k on art supplies in 5 years and I made $1k back. But that doesn’t stop me from painting nearly EVERY DAY. I share my work online, and whoever likes it, likes it. I don’t expect sales anymore. Be it because it’s not a popular look, or because of AI. It doesn’t matter to me, I still paint daily.

Not an issue either, my copied works were fully copyrighted. I wanted them to be cc-by, but I never really relicenced them, too much work for 1500 works.

I used to be a very popular and successful collage artist (I’m now an illustrator, I like painting more), and my work has been copied by AI. However, I don’t really care. In fact, I was musing once the idea of licensing everything under the CC-BY license. I don’t mind if AI copies my stuff, because if eventually this democratizes art (as it has already), all the better. Yes, these AI belong to corporations, but if they’re easy to access, or free to use, all the better. I want people to extend what I did, and remix it. I don’t want to be remembered as me, as a singular artist, that somehow I emerged from the void. Because I didn’t. EVERY artist is built on top of their predecessors, and all art is a remix. That’s the truth that other artists don’t wanna hear because it’s all about their ego.

Look, I’m a Linux user, and I prefer to use Free apps. However, the truth must be told: Firefox is not as optimized as Chrome. On older devices, Chrome is twice as fast in youtube playback, and it uses way less RAM overall. Chrome is the better browser in terms of architecture, at least for older PCs (and I have a whole bunch of them). On my main PC, running Debian-Testing, which is a newer PC, I do use Firefox, because it can handle stuff ok with enough CPU power. But for all my older PCs (anywhere from 5 to 15 years old), I have to use Chrome.

Now, if you find me a de-googled, Free, WELL-MAINTANED Chromium browser, I rather use that than Chrome. No, Brave, etc don’t cut it. I want a community-driven, well maintained Chromium browser. Currently, all de-googled versions are not well maintained, or not available as native packages on Debian.

EDIT: So, downvoted, huh? By fellow open source users who don’t want to hear the truth?

Kdenlive is a desktop app, not an android one, that the OP is asking for. Regardless, kdenlive crashes easily, has no hardware acceleration, and it doesn’t have good color grading tools (particularly in regards to film emulation, which is what most people want to do artistic videos – I used to shoot music videos). For basic videos, it’s ok.

That’s a video cutter, not an editor. There’s a difference.

A video editor…

The sad thing about this is that 90% of the skins available for WinAmp since then are gone. You can’t find them to download them anymore.

I’d suggest against dual booting not because it’s difficult to setup, but because Windows WILL eventually wipe out your boot manager that Linux would install to boot both OSes. After 1-2 major Win updates, it usually also updates the bootmanager, overwriting your Linux one. So instead, I’d suggest you just buy a PCI nvme card ($12, if your PC doesn’t have space for a 2nd one), add an nvme storage ssd ($35) on it, and then disconnect the Windows drive while you’re installing Linux. Linux will then install the bootmanager on its own nvme only. Then, you re-connect the Windows drive, and then you can press F12 upon booting (well, it’s usually f12 or f10), to tell your UEFI firmware which drive to boot each time (so basically, you’d use your firmware as your bootmanager, per-drive, instead of grub or windows boot manager as per-partition). This way, no one is stepping into the other’s territory at any point.

I’d suggest you start with Linux Mint. You can burn a usb drive to test drive it before you do all that, to make sure it works well with your PC. I suggest you use the Edge version of it, that has a newer kernel (so it has a better chance of supporting your PC).

I’m using a 32" 4k monitor without scaling, even if my eyesight is not the best. I have no trouble at all with it. It’s the more common 27" 4k monitors that have tiny fonts and need scaling. But 32", 4k it’s fine at 100%!

As for 1080p, it’s enough for most things. You mentioned the dpi comparing it to a 24" 4k monitor, but why would you need 24" for a 1080p monitor? Anything above 20" is a waste for 1080p.

Both my laptops were Win10-native, not upgrades from previous versions.

TWO of my laptops were bit by that bug/error. Not one. Two.

But what they offered was not a real solution. I’m an experienced computer user, and still didn’t wanna mess with that “solution”.

This was done just to force people to upgrade to a Win11 (and maybe get a new PC too, if their old one couldn’t run Win11). If not that, then simply, incompetence in general.

It’s all laughable, really.

krita is also used for image manipulation by many in the linux community, people who don’t like the gimp ui. That doesn’t mean it was meant for that, but the reality is what it is.