I liked BoFIII a lot, but I loved BoFIV. BoFIII re-release would be awesome, but unfortunately it never had a PC port, so it’s a bit unlikely.

Mandriva is gone, but there’s a couple of projects carrying its legacy. OpenMandriva is one of them, obviously. Mandrake was my first distro too, so I have a soft spot for it.

From my perspective, OpenMandriva’s biggest strengths are that it’s independent, non-derivative, community driven, and based in Europe. Unfortunately it’s also small, but the people behind it seemingly do a lot with very little, so the community is passionate about the project.

Personally I’m just happy that there are smaller, non-corporate distros still out there providing alternatives. And OMLx seems like a pretty solid distro at that.

For their selling pitch, you can check their FAQ.

I eventually decided on openSUSE Tumbleweed for a few reasons: rolling release, because I like to stay up-to-date; non-derivative, not a fork or dependent on other underlying distros; European, for (perceived) privacy reasons; a relatively well known and large distro with a decent community, for troubleshooting reasons; backed by a company, though that has both its ups and downs; lastly, support for KDE Plasma.

I actually had trouble finding a distro that suited all my criteria at the time, but openSUSE is good enough for now and I am pretty much satisfied.

Evacuation in my ass? Sounds about right.

Thanks, now I’m depressed.

Honestly, guys, gals and others, Microsoft is making it crystal clear they don’t want you to use their OS. It’s not your OS, it’s theirs. Stop trying mangle it into something it is not. If you need registry edits just to make the OS usable, it’s not worth it. It’s not for you. Please, please, please look at alternatives that respect you, your intelligence, your privacy and your data. One day Microsoft will push an update that will lock you out of your machine unless you create an account. Jumping through these hoops is just delaying the inevitable. Using an OS is not worth all this effort and stress.

The president of the United States of America is angry that starting a trade war has started a trade war. I would be appalled, if this wasn’t just par for the course at this point.

I landed on Claws Mail myself. It does look a bit dated, but the UI is functional and the client works. I’m content with it.

Anecdotally, I don’t trust Klarna one bit. A few years ago I was making a payment and Klarna directed me to a third party site that wanted my bank credentials. It was at that moment I stopped using Klarna and requested they delete all information they have on me. Apparently, Klarna wanted to see my account activity. I now go out of my way to avoid them. I have a similar issue with PayPal, where connecting a Credit Card requires entering information in a way I’m uncomfortable with.

So for now I’m just using a CC directly. This may not be the best approach, but it feels the least intrusive - for now. I don’t know what the optimal solution would be. Maybe when GNU Taler becomes an option…