As someone who lives in a country that formerly had a nationalized phone company in the internet age, and currently has a nationalized power company and airline. Dear God fuck no!

I’m with you. I’m so completely and utterly over working in IT. The industry used to be full of companies founded by people who loved tech, and were staffed by kids who grew up on Lego and Logo. Today these same businesses are owned by investors who don’t know the first thing about technology, and staffed by grown up kids who were told by their guidance counselor that IT was a high paying field. Nobody knows their ass from a hole in the ground anymore, and getting anyone remotely competent on the phone is like pulling teeth. If I could bail on this industry tomorrow and build picnic tables I’d never look back.

I don’t use Uber because it is cheaper, I use it because I know the fare ahead of time, I don’t need to dial a dozen different cab companies, and the vehicles are generally nicer. I don’t use streaming because it is cheaper, I use it because I don’t need to worry about time shifting, and can access much higher quality content than on cable. As for the cloud? You can pry my big iron from my cold, dead hands.

I was actually a Xubuntu user for a long time, but tried Mint with Cinnamon, and found lots of things much easier and more polished, while maintaining the lightweight feel that XFCE provided.

I find that installing things from repos you typically get something far more up to date with Ubuntu than Debian.

I’ve been a Linux user since installing Slackware from floppy discs. These days I run Mint on my desktop/laptop and Ubuntu on servers. Does this make me weak?

Hikvision also has some serious baggage from the Chinese govt. Hanwha is really good stuff, South Korean, a spin off from Samsung.