https://codetiger.github.io/blog/the-day-my-smart-vacuum-turned-against-me

And just like that, my $300 smart vacuum transformed into a mere paperweight.

If you’re going to fund something, go for Servo

Also very much in development

From what OS, and for which activities?

Generally, I would advise vibe checking with a Ventoy USB and a live .iso. See if you find your marks, and can do basic stuff. Ventoy will allow you to try different distros in relatively quick succession

Only to Zorin

There’s a note on the Flathub page that it requires permission to your home folder, so this should be granted automatically. Maybe they made an update since you had the issue?

In most cases the sandboxing should not require user intervention. Apps can either use the native file picker (which gives them access to selected files) or list which directories they want to access in their manifest. If an app tells you to select a file by path-in-text-input or homemade file picker, but doesn’t have permission to the relevant directories, that’s a config issue on the packager’s side.

You should install Signal as Flatpak. It should be available through the app store if you are on Mint. Otherwise see https://flathub.org/en/apps/org.signal.Signal

Do not consult companies websites for how to install on Linux if you can avoid it, they will nearly always break your setup. Just head for the app store and click the big green button.

FYI, subliminal messages, as in “messages that you can’t see but your subconscious will be affected by” are not a thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subliminal_stimuli

I remember watching a science show where someone wanted to demonstrate them, blatantly failed, tried again, failed again, called a psychologist to try better, and failed again. At the end the guy excused himself and said that it must surely be working for everyone but him, for some reason. Except no one actually managed to get it working, the guy who invented the concept later admitted he faked the result.

What did XP do? I’ve never heard someone complain about it

Looking at the specs, I would guess it is

You can setup a Ventoy USB stick if you want to try multiple options

It’s similar in that it has an application launcher at the bottom, a windows-like start menu, and aims to be simple.

Zorin has a modern UI where Mint is more windows-7-ish. They don’t have the same file explorer, settings app, app store, generally the core apps are different.

Look they’re quite different, it’s hard to make a full comparison, just run a Mint .iso in gnome-boxes if you’re curious.

Do you actually feel your computer slow down? I would guess your 20 unused tabs would get swapped out and the rest should run relatively fine

It’s a feeling

Kevlar doesn’t stop feelings 🥹

If you already have the correct version of the flatpak installed, you can try flatpak build-bundle.

flatpak build-bundle LOCATION FILENAME NAME where

• LOCATION is the path of the repo on disk. Run flatpak info -l org.kde.arianna, and copy the part before /app
• FILENAME is the output file name, preferably .flatpak. Eg: arianna.flatpak
• NAME is the name of the app, here org.kde.arianna

The generated file can be installed with a double-click, or with flatpak install <file>

This is the equivalent of an Android .apk. It contains the app but depends on a runtime. If you want to install it in a few years, odds are the runtime will no longer be available. You can backup the runtime the same way with the --runtime option.

flatpak build-bundle --runtime LOCATION FILENAME NAME where

• LOCATION same as earlier
• FILENAME eg arianna-runtime.flatpak
• NAME is the name of the runtime, which you can get with flatpak info --show-runtime org.kde.arianna

This takes a while, for some reason. Maybe it’s compressing stuff?

The runtime is installed the same way as the app: double click or flatpak install.

Note: I only did this once, and not specifically on Arianna. Hope it works.