UnfortunateShort

Hey look, one of these anonymous internet people was insane and became a terrorist. Sure casts a bad light on all of you.

That’s pretty much it afaik. Owner sold it, new owner didn’t know what to do with it, owner bought it back.

KDE Plasma offers a UI similar to Windows out of the box, I would say that’s a good start. Introduce them to the endless customisation options and they might start to dig it. Maybe take a distro aimed at gaming like Bazzite.

Other good options inlcude OpenSUSE or Linux Mint, the latter with another, but also similar feeling desktop.

Although caution is advised, this is a slippery slope to becoming a programmer.

Any intel on affected, high-profile software?

Eh, isn’t that argument more about being greedy for ressources rather than capital in particular? I mean, why did empires conquer stuff?

To correct some oversimplifications in this thread, let me just summarise some facts:

Crypto is exactly as worthless as money.

Not all crypto is bad for the climate, see for example Etherium and Solana.

Crypto has legitimate uses, especially as a replacement for traditional bank transactions, which to remind everyone, are basically made up numbers and ‘trust me bro’-s. And I will explicitly include smart contracts and NFTs here, just to annoy people who don’t get them.

Not all crypto is private. In fact, it was designed to be the opposite, hence most crypto isn’t private at all.

While not all crypto is private, even less ways to spend or exchange crypto are private. A simple and also very private thing is cash.

…In need of a hug?

I think you’re forgetting where Linux was the most successful by far: Servers and Android. Server guys do what they want, if you tell them they can only use software you allow them to, they will laugh at you and buy their data center elsewhere. Android has had locked bootloaders forever (I actually think even my very first phone had one).

So maybe development would have been harder? I mean, we don’t have looked bootloaders on desktop even today, not really locked at least, so it’s hard to tell. Linux’s main audience would not have cared I think.