My uncle in Oregon can't get into his laptop because his Microsoft account got b0rked and the bloody 2FA won't let him log in because he registered it to his home phone number without thinking about it.

I really want to grab some microsoft exec by the giblets and swing them around until they reach orbital velocity.

My utter disdain and hatred for that ruddy company has ripened and reached 180 proof over the past thirty years.

@RL_Dane
Ah, I remember when my Windows laptop enabled FDE without telling me then locked me out of my account, saying my password was incorrect. I couldn't do a reset without the key unless I willing to lose my data.

I waited literally 7-9 hours in a queue to *virtually chat* with a Microsoft representative. He told me that the key should be backed up to my account.

It wasn't. I lost all my files that weren't synced to GDrive, including the first 43k words of my in-progress NaNoWriMo novel.

@RL_Dane
This is (1) when I made Ubuntu the primary install I'd use rather than just a dual boot I had for kicks and (2) the main inspiration for why I now run hourly backups on most of my data.

@RL_Dane
Anyway, here I am a couple years later and I don't use a single Micro$oft product that I'm not required to for uni. No GitHub (except issue reporting), no npm, no Windows, etc.

@RL_Dane
And never will I recommend a Micro$oft product to anyone.

@benjaminhollon

Word.

@RL_Dane
Not sure whether the next step should be de-Applifying or de-Googling.

@benjaminhollon @RL_Dane I would say De-Googling is probably of higher imperative than de-Applifying, but I'm an Android user, so they basically own me.

@gordoooo_z @benjaminhollon

De-Google your Android!

@RL_Dane @gordoooo_z
Not sure I've ever understood going half-measures; for example, using degoogled chromium rather than something else altogether, like Firefox. If I ever switch away from a mainstream mobile OS (which I hope to someday) it'll almost certainly be to a pure Linux-based system.

@benjaminhollon I have a phone that, in addition to Android can run Sailfish and Ubuntu Touch. Both systems aren't quite there in terms of making them your daily drivers, main problem being the browser not being on par with what you can have on Android. You can work that around with Waydroid (running Android in a container under host os), but that kinda defeats the purpose because using Android as host OS you can always have better battery life —mine lasts for 5 days 🤷
@RL_Dane @gordoooo_z

@m0xee @benjaminhollon @RL_Dane I was really excited about Ubuntu Touch with Convergence, but that seemed to become a stretch goal after Canonical handed things off to ubports :/

I'm just waiting for a Linux smartphone that can make that dream a reality.

@m0xee @benjaminhollon @RL_Dane Personally, I think a future where a laptop is essentially a dumb terminal that wakes up in the presence of a smartphone would make a lot of sense, in a world where a CPU becoming obsolete also makes all of the perfectly functional integrated peripherals obsolete as well.

Same thing happens to phones, but putting a 6" screen in a drawer to die is far preferable to putting a 14 to 17" screen + keyboard + trackpad + speakers in a drawer to die.

@gordoooo_z
MS got it right with Continuum. Unfortunately the whole Windows 10 Mobile thing didn't take of and they've scrapped it. Then the community made it possible to install desktop Windows 10 on ARM and later 11 on Lumia phones. It worked nicely, even though the UI wasn't optimized, you could use it as a phone, but when you plug it into dock with external display and periferals, it's a normal Windows PC.
@benjaminhollon @RL_Dane

@gordoooo_z
I've been using my Lumia phone like that until recently. The battery got too old and the phone started to shut down randomly and as getting new one is extremely hard, I had to put the old thing in the drawer. I got it in 2015 and I thing it wasn't to bad of an age to retire this device at last.
Purism tries to do that with Linux phones, but AFAIK there are lots of issues with Librem 5.
@benjaminhollon @RL_Dane

@gordoooo_z
I don't know why this still didn't happen, the phone I use now looks too powerful to me, it has an eight-core CPU, the performance core being clocked at 3.0 GHz, it has 8 gigs of RAM and 256 Gb of fast UFS 3.1 storage. I have a 200 Gb SD card in it on top of that. I think it's more powerful than the laptops I use. And device like that is used for answering phone calls and some lightweight web browsing? 🤷
@benjaminhollon @RL_Dane

@m0xee @gordoooo_z @benjaminhollon

Dang, what monster phone is that? :D

Man, I remember when mobile OSes had to be super lean because the hardware was so weak.

Now the phones are as fast as laptops, and the mobile OSes are bloated garbage.

@RL_Dane
https://m.gsmarena.com/xiaomi_poco_x3_pro-10802.php
Very decent hardware dirt cheap! Bonus points for having community ports of SailfishOS, UT and Droidian.
It has issues though. Looks like soldering isn't good and sometimes these phones die 😩
Mine is about a year old and no hardware issues, but you can find many reports of such cases online.
Mine seldomly runs hot, I need all this computing power like… never. Maybe it'll last longer.
@gordoooo_z @benjaminhollon

@m0xee I wonder if it could be solved with a gentle reflow? Maybe they just have to rush them out to hit that price point? I don't know, but that is certainly a lot of phone for the money.

@gordoooo_z Yeah, reballing is how these phones get fixed basically. But you never know if that fix would be permanent so most get rid of their phones after that if it happens. I'm using MacBookPro late '11 with a dead discrete GPU now, same issue. I even used this laptop for gaming when it worked and never had any issues, it worked perfectly for 5 years, then 🍏 anounced a free replacement program, but after the program ended it decided to die on me. Now I'm being wary about this😅

@m0xee I swear those Nvidia Macbooks were the worst. A photographer friend of mine shelled out $3500ish for one of the later ones (maybe 2015?) and it was failing well within the first year. Ended up building her a Ryzen PC the next time around, once she finally got tired of expensive Macbooks dying on her.

@gordoooo_z Mine has ATI/AMD GPU, but the issues are the same. Yes, this was the last drop for me, Apple messing with UI design was bad, but failing hardware was it. There was a brief period of me trying to use Windows (hence the Lumia), but now I'm back to using mostly FOSS stuff like I used to.
It's still a nice laptop: quad core i7, 16 gigs of RAM and a nice 1920x1200 display. Linux makes it easy to disable the dGPU and use the built-in one, it runs just fine.

@m0xee I've been Windows all my life, really. I had a friend around middle/high school who showed me the OS X light (his dad was loaded, so he even got a G5 in his room on release, in 8th grade 😳). Once I dipped a toe in the Linux world, though, I knew I'd be waist deep eventually 😅

@gordoooo_z PowerPC Macs are the best! I still have my G5 tower, it's mostly useless now — I only turn it on to update software a bit and tinker, but I still like this computer. It dual boots Void Linux and Mac OS X (in case I'm up to some old Mac games) now.
And MacMini G4 also running PowerPC port of Void hosts my Pleroma instance and some other stuff.

@m0xee man I would love to get my hands on a G5. Probably not the liquid cooled ones though. Too much of a ticking time bomb, but not owning any Apple devices atm, there are a few more affordable ones with more retro appeal I'd probably hop on first. I really want to get an iMac G3, and I keep seeing eMacs show up on FB Marketplace, usually for under $100.

Not going to pretend that I'm not tempted by the stack of cheesegrater Mac Pros someone is selling for $99/ea, but not quite...