Maybe some AI crawlers started to honestly report Linux instead of Windows as they possibly did before? Otherwise such a quick spike is hard to explain (unbelievable). Or did I miss any big news lately?

//I’m on Linux in the last 15 years and I don’t even care that much about what unrelated to me people use, although I always do help fellow Linux-ers when I encounter them in the wild.

Good starting point would be to focus on projects hosted on codeberg. Their official policy since recently is human-first. (The rules are detailed though, I don’t want to over-simplify. But very reasonable and vibe-coded stuff is definitely out of the window.)

My personal basic tools for learning:

• man bash. That’s the documentation for everything. It’s very careful and serious though, so sometimes you need…
• Search in internet if you think your particular question is very “repeatable”. Stackoverflow used to be good, but now they’re all “AI AI AI by the way have you heard about AI?”. So I’m not recommending it anymore. For “advanced bash” there are pages that go over those “advanced topics”, too!
• Run shellcheck to read your code and give suggestions/warnings. It’s a great tool for learning, too, besides the primary goal of reviewing code to be production-ready.
• Sometimes, with extreme care, ask an LLM to review your code or give siggestions. It tends to hallucinate a lot, makes up wrong and unexisting stuff, but sometimes it’s useful, too. Especially at finding bugs. Again, it can be useful, but use with care. Oh, and it can actually be great at explaining, too. Throw it some syntax/code and it’ll explain wtf is going on. This part is very reliable and good.

At my current level of experience I need mostly man bash, and occasionally all of the rest. Before I used a lot of stackoverflow and simply thinking of what I even want.

Has anyone [of Lemmy/fediverse people here] independently confirmed the numbers? I’m not an investor though, just curious.

Hey, yeah, shit like that happens in life. The jokes about that from your friends are understandable but inconsequential. After all, you probably love Linux not because everything is plug-and-play here, but because it’s free and customizable (and you can set up a lot of things to be plug-and-play, too, if that’s what you want).

By the way, heads-up on connecting Android phones for file exchange: those require the MPT driver, too. Some distros/desktop environments ship it out-of-the-box, some don’t.

And last thought from a social angle. With experience of using Linux and talking with other people in the last ~18 years, I would recommend not to advertise Linux, to yourself or to others, as a system that “can do everything that Windows can”. That’s just not true. Some stuff Windows can do that Linux cannot, some stuff Linux can do that Windows cannot. For me it worked best to get people interested in Linux if I:

• Don’t push hard. I answer any inquiries eagerly, but I leave people the space to stay where they are. If they believe something is really good for them, I let them have it. Good advertising moments come themselves when people themselves note that they’re actually lacking something.

• I teach, and more rarely do I just do something directly. I’ve noticed this keeps people engaged longer. “Don’t give the fish, teach how to fish”.

• Sometimes it’s fun to share the awesome things you can do in Linux. And many people don’t know that all the routers, Android phones and servers are near-100% Linux. Learning that impresses them and seems count towards “good reputation” for the system in their eyes, too. (And it’s a true fact.)

I’ve noticed that *not using* youtube for a while gets you ublocked, too. Which is only good, if you think about it. Most often (even if not always), your days will get a bit healthier, and the lifting of the block is only a bonus when you really need that rare video, too.

I haven’t found other solutions or tricks; nor have I tried after I’ve realised that this one works. I take it as a “hint” from google, to get away from the screen (YT) for a few days.

I’ll skip discussions about my persona. But most certainly golf courses or video games have orders of magnitude lower impact on electricity and watee than worldwide LLMs (mostly in datacenters).

Currently, LLMs impact on electricity usage and fresh water usage across the world is HUGE.

The painful part to me is the choice on where to put the stress. Which areas to highlight and talk about.

Yes some weak LLMs can use comparatively little electricity. Yes some other industries use electricity, generate CO2 and consume fresh water, too. But the existence of other problems, to me, does not mean that eco impact of LLMs should be swept under the rug.

There are other questions

Not sure if that’s really _acknowledging_ the problem.

Nice to see progress!

(Makes me happy that my small humble donation was probably used for reaching actual goals, too.)

I was trying to understand if I need to read the post in detail, but your comment helped me, thank you.

I will most certainly not read stuff from a person who judges people by their native language.

Grok this grok that…
I’m sorry, but ***k grok. Stop posting about it.

disroot is quite decent. I like their (privacy) vibe and the set of semi-independent services they provide.

Yeah that’s a great idea! I use that too. An encrypted USB drive makes sure you can trust the data not leaking, and spaced repetition can (should) be practiced to memoize the password. Then you’re good I’d say.

Technically KeePass can “merge” and has some sort of conflict resolution, but you’re right that forgotten and unaddressed conflicts can lay around for unlimited time without you noticing. It’s the main problem with keepass + syncthing.

It’s a bit sad that you’re downvoted so hard. You obviously have good intentions, just not having a good grasp yet if I may be frank. The solutions in this post are what you should follow IMO. In short, USB thumb/hdd drives with your important data. Encrypt the whole USB if your devices are under Linux if you wish. Use a proper password manager like KeePass to secure it additionally, with a strong master password of course.

Wrong question. It doesn’t matter who was “first”.

If the first group stops, the problem is gone.
If the second group stops, the problem is not gone but likely growing.

Fully agree on this one 🤝
The feedback loop is real and powerful

I’m not. As I said, I think people have varying degrees of education. I’m not separating between “us” and “them” in terms of education. I don’t make generalised statements of what happens on a global scale without good research into the subject either.

But simple things such as “we need to make education a social priority” is within my reach.

but people are uneducated

So you’re not? OK, as you say.

I’m not subscribing to such statements, personally. I see varying levels of education around, and I see my job as educating when I can, learning when I can.