Don’t do this, just run a Linux distro if you don’t run anything that’s vendor-locked to Windows by DRM.

Your least friction option to switch to assuming you’re already on Mint, will be LMDE.

Also, what if MS or the government starts getting hostile and taking down Linux and other FOSS repos they don’t like?

Well, Mint could just fall back to LMDE if Ubuntu starts going in the same direction as RHEL and starts account-walling their source code and blocking redistribution under the penalty of an account ban, but I don’t know about other Ubuntu clones.

What if said manufacturers are funding this legislation so they can get it through as an opportunity to lock printers down? And what if this extends to 2D printers/scanners, and even software/devices in general?

It’s going to be hard to completely kill off the Fediverse unless you block all ways in which it can be hosted, to include meshnets and the dark web.

On top of that, it’ll be really hard if not impossible to kill protocols which by their design are independently governed and completely open like ActivityPub and compatible protocols; it’ll be easier to kill ATproto because it has a centralized plc.directory ledger which if that gets taken out, the entire protocol goes down with it, that and even if you self-host a PDS, you still have to interact with Bsky corporate’s centralized infrastructure at some point, where with ActivityPub, each instance is independent of the other.

Windows is already KYC’d by default since consumer Windows requires an MS account and setting up an MS account requires your birthdate.

Assuming PCs don’t get wiped out as a platform first, which between AluminumOS being a thing and parts being made intentionally scarce and expensive, I wouldn’t be shocked if that happens.

Can’t control what people do with their PCs? Just kill PCs as a platform in favor of thin clients tied to cloud subscriptions that you can control or glorified Android phones.

You want a weaker version of the AGPL, that’s what the GPL is.

From my understanding in terms of strength between the three, it’s:

LGPL (weakest) > GPL (middle of the road) > AGPL (strongest)

I’m personally running Artix with runit and things are fine so far, but as ChrisG pointed out, dinit is basically a drop-in replacement for systemd syntax-wise.

Although if you’re on Artix, you’ll need to enable Arch’s [extra] and [multilib] repos or you’ll run into dependency issues on some apps due to some packages not being available in the main Artix repos. I learned this when trying to install steam-native-runtime, there were some Python deps which weren’t available in the main Artix repos, but that were available in the Arch repos, if I’m remembering right.

Also, I recommend enabling the unofficial [liquorix] repo in order to get a newer kernel with more frequent updates than what Artix provides in their repos, eg. the default and zen kernels in the Artix repos lag a bit behind the lqx kernel from the [liquorix] repo, and I still recommend enabling [chaotic-aur] as a convenience repo on any Arch distro.

I also switched to MATE from KDE out of concern that KDE could end up following GNOME’s path after SDDM is deprecated, plus I just wanted a lighter and different desktop, that and MATE’s default two-panel layout is completely usable from stock although you might wanna set the panels to auto-hide to maximize screen space.

It’s protestware.

There’s also going the Ageless route and making protestware.

That’s what Ageless already does, so maybe Artix could implement that officially in their distro by what you’re suggesting?

Alt-init distros exist but it’s only a matter of time before either they’re screwed or age-gating goes down to firmware or hardware level.

I hope the alt inits or even the hardware itself aren’t targeted next.

Man, the payment processors got bored with NSFW and they’re attacking free software now?

No, or at least I hope it don’t. DOS never had user accounts to begin with as it was always single-user, or at least the variants everyone is familiar with (MS-DOS, PC-DOS, DR-DOS, FreeDOS). There was a short-lived Multiuser DOS sold by Novell, but none of us on this thread have probably ever even seen it in the wild let alone heard of it outside of a wiki page.

The only way you could’ve locked others out of your DOS PC back when that platform was relevant, was to physically lock them out of turning your PC on while you were away, to which there were multiple keyed power switch locks to do exactly this sold, and even then, this only applied to either the original 5150, XT, or AT, or clones thereof which used the original-style PSU with the big switch on the side of the case, as outside of physically locking people out of your PC with a power switch lock, there was no user control back then.

Oh, an addendum to this, the original AT also had a keyboard lock built in so you could also straight-up disable the keyboard if you were away and lock others out that way, in addition to installing a power switch lock on the side. Basically, the only form of user control you had in the DOS era was a physical lock of some kind, as you have no user accounts to lock out to begin with on that platform.

Not to mention permissive licensing legally allows a project to go closed-source, effectively rugpulling its userbase, with no recourse.

I keep pushing this as an example, but imagine Bluesky corporate closed-sourcing ATproto and paywalling third-party and self-hosted PDSes once they run out of VC funding and need to start turning a profit somehow, since ATproto is permissively licensed rather than being copyleft licensed, they could do that.

By contrast, copyleft licenses ban this type of rugpulling and GPL3 calls out and bans tivoization (what RH does with the RHEL EULA) by name.

They make their own ARM silicon for datacenters, hypothetically they could just scale that down for consumer devices and there’s your vertical integration.

Conversely if Apple ever wants to enter the datacenter market, they could scale their M-series silicon up to meet that industry’s demands as well.

Windows will probably become a thin client/cloud OS as MS is already making moves in that direction with Windows 365 thin clients that were recently announced, and the fact that Win12 could be subscription-based.

I could easily see MS phasing out local Windows installs altogether in favor of a lower consumer-oriented Windows 365 subscription tier tied to the cheapest thin clients possible at some point.