NebLem

Linux Mint and PopOS are usually listed as friendly distros and are derivatives of Ubuntu without Ubuntu controversies like Snap. Mint even has an alternative direct Debian base skipping some Ubuntu packages, so might be ironically closer to old Ubuntu in that flavor.

If you’re open to going non-debian, Manjaro is often sold as the more user friendly Arch. (Edit - a recent Manjaro controversy has people recommending EndeavorOS instead for an Arch wrapper. I’ve not tried that one myself).

Debian or Arch aren’t bad to use directly either and are far more newbie friendly than they were a decade ago even if not as out of the box opinionated as their derivatives.

In addition to Joplin, Logseq is really great too, though with more of a text-first, outline based, zettle approach.

If public transport mapping is your goal, it might make sense to try out the MapComplete Train Station https://mapcomplete.org/stations and Bus Routes https://mapcomplete.org/transit themes which give an easier, more focused, mapping interface. Quest apps like Street Complete can also make getting into OSM a bit easier, though OSM Beginners Guise is great too. https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Beginners'_guide

Yes! https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Public_transport though it is a bit complex to fully add routes, adding stops is super easy!

Ready Player One

On the microblogging side of the fedi, “fedihire” and “jobalert” hashtags seem to be frequently used for job postings, and “getfedihired” and “jobsearch” for those posting that they are looking.

I’ve never heard if it either but I too am not on TikTok and I use ad-blockers nearly everywhere.

OpenStreetMap’s platform is the only real way to compete against Google and Apple and it’s why Microsoft even though it has Bing Maps, has licenced to them resources like satellite imagery for mapping. It’s awesome in bigger population areas but there’s still a lot to map in rural places outside the EU.

Review is harder. Right now the leading open platform afaik is Open Reviews (aka Mangrove Reviews) which has tie-ins to OSM projects like MapComplete. OsmAnd and OrganicMaps have open tickets to hook into that ecosystem. You’re right about the userbase problem though, I think it (or a successor) needs AP federation to really take off. That being said there’s several active non-Google nonfree alternatives like Yelp and TripAdvisor as well as niche sites for things like camping, parks, and schools.

Neocities is trying to be a modern reincarnation https://neocities.org/

Tilvids.com, maketube.net, urbanists.video, spectra.video are a few

You can’t turn pictrs off as a configuration setting?

Can CSAM distributors use it as a test suite for workarounds?

Edit: first draft was too declarative where I meant to pose the thought as a question.

What would your preferred frequency be?

One of the new weekly special creations at my local ice cream shop. It changes every week, but I like trying the new flavors they create.

It’s not so much the instances but the communities that are important on Lemmy, unlike most of the fediverse. If your community’s instance is federated with the big instances, it helps get people to your community either way if the post shows as a link on the bigger instance or the host instance. Hopefully crawlers will eventually add some smarts so we link the host instances eventually too.

Yeah that really made it hard to convince normies to use it. Have you found a similar replacement that does e2e privacy if both using the software and sms/rcs as a backup if not?

Most of the others were Emacs related. I’m sure someone on here is even using the new emacs client lem to read this comment.

Wine and crossover can probably meet the needs of most of your windows app needs at this point, which realistically aren’t a lot if you look into it, and keep a windows vm / cloud instance handy. Why not try a vm of Linux on your windows machine (or use WSL) to get your toes in the water to see if your assumptions are still correct today?

Follow your friends, check out your instance’s federated feed and follow some people there (if you aren’t self hosting), follow some tags, and follow a trending bot like @popularposts@masto.ai

I haven’t hooked up posting from my domain yet, but I understand this is an alternative to using an AP plugin or https://fed.brid.gy/ . Seems pretty slick if you want to tie your primary identity into a mastodon server, though I guess in theory this approach could work with any AP platform that has a similar API. Probably the best use case would be if you don’t fully self-host your own blog.