Plus why put this here instead of in the NSFW instance they came from?

Lol glad to hear it!

Are you alive today lol

I’m using Voyager. I can zoom in on the image

How do you pronounce Wafrn?

Also in terms of games…I know Steam compatibility is supposed to be great, but if you use other platforms, you might run into some issues. Most of my library is in the Epic Games store (I know, terrible to admit this online…but they give you a lot of free shit), and I just could not get it to work at all the last time I tried Linux (maybe 6ish months ago).

Whenever I try switching to Linux, there is always something that doesn’t work right and takes forever to finagle with to fix if it’s even possible. I’m primarily a Linux Mint fan (daily drove it on my aging desktop until it died of old age a few years back), but I’ve also dabbled in a few other noob-friendly distros like Ubuntu (was really into it when everything was still orange and brown lol) and Pop OS.

Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love using Linux to breathe new life into older systems, but it just isn’t a good option for me personally if my device hasn’t gotten sluggish yet.

As an example, I have an aging laptop that started blue screening a bunch. It doesn’t support the Win 11 upgrade due to it’s processor not meeting minimum specs. So I thought it was finally time to see if Linux would improve it.

First of all, I had a hell of a time installing various distros without having them boot to a black screen after installation completes. Took absolutely forever to finally sus this out on the various distros I tried. Then I find that the couple extra buttons on my basic Logitech mouse don’t work. These are essential buttons for me that I use constantly. I go through a million troubleshooting steps before finding out that it’s a Wayland issue, so I switch back to Xorg and everything is cool. But then I start running into lag issues which never occurred on my Windows install. I also tried playing some games I had in my Epic Games library. I could not for the life of me get it to work, no matter which platform I tried. I get that Steam has better Linux compatibility, but not all of us have all of our games on Steam.

Finally got tired of the whole ordeal and switched back to Windows. Did a bit more troubleshooting and seemed to have resolved the blue screen issues and now it seems to work perfectly and much better out of the box than Linux. It’s not an old enough device a Linux refresh to be worth it yet.

I get that Lemmings are die hard Linux fans, and I think Linux has some fantastic use cases…but for many users it actually isn’t a good alternative. I find it works best when you want to breathe new life into older hardware or if you have every component specifically built to work for a particular Linux distro. But when basic features don’t work properly without hours of troubleshooting (if you can ever get them to work at all), it’s a little hard to just recommend it to your average Joe whose Windows/Mac computer works just fine.

This “everything just works” Linux experience a lot of people talk about on Lemmy/Reddit has absolutely never been my experience, even though I’ve been a casual Linux fan for over a decade now. Meanwhile, I’ve had the opposite experience with Windows (unless you’re talking really old Windows versions like Win XP and older).

I was staring at it a minute confused because it looked like warfarin to me lol

God I can’t stand servers that are Nazis for that. Guess what…natural conversation will change topics over time. I’m sorry I can’t keep up which of your 100 channels I need to jarringly break away from the convo and hop into whenever the topic even remotely, slightly drifts from what it started with. Discord channel Nazis don’t understand how human conversation works.

Lemmynsfw.com is where the bulk of them come from. I have probably 100 communities blocked from them and it has helped a little bit, but the sheer volume of communities popping up out of there is incredibly hard to keep up with. It only helps so much.

Is your instance defederated with lemmynsfw.com or something (I think there is one more instance for yiff stuff too, but they were smaller and easier to block)? That’s where the bulk of the porn comes from. I try block individual communities when they pop up in my all. but the sheer volume is hard to keep up with.

All is inundated with porn. Until they allow instance blocking for users, it’s incredibly hard to wade through to find new communities you’re interested in. Turning off NSFW in your settings isn’t a great solution because many of us still want to look at NSFW topics/discussions/memes.

To clarify, I don’t have an issue with porn. I just don’t want it on my front page. If I wanted to look at porn, there are plenty of sites dedicated to that already. I’m here for discussion, memes, and cool things.

My man, you’re not supposed to snort the toner powder

And when you need to block ads on a friends phone? roku tv? android tv? apple tv? iphone or ipad? android phone or tablet?

I’m not understanding why I would want to try to block ads on a friend’s phone unless they asked me how to get rid of them. But for the other stuff, it’s super easy.

On a PC: Install any random adblocker your browser allows. Most browsers have an addon or extension store that you can go it with only a few clicks and install one quickly and hassle free. Once you install it, there is no setup required and no maintenance or fiddling required.

On Android phones: Install YouTube Revanced. It’s an app. You have to download and install I believe two apps. You don’t have to root your phone or do anything special at all. Just download and install and forget about it for the next several years.

On Android based Smart TVs (Chromecast, Fire Stick, etc.): Install SmartTube. It’s as easy as downloading and installing a single app. You don’t have to root your device. It’s incredibly simple and no more complicated than downloading almost any other random app. There is no complicated setup, configuration, or maintenance. Just download and install and forget about it for the next several years.

So there you go. It’s not complex at all. A non root installation of two to three simple apps (plus an adblocker that you should have on your browser anyway) has all of my devices set for literally anywhere on the planet I can go. You’re really exaggerating how complicated it is and how often you need to install a new app or how often it breaks (maybe once every 5 or so years you install a different easy to install and use app).

I will admit, iOS stuff is a little trickier. I don’t personally own any iOS devices, but I think it does make it a bit more complex to install adblocking apps on them. So I suppose if you only have iOS devices I could see why you choose to skip this stuff. It’s doable, just more involved. On Android, you literally download, install, and just go and are totally set for multiple years.

Sure, pi hole can work, until you leave the house. Some phones can be rooted to use an adblocker, but that’s not practical for everyone. You can use DNS blocking, but that means all of your traffic is tunneled through a random DNS you can hopefully trust.

I have heard of pihole, but I don’t believe it’s a common solution. This part I agree with you…it’s overly complex and you need a lot of tech knowledge to set something like that up and maintain it. Couple that with the downside of it literally only working at home and I don’t really understand why people go this route.

It’s just a lot. It’s possible, but you really need to manage it and keep it working. When a solution is killed, you gotta find a new solution.

You really, really don’t need to constantly manage all of this stuff to keep it working. And it’s really not complex at all. It’s as easy as downloading and installing one or two apps or installing one adblocker extension to your browser. Then you forget about it. There is zero maintenance involved. Maybe once every 5 years you might have to install a different app, but there is no advanced skills needed and there is no maintenance needed. Things do not constantly break and need maintenance. I don’t do any maintenance and nothing just randomly kills itself.

YouTube aside, I have no idea how anyone can find browsing the internet at all tolerable without an adblocker extension on their browser. Are you not inundated with ads on every site that is not YouTube? Do you just deal with intrusive ads everywhere else?

I’ve rarely ever had issues with adblockers. Install one and it works totally fine for multiple years until you might need to install a new adblocker.

It’s weird how people are fine paying for Netflix, Hulu, CrunchyRoll, Twitch, etc, but draw the line at YouTube, the platform that has infinite more content and actual value.

I see your point, but I think there’s a psychological reasoning behind this.

YouTube in its early days ONLY had a free option whereas services like Netfix have always only had a paid option.

YouTube in its early days certainly had a ton of ads, but they were non-obtrusive. Things like banner ads and ads on the side of the video. Then slowly, they added in-video ads. Iirc it started out only as a single pre-roll ad, but in its current form it has devolved into multiple pre-roll ads and an ungodly amount of imcredibly jarring and obtrusive mid-roll ads that violently break up the content you are consuming. YouTube then has the gall to say that if you want to consume the platform how you used to, you have to shell out money. YouTube hasn’t added anything with its subscription service. Instead it wants you to pay them money to return the service to the usability it had prior.

Discord Nitro has a subscription feature that ads something. They didn’t take away say, the ability to voice chat, and lock a feature it used to have for free behind a paywall.

We can also examine Spotify with this. Unlike YouTube, Spotify has always had both a free tier and a paid tier. The free tier has between song ads and the paid tier has always had no ads. It’s less jarring to have to pay for something if it has always been there. Imagine also if Spotify started putting ads in the middle of a fucking song and forced you to pay to remove them even though there never used to be ads in the middle of a song.

Tl;Dr - A twofold issue. 1. YouTube sort of shot itself in the foot in a way by not starting out with a paid tier. 2. YouTube did not really ad anything with premium, but instead is making you pay to use the service as you used to be able to for free. Obtrusive in-video ads are cancer and one of the worst types of ads.

Adblockers, ReVanced, SmartTube, etc. No ads and no fee.

I am also curious as to why someone would do this

I am similar with my laptop. I keep all desktop icons hidden because it looks clean and great.

With my phone, I only use the bottom quick launch row for icons.

Yeah I used RIF for 99% of my Reddit browsing. Once I logged onto Reddit on my PC and found some months old chat comment for someone that was requesting help with an experience I had. I felt bad about not seeing it because I genuinely would have given them a comment on it sooner if they would have just PMed me.