Fuck Empress, however she's right on this specific matter.

I've tried pretty much all the FOSS Lemmy apps I could get my hands on but the experience Sync provides is far superior. I'm an ex Boost user and since I couldn't find Boost for Lemmy I naturally gravitated towards Sync and I'm not looking back.

If music production is your main objective, I would suggest Windows. I do some home recordings as well and have quite a baggage of pluggings and tools that are either unavailable, not compatible or not up to date on Linux (I'm on an Arch based distro). I have Windows and Linux on two separate SSDs for this exact reason. I managed to set up my Linux system in a way where I can work on some projects and got most programs to work one way or another but I always encounter hardware issues that have to do with drivers, especially with some of my older equipment. If you have the the option you can install another drive on youtrlaptop and run both Windows and Linux.

Now, there are folks out there that do music on Linux but there is a lot of work to do to keep things running, especially if you use lots different softwares and pluggins.

At least with cable TV you can get the highest tear subscription with all the channels. With streaming services you have to subscribe to a decent bunch just to have a broad variety of content, resulting in a much higher price than any cable TV subscription.

It's a disaster.

There's people on both sides of the scale here.

I used to pirate stuff because I couldn't afford it or because I prioritized spending my money elsewhere since I could get stuff for free. Then as I got a job, I could afford to pay for lots of things and legal options became more convenient than piracy, so I just stopped pirating.

Now I'm back on the ship because pirating has become more convenient than subscribing to a bunch of different fragnented and anti-consumer services just to access a handful of content.

Some people just want shit for free (which is ok, been there), some others value service and convenience first and foremost.

Not to mention the fact that oftentimes pirated content is just better. DRM free games run better and some work people have put into remastering media in general is outstanding.

I found a collection of the DBZ anime which is color corrected, proper aspect ratio, higher resolution, improved audio (from a different home release with better audio) made by fans for no profit. Even if you wanted to you couldn't purchase that but piracy made it possible.

Unofficial remasters of some old, poorly mastered songs have made a difference for me and I wouldn't be able to enjoy them without resorting to piracy.

If piracy were legal (just the download for personal use, not redistribution), let's pretend for a second. I bet the majority of people wouldn't even be here asking these questions.

"If it's legal then why not". That's how many people think. However the morality aspects still stand and shouldn't be skwed by the legal aspect. When you made the example of pirating indie games, if piracy is legal, people would legally download those games from third party sources, even the people who wouldn't do it if piracy were illegal (like it is in reality).

At that point it'll become some sort of "if I can afford it I will support the studio and buy the game, if I can't I will get it for free because people won't think I'm stealing regardless". Kind of like a donate if you can sort of system some software developers have in place.

In reality nothing prevents the same people from thinking that way right now. It's just the stigma behind pirating even those indie games which is still skewed and dependant by the legal aspect of the situation.

The truth about digital products is that if someone doesn't want to pay for something they won't pay regardless and it doesn't rob anyone else from being able to purchase and downloade the same exact content the legit way. The mistake is seeing pirates as otherwise potential paying customers if piracy wasn't an option.

I don't think piracy needs to be justified because different people have different reasons.

Sure you could argue that you're not actually stealing but creating/downloading a copy of something it already exist. I always found that anti piracy commercial "you wouldn't steal a car" ridiculous as that's not how piracy works.

For example, I do it because I don't agree with how segmented the video streaming industry has become in recent years with this many different services that force you to buy a bunch of subscriptions while continuosly pulling content. Unlike the music streaming industry where all the most popular content (the majority of it) can be found on pretty much every serivce. You could have Spotify or Apple Music, not much difference (if any at all) in content or quality.

When I was a teenager I did it because I couldn't afford to buy any sort of media content and options were limited. Pretty much everyone that owned an MP3 player was pirating music.

Do you know what makes windows great? It just works out of the box with broad driver and software compatibility. Extensive hardware support (Windows 10 runs on any brand new hardware as well as old hardware from 12 years ago). Many professional software applications, such as Adobe Creative Cloud, Autodesk products, and Microsoft Office, are primarily developed for Windows. If you rely on specific professional software, Windows offes better compatibility and support.

Linux offers better security and has a large repository of open source software as well as being very developer friendly. If you're reading this it's thanks to Linux. However switching to Linux isn't a viable option for everyone for the aforementioned points. It surprises me to this day how many smart and tech savvy individuals still can't grasp this concept.

Deliberately using an alternative is a form of protesting.

And it can be, sure, but it's not always the case.

I'm not just using Lemmy until or if Reddit backtracks, I'm using Lemmy because I believe it's the superior platform in many ways and has more to offer. I didn't make an account here in sign of protest, I made one because Lemmy was suggested to me and I'm liking it better than where I came from.

I'm also aware that many users on this platform would go back to Reddit if they backtracked on the API keys.

No point in protesting, we already have a better alternative.

I'm on windows 10, use my PC for work and gaming. The thing with windows is that it works right out of the box, all major softwares are developed for windows in mind. When shit stops working is when you start messing with stuff that isn't your typical "start the PC -> download program -> install -> run the program -> shut off" which is what most users do. Updating the os, softwares and GPU drivers are easy tasks.

It's when you start messing with python or softwares that aren't too mainstream and require a bit more effort that things have the potential to break. Even then, the os itself won't break on you unless you really try. I broke windows a few times in 15 years but it's worth mentioning that I was manually and willingly changing registry keys and messing with a lot of other stuff. Even then most of the time I was able to fix it.

With Linux is different. If you just use the OS for basic stuff like browsing the internet and editing documents you should be fine for the most part (if you choose a user friendly and stable distro like Ubuntu or Mint). The moment you try getting to run niche softwares or something that requires you to manually open the command prompt to change things in order to accomodate what you're trying to achieve, that's where it gets tough for most people. That's how Linux works, it's the user's fault though not the machine's.