Absolutely. The tendencies are visible all over the world and there will be grave consequences for all of us. However, there are differences. In Germany for example after the horrors of WW2 the political system was specifically designed to prevent something like this from happening again (ironically the creation of the german constitution was heavily influenced by the US). Which sounds like a good thing at first, but what happened in the last decade was basically this: The right wing parties became stronger at every election and as a result there were coalitions forged between opposing parties to prevent right wing parties from taking over power. And this in term lead to years of standstill in political decision making, dragging down the country, because opposing parties tend to block each others ideas. Which in turn made the right wing even stronger, because they now had someone to blame for the resulting mess. Germany and by extension Europe as well have a lot of bureaucracy, which on one side gives a bit of a shield against hostile takeovers, but has a downside of inefficiency in acting to protect democracy too. It's not looking too good, but Trump's habit of pissing off his allies might have a net positive effect of uniting people against this bullying and encouraging them to get their shit together. But I think it's to early to tell. Could as well sway in the other direction and produce Trump bootlicking countries like you said.

About surveillance technologies, indeed the possibilities set our current situation apart from when Nazis came to power in the past. It's absolutely crazy to witness how a commercial surveillance industry disguised as ad services (Google/Meta/...) created a monster that makes Orwell's 1984 look like a children's book, and most people still don't even understand the implications in order to realize what they're up against. From a european perspective, there is an upside in that at least for now the EU is actively trying to limit the power of those mega corporations. These processes however are chugging along at snail pace due to the aforementioned bureaucracy. Slow, but steady. Which is at least something.

Sorry for the lengthy reply. It's such a broad topic and there are no easy answers.

It's never as bad as the pessimists think it's going to be

That depends on the timescale you are considering. Most of the people who would tell you otherwise because they were suffering in WW2 are dead by now. If you have spent your entire life in a comparatively stable and safe environment (like I did), you might assume that things can't get that bad.

I think an assumption like that is dangerous, because it gives you a false sense of security

Hello. I'm from Germany and I have bad news for you. If our own history taught me anything, it's this: When there is a critical mass of citizens (including military personnel) who are willing to ignore common societal values and at the same time there is a corrupt justice system which can just bend the law to their will, there is very little in the way to full scale fascism. You guys have the groundwork for this right in front of your face. Your supreme court is only inches away from fulfilling that role and the last election showed that a majority of people are already blindsided enough to wholeheartedly believe the bullshit that they are being fed.

So please don't take this lightly. Democracy is not for granted and it can be taken away. It's a slow process up to a point where things fall in place and then it happens very quickly. In Germany the rise of the Nazis didn't happen over night. Warning signs were there from the first world war on, and the slow erosion of society along with economic factors was a key element. Hitler himself was widely regarded as a loud mouthed clown with little chance to actually accomplish anything.

The erosion part has been going on in the US for decades now. This time, most of the puzzle pieces needed are already in place.

And about the "they are incompetent, it won't be that bad" argument. They don't need competence to break things when they are in power. Breaking things is precisely what these people are looking for. Destruction of democratic values, economic instability, fear, poverty, chaos and social unrest are the key to more power. You just need to look at the designated cabinet positions. Those candidates were specifically chosen to fuck things up in the worst way imaginable. This is not a coincidence. This is a recipe taken right from the fascist's handbook.

You're misinformed and those generalisations are nothing but uneducated hatred. Muslims do not all share the same beliefs, in the same way that Christians have different types of beliefs (like catholic, protestant, Jehovah's witnesses or the Ku Klux Klan) The people you are talking about are a relatively small subset of extremists, which exist in every religion, even in Buddhism.

Btw, I'm not defending any religion here. I'm not a religious person. It's just stupid to label a world religion with 2 billion members as potential terrorists. Most of them are just ordinary people living their daily lives.

You are a victim of right wing propaganda if you forget that.

I'm gonna have to strongly disagree... I have all those health issues, and they keep getting worse, I can't remember the last time I had sex, I've got a massive shiny forehead where hair used to be, and so on. But actually, I am better off today than I was in my 30s and 40s and this is basically due to one reason: I've stopped putting pressure on myself on fulfilling the life that I thought I needed to have. I've spent so much time trying to do the "right thing“, especially as a father, but it turned out that all my worries and all the effort I've put into doing the right thing were unhealthy for me and life had its own plans anyway.

I realized that the world doesn't really care about what I do and that lead to the realization that I can do whatever the fuck I want. So now, the pressure is relieved and I'm trying to focus on things I enjoy doing instead of chasing some life plan. I still have depressive phases, but not caring so much about things that I deemed super important a few years ago has made things much easier. Also I found that people have no power over you if you let them know you don't care. You don't need to pretend to be happy to anyone. You can choose just not to play their game of toxic positivity and enjoy being your own grumpy old self. I definitely do.

I've recently seen some statistics about perceived happiness by age distribution. Turns out, it's sort of an inverted bell curve. People in your age group are feeling significantly worse off because the more positive youth experiences are still quite fresh while you're not ready yet to adequately deal with the downsides of adulthood. This is a kind of midlife crisis. The good news is: It will get better, statistically.

And a more personal note from someone suffering from intermediate depressed states: It might not really help you right now, but there is a soothing realization in that most of the burden you are feeling right now is only in your head. A different state of mind is possible, but you'll have to work on it. The big foggy cloud surrounding your head is not THE reality but your current perception of reality and that can be changed. Sometimes it helps to just get a different perspective, and you'll get to that if you try new things that look even mildly interesting. Get out of your so-called comfort zone (which isn't that comfortable anyway as you know by now) and do little things every day that you haven't done before. Even if the specific things you are trying out might turn out to be a failure, you'll discover other interesting things along the way. A word of warning... Don't let anyone guilt trip you, if you try new things. Your environment usually doesn't want you to change and that can be a problem, because if you change yourself your environment has to deal with that change too. So make sure you find people who support you as a human being, instead of just supporting your role as a good parent, employee or debtor. Also check for yourself if all the things you feel obligated to do have to be done in the exact way you are doing them right now. Maybe there are some adjustments to be made to gain more personal freedom, to get regular breaks from the chore in your daily life.

Good Luck!

Could be snapless in a minimal install, but if you need Firefox, Chromium, Thunderbird or a bunch of other useful stuff they all come as a snap package

Can someone point me to technical/learning resources about NPUs? So far all I have seen is superficial marketing talk and ads. And on top of that, everything existing in the AI/ML sector still seems to require beefy server hardware. So is there any real point to NPUs at all?

I'm in a similar situation. I've used Kubuntu (Ubuntu + KDE) for more than a decade now, and it has mostly worked beautifully. Over the years, memorable problems were a few issues with GPU drivers, GRUB shenanigans and the occasional amateurish KDE UX fuckup. But in general I found the whole experience much better than what I saw on Windows during the time.

However, for a while now Ubuntu is breaking my #1 rule of software products: Do not annoy your users. Every update they are trying to push (and fix) their useless Snap architecture a bit more, and every updates makes things effectively worse. Examples: displaying annoying popups to tell you that Snap app x needs to be updated and that the app has to be closed for that, but not updating it when closing the app, trying to fix that in the latest version by auto installing the latest snap with a popup and progress bar when closing the app (making me wait to turn off my computer till it's finished - I just finished my work and want to go home please), numerous interoperability issues because snap apps run in some kind of sandbox and don't play nice with regular (Debian and Linux) mechanisms, and so on. It's an absolute shitshow, and I think they have now annoyed me, personally, long enough. I need to find something better.

Ah. I just needed that off my chest. Maybe I should give Mint a try

I think OP wants something that also minimizes the "set“ part. Arch is for enthusiasts who like to put a lot of effort into creating their own perfect Linux system. I've tried it once and to be perfectly honest I don‘t want to fiddle around with basic settings if there is no need to. I'm pretty busy with other things in my life and want stuff to work out of the box with sane defaults if possible. It's essential that stuff can easily be customized afterwards though.

Arch is very good for people who want to invest time into learning what goes on under the hood. Perfectly valid use case, but probably not for OP.

Thank you kind stranger

As a non-native english speaker, I don't know what "pegging" means and now I'm too afraid to look it up.