synesthesia [they/them]

Take a look at Microsoft's MakeCode Arcade. Don't know about libre, but it is open source and you can host it yourself, if you want. Although, the officially hosted version is free to use too.

It's like Scratch, but geared specifically towards making video games. What's cool is that you can run the games on a variety of hardware, including handhelds under $50. Or build your own.

I haven't had a chance to teach using Arcade myself, but I can vouch for MakeCode for micro:bit, which is based on the same platform.

Depends on what you mean by "operating systems". NT, Darwin, and Linux kernels have not been replaced, true. But an operating system is not just the kernel. There have been many different changes underneath the hood that are not as evident to non-technical users as UI revamps. I won't speak for Windows, but Linux saw many innovations both in kernel-space and in user-space, for sure. For example, systemd, Wayland, and PipeWire.

Then there's Fuchsia, which is not only a different OS, but a completely new kernel.

That may be your own main reason, but Linux on the desktop has a lot going for it, besides just privacy.

That being said, it's disingenious to say that Linux with provide your with privacy. This is only true if your particular install does not include any proprietary software and you yourself trust it to respect your privacy. As soon as you install Chrome, Steam, or Discord, for example, you immediately have a program on your computer that collects different kinds of telemetry and calls home, regardless whether it's running on Linux or not. And even if you installed a distro that is built on FOSS, remember how one version of Ubuntu used to send all your dash searches to Amazon through a Canonical proxy? Yeah.

The best tool to counteract spyware is to be mindful of what you're doing.

Aside from Deepin, there's Ubuntu Kylin that is a spin of Ubuntu specifically for China. Ubuntu itself is commonly recommened for beginners, so you can't really go wrong with it.

As for specific programs, there is now an easy way to get most popular proprietary programs as "snaps" via the built-in store. An alternative, more techincal way of adding more software that's not in the repositories is by adding extra repositories called PPAs, manually.

Before installing anything you can create a "live USB" and run Ubuntu off a USB flash drive, poke around, and even install and try out some software. All without making any changes to your computer.

Ironically, it is heavily optimized in spite of this. For example, JS arrays are sparse, but runtimes like V8 optimize them to be packed, if possible (if the array contains only integer indices and no holes). Integers also stay integers, if the runtime is fairly confident that they won't suddenly become floats. Moreover, if the runtime finds out that some JS objects don't change their shape (i.e. have the same properties and their inferred types), their relative addresses are cached, so the runtime doesn't need to look them up every single time.

Take a look at WebGPU, which can be used from wasm. It's an upcoming standard, but we also have had WebGL since forever.

That's true, but it does matter for medical equipment, which the op mentioned.

There is! It's called WASI and it's being standardized.

Otherwise, there's nothing stopping you from making Electron apps with wasm right now, of course.

What does it matter if it performs well or not, when it doesn't even have separate types for an integer and a float.

That's beside the point, but mobi and azw3 of it are roughly the same.

This thread has a transfer size of around 1 MB, which is a little bit more than a Das Kapital epub. A similar lobste.rs thread would be of around 30 KB. None of them have ads.

Everyone already pointed you to Ubuntu or some flavor of it, but I also want to add that you will have a chance to play around with any flavor of Linux (Ubuntu, Kubunu, Mint, etc) before you commit to it. When you make a Linux USB stick, it'll boot into a desktop environment that's very close to the real thing. So before you click "install" you can actually try out stuff. Click around, launch a bunch of programs, etc. All without any permanent changes to your computer. If you don't like it, reboot back to Windows and flash a different Linux flavor to your USB stick. Pick and install the one you like.

are you just allergic to making this even a little user friendly?

Quoting the wiki:

Whereas many GNU/Linux distributions attempt to be more user-friendly, Arch Linux has always been, and shall always remain user-centric. The distribution is intended to fill the needs of those contributing to it, rather than trying to appeal to as many users as possible. It is targeted at the proficient GNU/Linux user, or anyone with a do-it-yourself attitude who is willing to read the documentation, and solve their own problems.

People install Arch knowing it's a DIY distro and get disappointed because they need to DIY. It's weird.

Did you wake up tho or are you still in the FPS game? Hmm.

Which software though? PPAs are not just for extra software, they're also for latest software. Then there's Flatpak and Snap.

I assume, end users care about specific latest software, not latest versions of everything, including the kernel or pulseaudio or whatever else core component that requires active maintenance. For example, if a vendor pushes a faulty update to linux-firmware, you may need to manually deal with hardware failures. That's probably not the nice kind of latest software. :)

The EndeavourOS Linux distro has a new ISO release to give you guys an up-to-date installation medium in case you want to use Arch Linux but don’t want to go through its complex installation process.

This sounds great, but the reality is that to use Arch you have to install Arch. Arch-based distros and Arch installers are explicitly not supported by Arch maintainers and Arch forums. More importantly, Arch wiki instructions and update guidelines in Arch news may not work for a specific Arch-based distro or installer, because of side-effects from pre-configuration done by the distro/installer.

Why would you want to use Arch anyway, if not to deal with OS maintenance? Is it for AUR? But Debian's PPA system is just as rich, so why not go with a Debian-based user-friendly distro.

Don't know about the state of EGLStreams in major DEs, but wlroots maintainers don't seem to like it that much.

it needs to die so better free software orgs can take the spotlight instead

Which ones do you think are likely contenders?

Someone did make such a protocol! It's called Gemini and it's great. Although, it might be too minimalist for some.

Honestly, who knows? Not me. :)

But I do know that even though Chromium is an open-source project, Google still makes most of the decisions. There's the engine part and there's an actual browser also referred to as Chromium. The Chromium browser is Chrome sans branding and proprietary parts of Chrome. However, it still makes use of Google services and will call home depending on which features you have turned on.

Vendors can decide to skip on some of Google's stuff when building on top of Chromium components. Electron seems to not use any of it by default, even though it can, if an app vendor decides to do so.