Kirk

Just to be safe you may want to copy important files to a cloud storage AND usb drive before formatting the drive.

Also don't overthink this and there is nothing wrong with Kubuntu, but Kinoite is going to be very similar and a little more resistant to n00b tinkering mistakes.

I agree, like I said I fully own that I was being pedantic over definitions.

Yeah absolutely, and woo pedantry that's on me for oversimplifying. I do recall reading (I can't find it right now) an essay where he said that "enshittification" as he describes it can happen in any situation where an entity has trapped both consumers and businesses but that it's more common with tech companies because they move faster than regulations do.

things simply getting worse doesn’t fit my understanding,

fwiw I totally agree but if I may play an uno-reverse-pedantry card on you, Cory has said he doesn't care if someone uses the word to simply mean "gets shitty".

As long as we agree that the term "enshittification" describes a failure of capitalism (and not it's "MO").

I know Cory Doctorow (who coined the term) has said that he doesn't mind if people use the term "enshittification" to simply mean "product gets worse", but the definition he gave it specifically refers to anti-capitalistic practices (what he calls "technofeudalism").

"Enshittificiation" as described by Doctorow hurts businesses too. "Capitalism" definitionally implies the presence of a competitive market. "Enshittification" (like you said nothing new) describes what happens when a market is no longer competitive because it controlled by a single entity (monopoly). "Enshittification" happens when the government stops enforcing laws that protect free markets and allow capitalism to break down.

Sorry for being a pedant but I see those words gets thrown around a lot in ways that IMO can muddle the meaning.

I don't think starfleet captains have the authority to command the hearts and minds of their officers.

True, I edited my comment. I personally recommend the USB method (or if you have easy access to the internals- just swapping out an SSD).

It got cloudy

First of all, you are on feddit.nl and cannot speak for"Lemmy". That said- if anything, "Lemmy" users should be supporting independent journalism like 404 Media.

It's to prevent scraping/harvesting by AI: https://www.404media.co/why-404-media-needs-your-email-address/

They do not ask for a phone number.

It takes some doing, but you can live boot windows from a USB drive for those rare instances you need it. You can also just install it to a VM inside Linux (also not easy). But honestly these days the times where you'll NEED Windows are few and far between (and getting fewer and farther).