pmk

I'm trying to understand the way Mastodon works. Back in the day I started with IRC and then the many php-based forums and then reddit which led to lemmy. I never used twitter or similar platforms.
My understanding (and this is where I need help) is that all of the above are topic-based, whereas Mastodon is person-based? What I mean is that on lemmy I subscribe to things based on topic and I don't really care about usernames or user profiles, I only care about discussing a topic. It seems to me like Mastodon is the opposite? You follow persons and what they might say about any topic?
Is there something I'm missing here? Are hashtags close enough to sorting it by topic that it works just like a topic based platform? Is this difference inherent or just in my head because I don't understand Mastodon?

... what should we do?
I guess it all depends on how it would be implemented, which is something I have a hard time imagining at this moment. How do you imagine day to day online life in a post-Chat Control EU world? Which ways of communicating would still be private? Is there anything we can do at this point to prepare for the worst outcome?

A video from openSUSE Conference 2024 about using distrobox on openSUSE Aeon.

So, I'm just assuming we've all seen the discussions about the bear.
Personally I feel that this is an opportunity for everyone to stop and think a little about it. The knee-jerk reaction from many men seems to be something along the lines of "You would choose a dangerous animal over me? That makes me feel bad about myself." which results in endless comments of the "Akchully... according to Bayes theorem you are much more likely to..." kind.
It should be clear by now that it doesn't lead to good places.
Maybe, and I'm open to being wrong, but maybe the real message is women saying: "We are scared of unknown men."
Then, if that is the message intended, what do we do next? Maybe the best thing is just to listen. To ask questions. What have you experienced to make you feel that way?
I firmly believe that the empathy we give lays a foundation for other people being willing to have empathy for the things we try to communicate.
It doesn't mean we should feel bad about ourselves, but just to recognize that someone is trying to say something, and it's not a technical discussion about bears.
What do you think?

For example, I'm using Debian, and I think we could learn a thing or two from Mint about how to make it "friendlier" for new users. I often see Mint recommended to new users, but rarely Debian, which has a goal to be "the universal operating system".
I also think we could learn website design from.. looks at notes ..everyone else.

I made this during a time I felt very lonely. Now I don't feel lonely anymore, I feel great (for reasons unrelated to crafting, but still).

Whiteboard pen on random workplace whiteboard.

Felt tip pen on printer paper.

I'm not proposing anything here, I'm curious what you all think of the future.

What is your vision for what you want Linux to be?

I often read about wanting a smooth desktop experience like on MacOS, or having all the hardware and applications supported like Windows, or the convenience of Google products (mail, cloud storage, docs), etc.

A few years ago people were talking about convergence of phone/desktop, i.e. you plug your phone into a big screen and keyboard and it's now your desktop computer. That's one vision. ChromeOS has its "everything is in the cloud" vision. Stallman has his vision where no matter what it is, the most important part is that it's free software.

If you could decide the future of personal computing, what would it be?