I apologize for the semi-driveby comment but hopefully this will help.

I had a boot problem during a laptop fresh install that I kind of understood but just could not solve a couple years back relating to some weirdness with that specific laptop.

I used the boot repair live environment. This is surely not the howto I followed, it’s just the first recent one I found. My recollection was that it wasn’t too hard to sniff my way through, I wasn’t at all sure it had worked, but sure enough it came up fine on the very next reboot.

https://www.debugpoint.com/boot-repair-disk/

100% there are other howtos out there, I have not vetted this one beyond skimming it to see it looked reasonable.

(IIRC you can also boot an Ubuntu live-cd and install bootrepair to that live environment, then use it that way)

Was a Gnome user until Gnome 3.

Since Plasma 5, I use KDE Plasma.

I’m just going to share my unvarnished opinions here, I clearly understand that Gnome users feel differently, and that’s okay.

• Gnome 3 performance was objectively worse on every bit of hardware I tried than Plasma. (Unfortunately I had functional gripes with Plasma 4 so couldn’t use it.)
• The years of faffing about I had trying to be happy with Gnome 3 and trying to use other alternatives until Plasma 5 was ready pretty much convinced me of this:
  • Gnome devs care more about achieving their vision of how a desktop should be used than they do about accommodating users who might feel differently. This is my perception, and it’s a deeply held opinion. No matter how strongly you feel I’m wrong, you aren’t going to change my mind. You can come at me if you want, but it’s going to bear no fruit.
  • KDE devs have a vision, but place nearly equal importance on ensuring their users can make different choices if they choose. If this isn’t true, they do a damn good job of pretending it is, and that’s good enough for me. 🙂
• I’m unhappy with the degree to which it appears the Gnome team has actively worked against the ability for users to easily customize, and with various feature removals that at this point are so far in my past that I probably don’t remember the specific things that pissed me off, but I remember their explanations for feature removals being salt in an open wound every last time I cared enough to investigate their stated reasons.

Plasma 6 does everything I want the way I want. I have loaded it (and Plasma 5) on very low end and very high end hardware and found it performant and functional on both, consistently.

You’ll note I don’t claim it to be the best. There are folks out there for whom the Gnome vision happens to be how they like to work, or who aren’t bothered by whatever hoops you have to jump through currently to customize a Gnome environment, and I’m sincerely happy for those people. For them, Gnome is the best.

There are lots of other DEs and of course tiling WMs exist, but it takes me no time at all to have a fresh plasma install working the way I want my computer to work and looking the way I want it to look, and thus I literally have zero complaints. So for the past few years I haven’t even looked at any alternatives. If there’s ever a time that I don’t find the desktop product itself, and the KDE development team’s approach to desktop development, to be absolutely perfect fits for me, I’ll look elsewhere - but honestly probably not at Gnome.

Edit: Disregard my original reply, updated today and now it works again lol!

It launches for me (and I am in a plasma-wayland session FWIW), and it loads the thumbnails for all videos with no problem. When I click a video as if to play it, it appears to load up the main page for that video complete with play button, but nothing at all happens when I click the play button. Along the way are various api errors from youtube, but I think some of those came in even when things were working for me.

Basically I can get this far for any video:

Thank you! I actually tried setting the invidious options yesterday before making that post, thinking I might need to use that instead of localapi. But as you have predicted, no dice.

Edit - works fine after updating today lol!

Freetube on desktop Linux hasn’t worked for me for a long time - but that doesn’t seem to be the case for most people. Any tips regarding settings? I’d say it’s been at least 3 or 4 months since I could reliably use it.

I’m going with serious societal issue.

Yes. The thing to remember is in many cases you aren’t explaining for the person you are debating with or answering a question for. You are doing it for others who may read the conversation.

I’ve had things brought to light in online discussion change my mind or educate me many times. When I see someone claim these conversations are useless or a waste of time, I just think they are really setting weird criteria for what constitutes a waste of time.

Sure, sometimes I ain’t got no time for that, but other times I do, and I figure the same is true for many others as well.

Not offended, just seemed like you thought I was excusing it. I’m not - just acknowledging it. 🙂

Dude, we’re on the same side in this, I just know what some battles have already been lost.

Fair point!

Right there with you, but there’s no legal expectation of privacy in public, so it’s futile to complain about on that basis. Especially when ring doorbell cams are everywhere already. So the silver lining is a security robot won’t do this.

On the one hand, yes, on the other hand, it’s unlikely to brutalize or kill people for minor offenses, so maybe a win for a public space?

“Sometimes it’d be concerning for your car like someone could take it or something,” White said.

Wow, that couldn’t be a better sentence to highlight the layers of meaning in that comment.

Everyone seems to, except major phone manufacturers. 😡

In that hypothetical I think my comment would stand either way.

Why do all their jackets look three sizes too big?

I mean, something has to counterbalance their headwear.

Whew. OK man. Have a nice day.

Wow what a dodge. It doesn’t matter the extent of the trauma or whether it’s the worst trauma they have had. You are minding your own business, have done nothing wrong, then the cops show up with a random accusation and “need” to put you in cuffs while they determine if you are a threat. Comply or violence. It’s not right.

And I’m saying, even if they are polite, they are polite because I comply. If I don’t really want to be in handcuffs right then - doesn’t matter. If I’ve got an important appointment or was about to leave to pick up my child from school before police arrived to “make sure I’m not a threat” - doesn’t matter.

Your options at that point, even as someone who has done nothing wrong are comply, or expect violence. THAT is inherently traumatic.