Spotify has become my go to option to listen to music and podcasts while on the go.

Over the years, Spotify has become a staple of my daily life. While I still have my favorite music on my laptop's drive, Spotify has become my preferred way to listen to music, and podcasts, on the go.

 

While I do listen to music on the Spotify Linux desktop app, I find that it has become the main way I listen to music and podcasts on my smartphone while I'm on the go. I enjoy more the experience of doing so than having to connect my smartphone to my laptop in order to copy my music library to it. Besides, Spotify gives me far more options to listen to while on the go.

What I like the most about using Spotify on my smartphone, is that I don't have to worry much about filling the memory. I can choose from a far wider library of options than I could otherwise.

In a way, I feel that I can take all my music with me to access at a moments notice. The limits of the amount of music at my finger tips feel almost non existent. While there a few titles that aren't available, the amount is negligible and rather niche, most of the music I love is there for to access when I want to listen to it.

Spotify has become one of those indispensable apps in both, my laptop and my smartphone.

Information overload.

With the amount of information at our fingertips that smartphones, and computers connected to the Internet is easy to get lost the shear available. It has become a question of being able to ask the right questions, not if the information we are looking for is there.

 

The ability to filter out the information out there to find which is relevant, is becoming one of the most important abilities to have to be able to actually function in the modern world. It has become easy to get lost among the sea of information available for any given subject, even not to know what sources to trust.

Feeling overwhelmed with the amount of information bombarding us almost continuously, makes it easy to become numb to it. This can be a problem in the long sun, since it can make it easy for some not be able to access the relevant information for their needs. Without that information, it becomes harder to make the right decision. Which becomes worse when one takes into account that there are people who don't have the tools to know which information is either relevant or valid to be considered.

The problem now, is not if people can find the information they are looking for a particular reason. The problem has become the quality for information they can access to, and if they can actually evaluate it for themselves. Even worse when it is hard when experts are not readily available to help find the relevant information needed.

We are at are a crossroads in history, I've little doubt that we'll get thought it. What worries me is how well is humanity is going to navigate it.

Linux can be used by anyone, given they are given the correct distro for their needs.

Linux has stopped to be just for techies for quite some time now, with distros like Linux Mint and Zorin OS it has become far easier for people with not much technical skills to actually use a Linux distro with ease to do what they do on Windows or macOS. Both Linux Mint, and Zorin OS, come with all the software that most people already uses on Windows, or macOS, or something that can be a direct replacement for what they have been using so far.

Besides, most distros now come with a software store that allows to install with a few clicks the software that doesn't come installed by default. Dropbox, Zoom, and Spotify can be installed quite easily this way. Most distros use either Chrome or Firefox as default, or both can be easily installed via the software store used by the distros.

Since Chrome and Firefox are supported, accessing Disney+, Netflix, or Amazon Prime Video is something you do as you do on Windows or macOS using said web browsers. The same can be said of all the web sites people have become used to accessing using said web browsers.

The only Linux distros that aren't recommended for non techies would be purpose built distros like Kali Linux or SUSE Linux. Both of these distros are purpose built for a specific set of users, so they aren't recommended for use by the general public.

Personally I use Linux Mint, and have been using for the better part of five years, and before that, I used Ubuntu for the better part of a decade. I can recommend both of them to anyone that want a OS that will allow them to browse the Internet, do some light office work using LibreOffice, or use streaming service like Spotify, or Netflix. Even if you have quite a substantial music library, you can use Rhythmbox to manage it with ease.

Linux has become something more people can use without having to be computer experts, specially if the right distro is given to them to use.

The importance of choice of a desktop environment.

One of the things I like the most about Linux, is that the user can pick and choose the desktop environment that works for her/him. When I made the jump to Linux, I Linux distro of choice was Ubuntu using GNOME 2.

Now, Linux Mint using Cinnamon has become my favorite Linux distro. This combination just works for me, and it runs like a charm on all laptops I've installed it on. For while I used Ubuntu with Unity, but when they decided to drop it in favor of a highly customized version of GNOME 3 I decided to move to Linux Mint.

The idea that the user can choose the desktop environment that just works for her/his workflow, is a big benefit. Computers are a tool, an as such users have to be able to make it work according to their needs. The desktop environment they use is one of the most important ones, since its one of the things users interact directly when using a computer.

While the number of desktop environments on Linux have consolidated somewhat over the past five years, there is still enough for users find one that works for them. From lightweight ones like LXQt or Xfce, to ones with power feature sets like KDE or MATE, there is a desktop environment that will have what fits any workflow. Most importantly, they all have some level of customization to fine tune them even more to the particular needs of a particular user.

Desktop environments like GNOME and Cinnamon don't need users to have levels of technical knowledge to customize them. That is one of the main reasons I use the version of Linux Mint that runs Cinnamon, I can set it up easily to look and work to suit my needs without much trouble. I could go deeper into customizing it if I wanted to, but why bother if it already satisfies all my need with little extra work.

It has been a while since Linux can be used by anyone who is willing to give it a try, and the desktop environments have been a big part of that.

Hacking is not bad in itself.

The idea that computer hackers are bad by default is not true. While some hackers are malicious, many hackers are not out to do bad things. Many hackers got into hacking out of curiosity, wanting to know how computers and software work or extend their capabilities.

Hackers have a set of skills that can be used for good or bad, depending on the individual. This is true for anything that people do, skill sets are not good or bad in themselves. Yet, in a world that ever more dependent on computer systems to work, hackers are described as people who are out  to no good by many media outlets.

Yet, hackers can be a force for good. In fact, a good proportion of them use their skills to actually improve computer systems we use. Some by helping patching vulnerabilities in the computer systems, others by finding ways to extend their capabilities, while others help keep systems alive that have been dropped by their original developers.

As computer systems become more important for our daily lives, it would be in our best interest that more people learned to hack in order to keep in check the interest of private companies to control the data that we generate daily. We need to have people who can independently verify what companies say their systems are capable of, and what they do with our data.

Along with hackers with a strong skill set to do so, it is also paramount that open-source software become more prevalent. The software itself shouldn't be what is protected, but the information contained in the software is what should be protected. Most importantly, it is important to understand that just because software is open-source it means that everyone can use it as they want to use it. All open-source licenses have some limits on how the software it covers can be distributed, the ownership of the software, and how derivative works can use the source code and its redistribution.

Most importantly, open-source software development makes harder for companies to hide things on the source code of the computer systems we use, since third parties outside those companies can legally revise the code to make sure that the software it runs actually complies with what its said it does.

Hackers have the skill set and knowledge to make sure IT providers, software developers, and computer system providers, actually do what they say they do.  Governments can use the help of private individuals, and companies, in policing that our computer systems work as intended while staying within the limits of the law. As such, having a thriving hacker culture is beneficial to the general public by keeping tech companies in check.