It's frustrating. I gave up Windows after Windows 7, because Windows 10 had ads. I've switched entirely to Ubuntu Linux. I still have one Windows 7 desktop, and one subnotebook. I suppose I should turn them on to see if they still work.

Even there, Firefox wants me to "log in with my Firefox account" so I can use Pocket or give them my passwords or something. They also made the local bookmarks feature worse some time back, to force the use of Pocket. And Ubuntu keeps updating "snaps" of dubious value.

My phone uses F-Droid and Fennec, and when I got the unlocked phone, I said no to Google and deleted most of their stuff, without ever agreeing to any Google terms. I haven't logged into a "Google account" in years, and the only reason I have one is to update an add-on.

This is a pain. I'm not fanatical about this. I just don't like being pushed around.

I really want to switch to Linux for ideological and control reasons but I'm pulled in two other directions.

Firstly there is the comfy prison of Apple I currently reside in which is fairly friction free if you stay within the rails but costs a kidney to keep going.

Secondly there is the vastly flexible and compatible with weird stuff I use Windows which punches you in the face once a day and treats you badly.

I am at a loss because I am getting older and lazier. I tried to switch to Linux several times over the last 20 years from Windows but it never stuck at the end of the day due to the missing difficult to define "quality" on the desktop which I think (shoot me) that even Microsoft manages to surpass.

The killer though is that I'm using Windows at work on a daily basis due to corporate troll enforcement. Switching back and forth from that to Apple ecosystem is killing me, especially considering the UK keyboard layouts are rather different between both platforms. I'm not even sure I'm happy with Apple because I'm on ARM everything and I can't even fire up an ad-hoc VirtualBox VM like I could on windows and SSH into it to do Linux stuff. And the games are shit. Also getting stuff out of the Apple ecosystem is painful (Numbers / iPhoto / icloud email for example).

Some days I wake up, load a whole custom PC worth of parts into a shopping basket and dream of running windows or linux. But I don't know which one. I'm not even sure I want to leave the comfy prison.

Ugh not sure what the point of that rant was but I'm stuck and don't know which way to go but I'm not happy where I am. Help!

Edit: fine example. So I am editing openstreetmap while writing this infernal rant and the default editor doesn't work properly with safari, nor does it block youtube ads with any adblocker I've used. So I've had to install Chrome just to handle that, which is a PITA because that doesn't work properly with keychain. Then I figure if I use Edge on windows it'll just work, which it will. Even firefox will do that.

I'm superhappy with https://adguard.com/ (https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdGuardForSafari) and haven't seen a YouTube ad in quite some time...