might be worth it for me honestly. I’m increasingly tempted to switch to LDE again

Me too. It’s one of the two biggest reasons I’m currently on Cosmic.

I’ve grown to love the tiling on Cosmic. If there’s a way to get something similar on KDE, then there’s I’m almost certainly switching back to KDE.

I feel like so much LLM-generated code is bound to deteriorate code quality and blow out of the context size to such an extent that the LLM is eventually gonna become paralyzed

For my desktop PC, it felt just as easy as any other distro, but for my servers and especially for my SBCs, a pain.

On NixOS I just copy and pasted like 2-4 lines of recommended configuration and applied it. The driver was then automatically downloaded and installed and I haven’t had to touch it since.

I come back every year or so and play for a month or two each time, still haven’t spent money on it (but starting to think I should, to support the devs)

I feel like I’ve been seeing more posts and comments though, and looking at those, they seem to still be rising (although probably influenced by bots).

I wonder if the spike of active user may be caused by people first trying it out (then giving up), followed up by people making several accounts on different instances before settling for one or two.

Agreed. I haven’t been on an instance that federates with them yet and I’d like to keep it that way.

What’s cool about the fediverse is that we get to choose.

Do I want to be in an instance that federates with everyone, good and bad?

Pros:

• More content.
• Potentially insightful debate.

Cons:

• More negativity.
• Potentially giving a platform to extremists.

Or do I want to be in an instance that defederates on a whim?

Pros:

• More positive content.
• Taking a strong stance against extremism.

Cons:

• Less content.
• Potentially missing insightful debate.

Personally, debate I’ve had that was insightful was generally in good faith to begin with, and would be allowed on platforms like Beehaw, so I don’t see much use for “anything goes” kinds of platforms. Additionally, I’m not always in the mood for debate. I can just switch between different instances depending on my mood. Given that everyone can choose their instance, I don’t see much of a reason for trying to federate with everyone.