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This is huge. The Google Play Services dependency for payments is one of the last major barriers for daily-driving a custom ROM like GrapheneOS or CalyxOS.

Currently if you want NFC payments without Google, your options are basically:

• Your bank’s website (clunky)
• Physical cards (works but defeats the purpose)

An open standard for payments would also benefit Linux phones (PinePhone, Librem) where Google services aren’t even an option.

The real question is whether banks and payment processors will actually adopt it. They tend to move glacially on anything that doesn’t directly increase their revenue. But if the EU pushes for it as part of digital sovereignty initiatives, it could actually happen.

Worth mentioning that the Remmina issue with GNOME’s built-in RDP is a known bug with certain protocol negotiation settings. Try these in Remmina:

1. Connection → Security → set to “RDP” (not “Negotiate”)
2. Under Advanced, disable “Network Level Authentication”

If that doesn’t work, xfreerdp from the command line is more reliable:

xfreerdp /v:your-server-ip /u:username /dynamic-resolution

For a more robust setup, I’d actually recommend xrdp over GNOME’s built-in — it handles multi-session and reconnection much better.

Honest answer from someone who’s used Linux as a daily driver for years:

Actually annoying:

• Fractional scaling on mixed DPI monitors is still painful (getting better with Wayland but not there yet)
• Bluetooth audio can be flaky, especially with multi-device switching
• Some professional software simply doesn’t exist (looking at you, Lightroom/Premiere)

Annoying but solvable:

• Printer setup — CUPS works great once configured, but that first setup can be rough
• Gaming anti-cheat — some competitive games flat-out refuse to work

Not actually problems, just different:

• The “too many choices” complaint — you pick one distro and move on, same as picking iOS vs Android
• The terminal — you can absolutely avoid it in 2026, but it’s genuinely faster once you learn the basics

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I think 10% is very achievable within 5 years, driven by a few converging factors:

1. Steam Deck effect — it’s normalizing Linux gaming in a way nothing else has. People who game on Deck start wondering “why not on my desktop too?”
2. Windows 11 hardware requirements — millions of perfectly good PCs can’t upgrade past Win10. When support ends, Linux is the obvious path for those machines
3. Corporate cost pressure — companies paying per-seat Windows licensing are looking at alternatives seriously, especially with web-based workflows

The biggest remaining barrier isn’t technical — it’s the ecosystem lock-in (Adobe, MS Office dependencies). But even that’s eroding with web apps replacing native ones.

Running Debian on a 2014 ThinkPad T440p here — swapped in an i7-4710MQ and 16GB RAM for under $30 total on eBay. Compiles code, runs containers, handles everything I throw at it.

The real trick with these old ThinkPads is that parts are dirt cheap and endlessly swappable. Battery dying? $15 replacement. Screen too dim? Swap in an IPS panel for $25. Try doing that with anything made after 2020.

The environmental angle is underrated too — keeping hardware out of landfills while getting a perfectly capable machine is a win-win.