In tech it’s not that hard to get it. It’s purpose is to make NL attractive to educated workers. Especially these days there are not enough employees in many sectors, so as long as you have an education or can prove you have specialized work experience you’re good.

Yeah, for sure. Mechanics are getting scarce, everyone is pushed to get “HiGhEr EdUcAtIoN” so everyone knows how to use a keyboard but never used a hammer and a screwdriver. A lot of uddy of mine is a carpenter, the money he makes is insane because there just aren’t that many skilled people put there anymore. Our bikes have a bit different design, people sit more up right as we use it as a form of transportation instead of for sports. But the mechanics work the same. Although electric bikes are taking over the market right now.

Whaaaaaat…?

We are very multicultural, if you don’t want to adjust, that’s fine. There are enough people around who are similar to you. Only if you want to fit in you need to adjust, but that’s in any culture. Over here there’s not that much pressure to do that. Unless you live in the countryside.

Dutch and English are not similar at all. They have completely different origins. Dutch has a germanic origin and English an anglosaxon heritage.

The weather is not intense at all. It’s just humid, so 25C feels like 35C and 5C feels like -5C. But not as humid as a rainforest. Near the coast there’s some wind, but in the cities and inland not too much. Winters have become mild, summers kinda hot but compared to other regions of the world our climate is very mild. Just expect a lot of rain, but compared to the UK even that aspect is really mild too. Just prepare for us to always complain about it. And about everything else too.

Yeah, Dutch people are generally pretty blunt. When you tell something we don’t like will will tell you, politely, where a British person would say “ah that’s interesting”. For autistic people (like me) our directness is really nice. No beating around the bush.

The Netherlands has a worse housing crisis then the rest of Europe. Houses are not cheaper then in the US. Far from it. Also, the US is really big, so you can’t say that actually. San Francisco and Detroit have completely different housing markets for example. Next to that, here in NL we don’t build huizes from wood, which makes them more expensive as well. And our government extremity limited construction due to EU emission regulations because they are too scared to limit the biggest polutors, the farmers, with their massive export production. Because farmers protest with tractors and tractors are scary. So we prefer farming exports over housing apparently. Because we don’t buy fruits and vegetables produced in The Netherlands, they are too expensive. We buy cheap tasteless junk from Spain and Egypt. So most agricultural production is for export. The profits of our farmers are more important to us then being able to pay our own bills and aging a roof over our heads.

I have 3 kittens. Much better options

You would do good here in The Netherlands. Lots of tech jobs, over here you actually have rights as an employee. No max amount of sick days for example, as no one plans a certain amount of days to be sick. The “FrEeDoM” Americans claim to have is so twisted and extremity far away from actual freedom. Here in NL I do feel I have true freedom. As in: not having to be scared when going out on the streets at night, no matter where I go. There are no guns. No crimes against humanity. Of course we do have issues, every country does. But they are tiny compared to most countries. Although we did vote for right wing parties sadly, we’re not heading in the direction I want.

Oh and EVERYONE speaks English. From child to boomer. Officially it’s not a foreign language anymore due to the high level English most speak. They are even discussing it should be a 3rd national language.

Edit: there’s also a (very unfair to us natives) 30%!!! tax cut for expats to make NL more attractive. So you will make a lot of money yet pay less taxes while having loads of benifits as an employee.

Only issue right now is finding a house. Not enough houses so insane prices. A real housing crisis.

I have to confess, I disabled internet when installing windows to avoid all the booking[dot]com etc apps and ads. But I got ads on win11 and besides the MS apps ads I didn’t get anything else.

I’ve seen several reports stating win10 is faster. I’ve based my opinion on those reports.

Thank you for adding sources to your reply, I’ll look into it. For now I’m fucked up (drunk) because of the US elections as the outcome is either bad or extremity fucked up. And have a major influence for us Europeans as well.

In the end, MS is fucking up their OS big time, whether it’s 10 or 11. I feel forced to switch everything I have to Linux, although I do depend on some apps which do not support Linux sadly. Like Directory Opus. I had a hard time working with network drives on Linux, which makes a switch hard for me as I have a NAS for my main storage. But MS sure pushes me to switch.

Bogus. They are the same in that regard. Stability is mostly dependent on used hardware and drivers these days.

Ah, so all the tests must be wrong then. All the articles must be mistaken.

A few minor things around taskbar placement. Even though my personal preference is a vertical taskbar on the left screen edge, it’s less important than WSL2.

Just that? Then where are the old settings? The old configuration screen? It’s gone now in win11.

Win10 also has ads, MS added more ads through updates. My work desktop PC runs Win10, my work notebook runs Win11. I have the comparison on a daily basis.

I only had ads for win11 and office365 on win10. That’s it. Win11 has loads of ads.

Win10 runs faster and more stable then win11. Don’t get me started on all the limitations win11 introduced, next to all the ads and loss of control of settings.

Yeah, I’d like to have discussions with people who have factual based opinions and I don’t mind changing my opponion when they come with properly factual supported arguments. However, opinions based on feelings I do not understand and I do not feel like a discussion is even possible as I cannot argue against a feeling, no matter how factual my arguments are. It’s why I do not argue with religious people. They claim a monopoly in the truth. How unfactual their claim may be, there is no argument which they do not see as a personal attack.

So either someone is joking when saying a pile of shit is actually kinda nice, or they lost all connection to reality.

You’re joking right?!? 😂

• It’s slower then 10.
• They recently disabled the old configuration screens, meaning you have only the fancy looking broken settings. Try to remove a Bluetooth device. You can’t. “failed to remove device”. It can’t forget the Bluetooth data. This is one of many flaws. Many settings are gone now.
• it’s impossible to remove Edge now.
• there are ads within the OS.
• they stopped support for several apps, for instance to use the Xbox kinect as a 3D scanner.
• it’s now harder, sometimes impossible, to boot from a USB as win11 has too much control over the bios and makes UEFI sometimes impossible to use. It automatically boots into windows, even when told otherwise, and “repairs” the changes made.

I can continue for hours why win11 sucks donkey balls. Recent news from MS about their plans for win11 are also very troublesome. As well as the paid subscription for win10 for security updates. Like, wtf! I have 3 machines running win10, so I need to pay 90 a year? For real? Just so I won’t have to use the win11 aids.

Turning an OS to subscription based. World class assholes. The alternative is win11, which is even more shit while they are working hard to fuck that shitshow even more up. Yeah, Linux is the way to go.

Oh I know it was good. I often think from different perspectives when on ketamine and always I see things rather well. The only issue is my memory, sometimes I just don’t remember. But the moments I do remember are really good ideas, but sometimes they are too hard to realize (I had a great idea for an app, but I lack the programming knowledge and I don’t even know where to start). A friend of mine wants to develop it, some others are interested to get involved too. So other people like my ideas too.

My ideas make me create new music, helped me to start learning CAD and buy a 3D printer and laser cutter. Also some things I created were products of a ketamine trip. It helped me create a music tower for all my synths which is made to perfection and makes everyone’s jaw drop when I show them. People are even telling me I should build music studio’s professionally. It was all a product of my brain on special K. I created the perfect synth tower while I never even touched a synth 6 months before I started or knew how one works. Heres a picture. It’s foldable and on wheels. Perfect cable management and everything.

My autistic brain is capable of some nice things but in general it’s unable to perform as I want it to. But ketamine helps breaking through barriers and reach otherwise locked potential. Different perspectives, able to see the bigger picture while at the same time taking all the details into account.

I had a tech idea, which filled a gap in the market, something the world desperately needs but no one has ever thought of doing it. Instead of more money grab addictive tech junk, this would help people and would benefit society.

It was on ketamine. I forgot what it was when it wore off. I’m truly sorry. I hate myself.

I have used dual boot, live usb sticks and VM’s. It’s just that I don’t feel that comfortable within the Linux environment as my knowledge is lacking somewhat and I haven’t used it enough to fix that.

I’ll check it out, thanks!

So, I’m not that great with Linux. I know the basics, that’s it.

Is it user friendly? I mainly want Linux with Android app support because I hate Google.

I’ve used windows my entitle life. Now windows 11 upgrade was done without consent, now they are doing their best to make it even worse then it already was. I would love to switch to Linux, it’s just that I’m using some apps which do not exist for Linux yet. Next to that I’m not that comfortable with the Linux mechanics to make the switch on my main PC. As in: Like I know what I’m doing on the machine which I use a big part of my time. I need full control. I know I have it with Linux, I just don’t know how. And I feel stupid for it.

The moral of my story is: I’m scared to make a switch from something I’m so familiar with for years and years to something new, even though I hate the corporations behind the stuff I use.

I want a Linux phone capable of running android apps

Oh for sure! I’m not saying Spotify is the most evil company, just that it’s evil.

But Shell is a company with loads of deaths on its name, hiring killing squads etc.