I don't particularly watch/like PewDiePie, but he is joining the train and spreading the word, which is awesome. He is self hosting services and using GrapheneOS now.
Pretty good video. It's not like he explains how to do anything or even picks very good software to begin with, but his genuine excitement is really all that's required. Getting people interested is the important part, and they'll learn much better by using their own motivation. This video also gives off a strong "I'm an idiot, and if I can do it you can do it" vibe which can be really reassuring to those who are just too intimidated to even dip their toe in.
My problem is that I feel like the idiot among idiots so I'm still intimidated by it. I want to eventually take the plunge, but I am genuinely so fucking stupid when it comes to tech that I'm afraid I will break something if I try, lol.
If you're competent enough to use Lemmy, you're absolutely competent enough to run Linux for most purposes.
Honestly, it's a bit more of a stretch, but if you're competent enough to plug in a USB drive you're probably competent enough to install Linux. And most of Lemmy would be here to help you!
A good thing about tech is that if you have a spare device (even a cheap single-board computer like a Raspberry Pi or similar cheaper one, or a partly-broken laptop) or a working virtual machine, you can break things. That's a core characteristic of the old-school hacker mindset, to try stuff and break stuff until you understand stuff. Usually, the worst case, you just reinstall the operating system and have a fresh clean environment (or, better yet, you restore a backup you made! Learning how to fail gracefully is a great skill)
I bricked a certain wacky laptop setup twice and had to start over (luckily with backups) just trying to get a custom startup loading screen. But once I realized why it was breaking and how to avoid it, I had a cooler looking computer!
This video has a lot of self-hosting and somewhat advanced stuff being mentioned, but if all you want to do is start dipping your toe into Linux then it's not nearly as hard as you'd think. I would try running Linux in a VM (i.e. VirtualBox) to get a feel for how it operates and build up confidence that way, as well as maybe watching some videos on how people set up and use their Linux etc. It will be a learning curve, but as long as you pick a beginner-friendly distro (e.g. Linux Mint) it's really no more difficult than if you started using Windows for the first time. Keep backups of your data and/or put Linux on a secondary computer and you should weather the initial few weeks just fine.
On the upside, when you have problems in Linux there will be logical solutions with answers that can be searched for, whereas in an OS like Windows or Mac the solution is probably "I dunno! Reinstall?" or "You just can't do that, sorry". It's also understandable if you don't want to touch anything complicated, but I do think one of the best parts of Linux is really just getting messy, making mistakes, and learning. Because things in Linux make sense, over time you'll learn how to use a computer again. I feel strongly that Windows/Mac/Android/iPhones have (intentionally) dulled the average person's computing skills and put them into a state of learned helplessness. Everyone thinks computers are complicated wizardry because nothing on those proprietary operating systems makes logical sense, and trying to troubleshoot anything results in wasted time and frustration.
Crazy to see people stating that they never saw a video of him, but I guess the intersection of his audience and the fediverse is predictably low, especially in a degoogle community.
His recent arc with Linux and now this are pretty nice though.
I'm not into drama in general, and those are serious allegations. He sure had questionable stuff going on, but considering him being an actual nazi had always seemed far off to me, but we'll never know.
This guy rambling about degoogling and GrapheneOS, to an audience (700k views after 3h) that surely has nothing to do with that, is just great news to me as of now.
I never watched his stuff in his "glory" days of yore, but he popped up in videos from Magnus the bouldering/rock climbing guy, and that showed him under a new light. Then I saw his Linux arc and started gaining more respect for him. It seems he's kind of retired from the brain dead content and now has that new dad energy which I vibe with a lot more. Still not watching him regularly though, I don't know what the rest of his content is like.
I watched a Primeagen reaction video to a recent video of Pewds, and that was the first I've seen a PewDiePie video. I've probably caught a couple of shorts over the years, but this was the first video, and it might have been last week.
I imagine he's one who could ditch YouTube.
He could spin up his own PeerTube instance just for him to post to. Then tell everyone to follow him there and Mastodon. If only 20% of his audience does it, he'd still make out like a bandit.