fouc

If you want to do business with the US (either directly by selling/buying to/from them, or indirectly by using US equipment) you need to comply with US export control regulations as they apply internationally. Even if you are a Dutch company wanting to make chips at TSMC you need to make sure your chips are US export control compliant. TSMC may be a pure play foundry in reality they can’t make anything nor sell to anyone. Don’t get me wrong, it is messed up but that’s the reality. The EU has similar regulations but they only apply to the internal market which makes more sense.

Ubuntu was a fantastic distribution to start early on. Especially in the pre-10.x days there weren’t many beginner friendly ones. Your alternatives were Debian with very outdated software, SuSE which was kind of OK, Fedora which was also quite unstable and lacking packages (remember hunting RPMs on the old RPMfusion?) or Ubuntu. At some point I’d outgrown Ubuntu and moved on to greener pastures. Nowadays I’m not sure I’d be recommending Ubuntu to new users, Fedora is quite good and without all the snap store shenanigans. Even Debian installation experience is not too bad and it’s not lacking too much in software.