lattrommi

i think qgis might have the ability to do everything you require, however the learning curve is somewhat steep.

it allows you to import data from various maps, including openstreetmap, NASA and many more.

i believe there are free/open source topographic layers that can be imported or ways to add specific data.

it can draw layers, lines and shapes on top of each other with varying translucency and colors.

it can show non-mercator map projections such as stereographic, othrographic or even more obscure ones like the waterman butterfly or some of the ones from the list at the bottom of this page: http://www.quadibloc.com/maps/mapint.htm

if you are doing this for a fantasy world map and not earth, it might add even more difficulty but i’ve read people on forums claim they could do it, using another program with qgis and on windows only. i don’t recall much else since the windows requirement was a block for me. it’s probably possible to create the shapefile from scratch.

it has the ability to customize aspects of maps and mapped datum in many more ways that i am incapable of properly explaining, describing, using or understanding. i also have cognitive/developmental disorders, so it might be easier for others, however for me, it’s a map creation program i get lost trying to use.

There isn’t anything you need to know. It’s the opposite actually. You can now forget about graphics drivers entirely if you want. Unless it’s like, a job or hobby or something.

I’ll throw in my vote for Manjaro because while it’s not perfect, it hits all of OP’s points nicely.

• arch based
• hard to break (but not impossible)
• biased a little towards Gnome but runs KDE and XFCE great too
• uses a curated rolling release

The last point is the most important. Rolling release means it updates regularly, so your packages will be mostly up to date. Curated means they do testing in an unstable repository. If an update breaks something, those changes aren’t pushed to stable.

I ended up with it after trying other distros but having trouble with my nVidia card. Manjaro’s MHWD tool installed their drivers easily (although slightly confusing with its unnecessary checkboxes) and more recently, I’ve upgraded to AMD and never had a single issue.

It’s not perfect but almost every issue I’ve had was located between the keyboard and the chair.

this is probably an edge case but I do when i visit family and friends. these trips are short and infrequent enough that a laptop would be an unnecessary expense and i’m not driving through mountainous areas with my tower. none of them use linux. most have aged windows or mac machines. they don’t care if i run a live system or puppy linux from a USB drive. i add a handful of appimages i’ll use at night or if there’s free time. I’m sure there are better ways but it works for me.

I am using Manjaro as well.

Are there Debian apps that you want to run but are unable to because Manjaro is Arch-based? I have read that it is not recommended to install programs compiled for Debian, that it is difficult to run them. Using a virtual machine is the recommended way to use them. Asking just in case but I do not think this is what you want.

Computers can only run one operating system at a time, unless you use virtual machines and hypervisors. Most operating systems are launched after the system uses a bootloader to get the system ready for the operating system. This is usually done by the BIOS/UEFI/firmware starting a bootloader, which then launches the operating system.

If you want a USB that you can plug into a machine that is already running, that has an active operating system like Manjaro or Windows or whatever, then have it start running Debian, like you would an Appimage or a Windows .exe program saved to a USB, that is not possible except maybe with a virtual machine program like Virtual Box or Qemu.

USB drives were not intended to be used as drives that run operating systems. It can be done, but it is not simple and can cause a lot of errors.

What do you need the USB for? If you can explain what you are trying to achieve with more detail, there might be ways to do it differently.

directly onto my USB

directly without having to reboot to run the installer?

You use “directly” three times. Remove all instances of the word from your post and reread it. Does the post make sense to you still? Does it have the same meaning?

I am not trying to be a dick, I want to make sure the word does not have a meaning I am not aware of in this context or if Linux is installable to a USB drive ‘indirectly’ but that does not make sense to me.

Can you rephrase what you are trying to do?

One way to allow for this would be a license that says if you sell them through an LLC or corporate entity of some kind, that should require financial support but if it’s you selling them in your own name or as a single owner business, with your reputation and liability on the line, then you should not be required to provide support. The other thought to include in a license is actual money earned from sales. Once a company earns, for example let’s say $1,000 or 1,000€ a month in profits, that’s when the financial support license kicks in and requires payments to the open source authors. Of course, that would require high earners to report their earnings accurately which is a different can of worms.

Because I am terrible at writing, most of this was painstakingly generated using LLaMA 3.1 70B & 405B. Believe it or not, this was actually a lot of work.

The LLM ruins your presentation in my opinion. I do not mean that you disclosed the use of a LLM, I personally appreciate that honesty quite a lot. The short version is that there is too much elaboration.

That’s the first thing the LLM provided for you: It elaborates too much and gives a massive wall of text. One that you spent a long time painstakingly editing. If you had started from scratch and formulated it yourself, you most likely could have come up with a far more readable essay for the average stranger on the internet (I’m assuming that was your intended audience. I’m frequently wrong about things.) Look for the redundancies. LLM’s seem to love saying the same thing in different ways. Just an observation I’ve made which I have no backing for. Many of these points could easily be combined in my opinion.

The second thing using AI did to your detriment, is that the sections are not human-like. They are formulaic, each one having several clauses or thoughts strung together with commas. Sure, each sentence might be grammatically correct but I bet I could read this to my nephews as a way to quickly get them to fall asleep. Not only does every sentence have multiple thoughts and concepts, there are few intermediary sentences to break up the monotony.

The third and final thing I will point out is that page breaks and spacing things out are absolutely critical to keeping people engaged. Twitter became popular because of the character limit. If your point takes longer than 7 seconds for someone to read in their head, you’ve lost half your audience. Tell the AI to be more succint if you continue using one.

I think you might do better if you took out all of the text that isn’t bolded/strong or a header. Link to the full manuscript somewhere else at the end for those who are interested. Those 2-4 words starting the numbered points are all most people will need. If they do need further clarification or specifics, visit that’s when they can visit a link at the end.

Just my two cents.

man -k libass

libass: nothing appropriate.

yeah that looks exactly like what i wanted, thanks! i probably should have asked my question a couple years ago but i was still very new to linux and didn’t quite know the lingo. i’m still not quite sure how < works in general but i get the pipe and other redirects at least.

putting it in .bash_logout doesn’t always work. something involving login shells i don’t quite understand yet but i’ll read more about it. i saw mention of putting exit_session() { . "$HOME/.bash_logout" } trap exit_session SIGHUP in .bashrc to make it always work but i also don’t understand trap yet either so i’ll look into that too.

thanks again, your reply helped point me in the right direction of things i want to learn!

is there a way to save commands from history? i tried to figure this out when i was starting to use linux regularly, to help learn commands and to make a reference for myself as to what the commands do. i’m familiar with things like man, info, tldr and others but i wanted to put things in my own words since i remember better that way.

what i’m wanting but can’t seem to automate: -save commands from bash history to a file with only the command and arguments used, no line numbers or time stamps. -filenames can be kept, but if filenames are removable easily, that would be better. -file saved in should have the list sorted with any duplicates removed and happen after any terminal session ends. -i’ve read about changing the prompt but not done it correctly and not sure if possible or the safest way. -i’ve tried using .bash_logout but it doesn’t seem to do anything and i’m not sure why.

this isn’t too important anymore, as i’ve grown more comfortable with linux and bash but it bugs me that i never got it to work. i can copy and paste more detailed notes of what i tried but i’d need to redact a bunch of cursing and frustrated whining.

weird, mine does too. at least they fixed the KDE calculator… mostly. before the last update it wasn’t using the result of calculations to start the next calculation. so typing 2+2 then hitting enter gave 4 but if you typed +2 after that, it would error. had to type the answer if starting a new calculation. it was very frustrating.