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That’s fair. And I generally agree with you. I’ve installed a lot of different distros at this point, and I ultimately enjoyed installing and maintaining Gentoo, which is the distro I ended up with after years of using Artix. So it’s not like I don’t like learning new things and customizing an installation from the ground up.

My original comment was just pointing out that it’s not always a fun or positive experience to learn something new about Linux because something broke or you missed or misunderstood some part of the documentation.

For me, 99% of the time, I’m down to learn something new about computers. Heck I’m getting a CS degree right now, I better! But I’d be daft to think that’s the mindset of most people, and even I have my limits.

The con is more like:

You must configure something you never wanted to know anything about, but I guess today is a learning day…again…

Veritasium: A Story Of YouTube Propaganda

Any chance this is coming to Fdroid?

I prefer an alias that actually reflects my feelings.

alias didistutter="sudo"

Fuck past me! That guy has fucked me over in more ways than I can count. And Fuck future me too! That guy is pissed at me for reasons I can’t possibly fathom. And fuck present me! That guy be lazy AF.

The AUR is the Arch User Repository. All it is is User uploaded software packages with a script that Arch Linux and its many derivatives recognize and know how to utilize to install a piece of software and the necessary libraries/dependencies on your system.

It is similar to Debian based systems when you install software that’s not in the officially repos by appending an unofficial mirror to :

/etc/sources.list.d

Take installing Mullvad VPN on Debian for example. It’s not in the official repos, so you have to tell apt where to go get it.

Paru and Yay are what are known as AUR Helpers. All they are doing is automating the update process of the packages you installed from the AUR, which normally you’d have to update one by one manually. They also can help you easily search the AUR from the command line.

In essence, they are wrappers around pacman and makepkg.

Flatpak is different in that it is an OS agnostic package manager that sandboxes applications away from the main OS and essentially downloads/installs all its libraries and dependencies into ~/.local/share/flatpak instead of /usr/lib, though this is a vast oversimplification.

Very basically, paru/yay says “We install stuff on Arch and Arch based distros from unofficial, user maintained sources and keep them up to date so you don’t have to update them one by one once installed. When possible, you should probably default to just installing with pacman and using the official repos though.”

Very basically Flatpak says “I don’t care if I’m run on Debian, Arch, Gentoo, whatever, I’m bringing all my system libraries with me cuz I don’t know what version of what is on here, and I just need this app to run right the fuck now. So even though it’s heavier and less efficient, here’s plumbing and the kitchen sink so you have running water right fucking now. BTW, you probably shouldn’t run anything installed with me as root.”

This is a very oversimplified explanation, but hopefully that helps clear things up for you.

Wow. Haven’t heard of his. Just watched the trailers. Looks fucking amazing.

Molly White does a better job at explaining what Ghost is than I could. She did so on Ed Zitron’s podcast, Better Offline a little while back. Sorry, but other than that I’d just do some more research.

Here is said episode.

I’ve been using Links for years. I rarely meet another Links user, as TUI web browser use is rare in and of itself, and most go to w3m or lynx from what I’ve seen.

TUI browsers are surprisingly capable of getting you around the web even with more limited features, as long as you mainly are focused on accessing public text documents and communications.

I know one of the main uses I saw some utilizing Links for was when it was recommended during the Gentoo installation process when you had to download a stage 3 tarball. Most just had another browser or used a different Linux iso during installation, but if you were installing via the tty, and had no other device with a web browser on it, that was (and still is) a solid choice for finding and downloading the needed tarball.

Anyways, just a bit of lore. My only complaint with Links is it doesn’t let you change the keybindings and they default to emacs. No shade to emacs, but I am and probably always will be a vim user, so there’s that. Other than that I’ll always be a big fan of Links.

Ghost might fit your needs.

This is one of the best overviews of the differences I’ve seen. Nicely done.

The only thing I want to add having played around a bit with Bluesky before eventually deciding it wasn’t for me is that, unlike Mastodon, Bluesky does use a series of algorithms you can choose from when you initially sign up that curate your feed for you.

Basically from a purely user experience, the major difference is the sign up of an instance on Mastodon (which technically exists on Bluesky, but doesn’t really exist in practice), and the more apparent difference is the lack of an algorithmic feed on Mastodon.

What I like about the Fediverse is that I am in complete control of my feed. There are no algorithms trying to analyze my behavior to predict what I like. I prefer to have people recommend me shows, movies, books, articles, subjects, etc., and that’s what I get on Federated Platforms.

This does mean initially though my feed is just filled with a chronological ordering of hashtags I’ve followed by selecting interests during sign up, and thusly it takes some additional effort to setup and personalize when compared to centralized platforms.

It’ll take a while before people wean themselves off the abusive relationships inherent to centralized social media, but imho, Federated Platforms will eventually become as ubiquitous as RSS feeds and wikis. Quietly everywhere, not flashy at all, but running the best parts of the web.

EDIT: Removal of repetitive wording.

Gentoo, OpenRC, BSPWM, Nvim, Librewolf, Ortholinear Keyboard.

What? I use locally hosted searxng, ublock origin, librewolf, noscript, chameleon, libredirect, a massive no AI block list, and a self hosted pihole with unbound DNS resolution. I use yt-dlp with sponsor-block via a self hosted invidious instance and “subscribe” via RSS feed when I need to watch something from youtube.

On mobile I use grapheneos, fdroid, and tubular.

Wtf is a google and wtf is an advertisement?

Nice and addictive.

Yeah, Max’s exposition to Holly that was like…most of the episode? It was absolutely necessary to understand what was going on, but it was an exposition dump that was like the writers were wiping their asses with the golden rule of narrative, “show, don’t tell.”

If you have to tell the audience what is happening all the time, you’re just straight up not a good writer.

I was not aware of these. Thank you for making me aware of them.

I haven’t used spreadsheet software in decades, but I have helped some convert to Windows to Linux. Some of them did use Excel, and therefore had to learn to use LibreOffice Calc, and while they had some expected difficulties during the initial learning curve, they did say a few months later to me that they were eventually satisfied with the software.

Nevertheless, I’m sure much like the GIMP/Photoshop comparison, Excel simply has features that Calc doesn’t.

I am mildly curious. Could you give an example of a feature that its likely many businesses and/or individuals use in Excel that simply doesn’t exist in, or is too difficult to implement in Calc?

I can’t say that Russia or China are any better, before anyone asks.

As a native born citizen of the US, I just wanted to say I feel bad that you feel the need to iterate this. I know a lot of asshats always make people who criticize the US clarify this, and I can only imagine it gets super annoying even having to do that the first time.

Your criticism of the US doesn’t preclude you to defend or criticize other nation-states, those are separate criticisms unless the topic is international relations, which it’s not in this case.