Nice try, but the legend of Windows 11 is just that, a legend…a story we tell young children when we want them to behave themselves… right?..

Ive been running Linux for close to a decade now and one thing that I’ve noticed is rarely brought up in Linux circles is that Linux Kernel Development is heavily funded by major big tech corpos. Examples include Microsoft, Google, Oracle, and IBM.

There is a vested corporate interest in keeping Linux well maintained as it is the OS that underpins the vast majority of corporate server architecture and infrastructure.

I’m not saying Linux development wouldn’t exist without them, but imho, Linux certainly wouldn’t be as ubiquitous as it is today without this corporate backing. Thusly, it is worth noting that in many ways, we Linux users have not escaped corporate influence simply from switching from Windows or MacOS to Linux.

We’ve maybe lessened it to some degree, but to think we are somehow immune to the misguided mandates from state governments, like the latest recent age verification laws, is misguided.

Along with every other technology related problem. 👏Done and done!

blue cheese, cuz I’m sad and stinky.

Fair Warning: Long anti-systemd rant ahead.

Here’s a list of some fine, totally usable, and well maintained Linux distros that don’t use systemd:

• Artix Linux (offers 4 different supported init systems)
• Gentoo Linux (supports systemd/openrc, with documentation provided on how to manually support others)
• Void Linux (uses runit)
• Alpine Linux (uses openrc, most docker containers use this as their base)
• Devuan (offers 5 different supported init systems)
• Antix (offers 5 different supported init systems)
• MX Linux (offers systemd/sysv init)

Honestly, I was on Artix for 8 years and am on Gentoo/openrc now (been about 6 months). I never really got the systemd hype. I don’t even bother with it on my servers where I just run Alpine Linux. It’s just…not really needed unless the dev of a particular DE or app doesn’t know how to use basic GNU tools and/or doesn’t know they don’t need init for such and such feature.

Yeah yeah, systemd isn’t just an init system. People make that argument all the time, but honestly, that’s actually an argument against using it.

Systemd is poorly designed if the init component can’t be separated out from it’s various other utilities. If I could use systemd just as init, maybe it wouldn’t be…y’know, crap. But no, it has to handle DNS, cron, logging, login managment, etc.

Again, no problem if the systemd devs wanted to make it a suite of optional tools, but init systems are and always will be best if their codebases are as tiny as possible while still being usable and secure. Init’s only job is to fork other processes that the user specifies, that’s it.

Honestly if some software uses systemd, I’m not likely to use it unless someone’s paying me to. Heck, at work I use all sorts of shitty tools that frustrate me to no end in exchange for money.

But if I do happen to use software that requires systemd, on a system that I own, I’m likely to just go into the code, rip out the parts that utilize it, rewrite it, and recompile the binary because fuck that. Yes, I’ve done this. Most of the time, it’s not that hard. But I can count on one hand the amount of times this has been necessary, because the maintainers of these non-systemd distros are able to write basic scripts that hook into the various init systems and you just use them.

And if some major DE like GNOME or KDE relies on systemd, I’d just say, fuck’em. There’s plenty of DE’s that don’t and a multitude of WM’s that never will, and good, they shouldn’t.

Rant over.

I don’t disagree with you. It is worth pointing out though that Brendan Eich, the founder of the Brave Browser, is also the cofounder of The Mozilla Foundation, and the creator of the JavaScript Programming language.

So if you really want to boycott the homophobe, boycott Brave, Firefox, all Firefox forks, and JavaScript.

Usually your distro’s forums are good enough, and even searching not your distro’s forums can lead to some insights into your issues/questions.

Otherwise Arch Wiki, Gentoo Wiki, Arch Forums, Gentoo Forums, Debian User Forums, Ask Ubuntu, Linux Questions, Linux Mint Forums, even Manjaro Forums can be helpful. Always do as much search and research you can before asking your question on a forum and mention what you’ve done already. A lot of the times, your issue has already been raised and already has an answer. If not, ask away and mention what you’ve done already.

I’m a self taught web dev whose only had a single fullstack job under their belt, some charity coding at a nonprofit, and plenty of group and solo projects.

I’ve used ChatGPT mainly to code and also teach myself Calculus as I get ready to go back to school and get a CS degree to hopefully help my chances at getting some work. I’m not saying as a tool on its own, LLMs aren’t useful.

But I do use these LLMs with a severe sense of guilt considering:

• The plight of Kenyan workers who got paid almost nothing to have their mental health absolutely violated while setting up initial training parameters around abusive/sensitive training material

• The many teens who have committed suicide while being influenced by LLM advice

• The massive amount of land, water, and power that is being utilized to put it all together

• The massive amount of carbon emissions that the data centers that power these LLMs releases into the atmosphere, exacerbating an already dire climate crisis

• The massive amount of scraped data that was stolen without anyone’s consent in order to train it

• The fact that our entire world economy seems to now rely solely on AI companies and NVIDIA’s stock price going up ad infinitum even if their economic metrics make no sense at all

• The exacerbation of the already existing education crisis where both students and teachers are offloading critical thinking skills

• The destruction of the useful search engine, which honestly feels preordained by the ensuing enshittification of search due to invasive advertisement/marketing strategies

And honestly that isn’t even scratching the surface.

So yeah…I got some guilt using this crap. But hey, at least I got to live another day in the torment nexus.

EDIT: Removal of massive doomerism rant towards the end there.

It depends on where you got the game and how familiar you are with Wine, Proton, DXVK, etc. And yeah, the command line is kind of helpful for most things Linux, including running pirated games.

I got a pirated version of Cyberpunk 2077 running on Linux. I had purchased the game on Steam, but hated that when I was offline I couldn’t play and even though Steam has an offline version, I figured fuck it, I’m tech savvy, how hard can it be? It was…not easy, but not the hardest thing I’ve done on Linux. I pretty much followed this reddit guide.

I’d look for a different launcher than Lutris these days since the Dev started introducing AI code into his source, but there’s options in that regard and really, the big thing is understanding Wine, Wine prefixes, and Proton.

I haven’t done this for most games as I just like to purchase my games these days, but it was a fun challenge. I have no idea how difficult this is on Windows as its been almost a decade for me Windows free, but hey, if you’ve got the gumption, its not too hard.

For cases where you just want to install it once and then update only once a month or even a couple months, and not worry about the distro not being maintained, I’d highly recommend installing Debian. You will eventually have to reinstall years down the line when a new major release happens, but it is many many years down the line and even that can be put off for quite a long time. The only drawback is that the latest releases of the software you like aren’t always available in the official repos, as Debian’s MO is to vet every package for stability before releasing it via their repos.

If you want a slightly less stable distro that has almost all the packages in the world and is up to date and is going to be around for a long time, go with Arch Linux. It’s a rolling release model so packages are updated as soon as they are made available by the distribution maintainers. Things do break occassionally on Arch and a familiarity with the command line and where to go research/ask questions (the Arch Wiki and Arch Linux Forums) is very much needed in those situations. But Arch is very widely used and established nowadays and is a fine option if you’re okay with the rare package that breaks.

Gentoo is a great option if you simply want to customize every aspect of your system, but it’s considered an “advanced” distro and usually some familiarity with a different distro is recommended before using Gentoo, though some do end up using Gentoo as their first and only Linux distro. Gentoo, like Arch, is rolling release. Unlike Arch and Debian, packages are compiled from source, giving you granular control over which features of every piece of software you want to have and the ability to omit those features you don’t want/need. Gentoo is as stable as you make it. Like Arch and Debian, Gentoo isn’t going anywhere. That said, imho, Gentoo requires more maintenance than Arch or Debian, and potentially a little bit more knowledge of Operating Systems.

Other distributions like OpenSuse and Slackware are fine options as well as they have a very long established history in the Linux Distro ecosystem, but I am unfamiliar with them, so will leave it to others to make their comments/recommendations regarding them.

Ah I see. Very interesting! Thank you.

Fair enough. Why not tack on rm ./.* as well to that list? Lol. Sorry, I’m truly just curious and not trying to be a smart alec.

Fair enough. Then why not cd .., rm ./dir_name/* ?

Oh god…why would you not just cd .. and rm -r the directory name?

Microsoft generally doesn’t worry about losing market share to Linux over games. They don’t even worry about losing desktop share for the public sector. Only businesses matter, and they have heavy vendor lock in there as Microsoft Office, Teams, and to a lesser extent, Azure, keep them subscribed/enslaved.

Microsoft also gives a shit ton of money to the Linux Foundation,along with the rest of MMAANG and many other companies. All these companies know Linux runs the back end servers, and its free for them to use however they want, and they have a vested interest in Linux being around for servers as even they are aware it’s superior for that specific purpose.

Microsoft runs the Desktop, Apple runs the phone, Google and Amazon compete for cloud, and Meta owns marketing. Sure, they sometimes compete in other spaces like Android and Azure, but those are generally the established fiefdoms.

And Linux is all of their removed, but also all of their main support beam without which nothing works.

The true underdog is BSD.

I’ll say this is a good idea the day Gavin Fucking Newsom sits down with me, follows the Gentoo Handbook installation process from black box shell prompt to full working KDE desktop environment with all the bells and whistles (email, browser, office suite, printer working, etc.), and then explain exactly at which Fucking step the age verification prompt should be at. Fuck.

Agreed. Sadly an endorsement from Meta and/or it’s various subsidiaries is more of a condemnation than any criticism.

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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…