Thank god it’s not Alot, because

I think you’re refering to this. The community appears to be in the process of setting up their own association and eventually the infrastructure and assets will be transferred to them. We’ll see how that shakes out.

Wait, again?

Posteo is affordable and, at least to my liking, private enough.

Ever since VLC came on the scene it has been my go-to. Just really functional player that plays almost anything I throw at it, and I like the UI well enough. For now I have no reason to use anything else. I’m not hating on other players, but VLC works for me.

How- How dare you‽

That actually looks like an interesting phone. I hope it delivers on its promises.

I’ve taken to the habit of just logging in to the few sites I have accounts every time I open the browser. At this point, all my browsers are configured to delete all data. I don’t find it an inconvenience, and I feel it adds a layer of security. I don’t even use a password manager (though I should), as brain exercise I’ve memorized the few passwords I need. For me, it’s definitely worth the slight extra hassle. However, I accept this may be a bit much, given I’m pretty much the only person who uses this computer. I just feel more comfortable flushing all those pesky cookies daily.

Sure, a WM will run fine and leaves you with more resources to work with. Your setup will still struggle running a modern browser.

Yeah, none are going to be fast. Browsing is going to be slow no matter what, unless you use something like lynx. The best I can give you is Falkon, but don’t open many tabs.

Well, for example, upgrading between releases is done by manually editing sources.list and some other steps, and there’s no easy tool for that. This is not difficult, exactly, but for people with little experience it’s a bit daunting. Debian in general isn’t the most new user friendly distro, in my experience. Distros like Mint and Ubuntu make the Debian experience slightly easier. Not that Debian is some esoteric system.

Well, what about just using Debian? It’s a bit hassle, maybe, but if you have prior Linux experience, you’ll be fine.

It may be a lot to take in at first, but seems to me you’ve got it!

A repository (or repo) is a server that hosts program files for your distribution. Distributions host their own repositories from which you can install software with your package manager, like APT or DNF or others. If you only install software from your distribution’s repository, there’s likely no clashes with software versioning and dependencies, and the packages are about as reliable as they can be (which doesn’t mean there’s never malware). If you add third party repositories for software not available from your distribution’s repository, it’s more likely there will be issues, because the distribution doesn’t guarantee the packages work well together.

For example, Debian and Arch don’t retrieve and install their software from the same source. They have their own servers (repositories) hosting software compiled to work with their particular distro and to be used by their chosen package manager.

Flatpak (or Snap or Guix) is a separate package manager that handles it’s own dependencies and doesn’t clash with your distribution’s own software manager.

Does this help?

Very little. If I’m being honest with myself, I have a slight preference for how DOS/Windows handled mounting drives. I’ve never been a huge fan of the UNIX directory structure anyway. I’d like to see some sort of filesystem hierarchy reform for a clearer format.

But of course, using Linux is a relief in most ways. There’s no going back.

That is where all the best ancient philosophy comes from!

“Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.”

-Perineum

It’s frankly stunning just how little these people understand basic politics and the systems they are dismantling. They are profoundly stupid and too ignorant to realize just how intellectually ill-equipped they are. They have no understanding of why the structures they are tearing down were set up, and think that political structures purposely created to serve their interests are hampering them. They repeat age-old mistakes and think themselves geniuses for it. It’s almost inconceivable that people this malignantly incurious reach positions of power. But they have, they do, and they will again.

Well that’s a depressing read. The American rot runs deep. It’s frankly disturbing how accurate that article still is.

The writer drops some great lines though.

Thanks.

I am reminded of two quotes from Fear And Loathing On The Campaign Trail '72 by Hunter S. Thompson:

How many more of these stinking, double-downer sideshows will we have to go through before we can get ourselves straight enough to put together some kind of national election that will give me and the at least 20 million people I tend to agree with a chance to vote FOR something, instead of always being faced with that old familiar choice between the lesser of two evils?

Jesus! Where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be President?

How low? Now, I guess we know. Voting for the lesser evil for 50 years has got you Trump. Twice. How much lower are you going to go?

I have no solutions. Things will probably have to break completely before the mending can begin.