They get all the patches and minor upgrades in a timely fashion, similar to other distros. The major version updates do not come as readily though.

Have got Debian on an old thinkpad too because it is too under resourced to compile everything. I think Debian is amazing for a solid, reliable distro if you have weak hardware.

I use Gentoo and I love it. The installation process is a bit more complex than Arch but it doesn’t have to be if you choose the precompiled kernel.

The package management is extremely flexible and the community are great. I have a morning routine where I log onto my gentoo desktop before work and update everything; would compare it to raking one of those miniature buddhist sand gardens. Very theraputic!

Yeah the Manjaro devs have a long history of gaffes not to mention the infamous one with PGP keys requiring users to reset their system clock

Typically I don’t use a DE. I’ll go for dmenu + dwm usually if I only want a WM. I find the default bindings and behaviour for the tiling is the most ergonomic when comparing it to other WMs like i3.

When I do have to get a DE setup then I’ll use XFCE because I like how it stays out of the way and I find it easy to customise.

Not a gamer* but as an open source participant IRC is the main chat room technology my distro uses. All of the conversations are easily archivable and searchable due to the pure text format. Main devs can use tools like quassel to make sure they never miss an @.

*multiplayer gamer. I do play single player games.

I remember being stubborn and trying to setup eduroam at my uni library using only wpa_supplicant for a whole day. Hugely frustrating. Gave up and installed NetworkManager and it just fucking worked… my tech minimalism phase was extremely counterproductive lol

I have a gentoo desktop but for a convenient middle ground just put Debian on my laptop. It’s stable, things just work out of the box, maintainers/devs are competent, they haven’t drunk the snap/flatpack kool-aid…

Switching to Testing is always an option but I’ve not found the need to do that yet when I can install programs from a deb package or just compile from source and install it in ~/.bin in my home directory.

RustyTrombone: An unusual musical instrument. (Urban Dictionary)

I believe if the instance is still up then it will still work up until a daily limit is reached. Most of them appear to be broken because the limit is fairly low.

I think this would be less surprising if we didn’t imagine LGBTQ people were one homogeneous block of political beliefs and opinions. Some of my most right-wing friends are gay.

If you ever try it again just go for ubuntu. That distro hides a lot of the complexity from the user.

Those quotes are heinous and I agree he sounds like a piece of shit. It’s also true that the book he wrote is worth reading.

I still read HP Lovecraft too even though he was an irredeemable racist POS.

First time hearing this and at face value he sounds like an asshole but I don’t see how it’s relevant to free software. The book itself is a classic which is still worth reading.

FOSS attracts a lot of strong personalities. Stallman is a weirdo but everyone still uses GCC and I’m still personally using emacs.

Tech debt is like a hole in your roof that many teams don’t start trying to fix until water is flooding in. Companies missing the business value in addressing tech debt leads to perverse incentives for developers where they are encouraged to cram new features into the product and then leave for another job in 2-3 years before the consequences come knocking.

I agree with this. Communist like systems where there is central control of resources encourages corruption as people vie to get closer to the central control of the resources. Capitalism is just more honest about the fact that many people - not all of them - are fundamentally self-interested and entices them into cooperation with others by offering the carrot of individual rewards. Those are probably the same people that would try to exploit the system if it were more centrally controlled.

I remember looking at charity jobs when I was graduating with my humanities degree before I got into tech. Revealingly, the alumi I was speaking to who worked in the sector said something like, “At it’s core you need to remember that working for a charity is essentially a sales job.”

Made me nope tf out of there lol.

UB is only one class of error though. I get nervous when people talk about re-writing battle hardened code which has been used - and reviewed by the community - for decades because there are going to be many subtleties and edge cases which are not immediately apparent for any developer attempting a re-implementation.

Yeah the interface for it - and functionality - is more like nano than actual Emacs.

Regardless of the drug, someone who isn’t a medical professional shouldn’t be mailing it to children.