And don’t worry, the mega-corp that has constantly lied about things in the past promises that all the data from the integrated app that gets sent back to company HQ only gets used for training better chatbots (probably) (maybe) (possibly) (unless it’s, like really good blackmail material). And every single thing you’ve ever typed into Notepad surely isn’t just sitting there on a company server, waiting for a subpoena from an increasingly authoritarian government to gain access to…

(And, of course, that program you coded in Notepad? The fact that it was used to train Microsoft’s next chatbot, which then went on to magically write code strikingly similar to yours to be integrated into the next Microslop project without notifying or compensating you in any way … purely coincidental, of course. It’s not stealing – it’s training. Running it through a chatbot first magically removes all copyright protection from your code.)

I was about to say… Maybe I’ve just been lucky, but I haven’t had the slightest issue with Linux audio. Ever.

does your half-assed linux install come with the incredibly useful NoPilot?

Nope. If for some incredibly bonkers reason I actually wanted to use it, I’d have to actually – gasp! – go to a website and talk to it through a website interface, rather than an interface directly integrated into every goddamn app on my own computer. That’s like … two, maybe even three extra clicks!

(Seriously, though. If for some reason I wanted to talk to a chatbot, I could do that on the chatbot’s website. Why do I need it to be integrated into fucking Notepad?)

as I can see hints of things going wrong.

Yes!

Even if you don’t understand every line, if the system hangs or just takes an unusually long time to boot, you’ll be able to see what it’s getting stuck on. And even if you don’t understand that, you can google DDG the message and find out what it’s doing, maybe figure out what’s taking so long, what’s wrong, and how to fix it.

…mostly because they have never had to reboot their system 64 times before getting a new machine.

You really didn’t have to call me out like that.

I’ve had my system for ~4 years now, and I think I’ve rebooted it a grand total of maybe 10 times. Pretty much never voluntarily. Usually due to a power outage or needing to shut down for a hardware upgrade.

Some things on Ubuntu are much more updated than standard Debian, including the kernel.

Okay, but…

Recently, my girlfriend (who I successfully migrated to Kubuntu) was complaining about ads on youtube, so I wanted to install Brave for her, since that works well as a chromium-based browser but still doesn’t show ads. (I’ve had issues trying to play youtube on Firefox with adblocker, probably because Google’s trying to discourage anything other than Chrome.)

Brave was available in the app store, and installed as a Snap. And it was fine. It installed fine, it works fine, no issues. Maybe it’s not the most efficient way to do things, and there certainly are issues with the snap system. But … it’s not the devil, and it’s not the end of the world.

I’m not sure if other people want to read the pedantic truth anyways. I’m glad you filled this void.

Glad my pedantry could be of service, lol!

The instructions for installing on ubuntu only work because of ubuntu’s popularity.

True, but this is still a very real effect with real-world benefits.

(And I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s just Ubuntu’s popularity. More like, due to Debian and Debian derivatives’ popularity, of which Ubuntu is one. Since there are so many popular distros out there that are Debian-based where Debian-style install instructions will work (and quite a few people running Debian itself), it makes sense to give Debian-style install instructions first.)

Also if you can copy-paste commands, you can also just follow build instructions.

In my experience, not so much.

Because even if you follow the instructions exactly, you’ll always run into some problem due to your build environment not being quite identical to the developer’s build environment, some library being half a version number off, and then cmake fails with a cryptic error message. So then you downgrade that library to the older version and try again, and this time it fails with a different cryptic error message that you can’t make any sense of at all this time, or the compiler quits because it says the code is formatted improperly on line 1437 and now you’re left wondering whether it’s an issue with your compiler or whether you should go in and edit the source code yourself to try and fix that supposed formatting error…

I don’t know… I’ve tried this approach a few times – usually as a desperate last resort – and it never seems to actually work. In theory, it should. In practice … good fucking luck.

it is more about arch’s philosy being your system may not boot next update

Yeah … no thanks. I’ll be okay with slightly outdated versions of various packages, as long as they still work.

ubuntu: pacman -S name is not harder than apt install name.

Eh, it’s a teensy bit harder, since you have to remember what -S means, rather than the easy to remember and plain English ‘install’. But, yeah, not much of a difference.

And try to install something on ubuntu if it’s not in the official package repos.

1: Go to that something’s website.

2: look for their download/install instructions page, scroll to Linux instructions if necessary.

3: Install instructions for Debian/Ubuntu are usually the first one listed, and typically just consist of a few commands you can copy and paste over without modifying.

It isn’t particularly difficult in most cases.

Honestly, I think Kubuntu is slept on as a beginner’s distro.

Yes, Ubuntu has its issues … but those sorts of issues are really not going to affect a newbie much. And it’s stable, easy to use, KDE defaults will be pretty familiar-feeling for Windows refugees, and it should be relatively easy to find help – 90% of the time, if you just type “how do I _____ in Linux?” into Google Duck Duck Go, the results you find will be perfectly applicable to Ubuntu. Want to install 3rd party software that’s not in their repos? In pretty much any software that offers a Linux version, the Ubuntu-compatible install method is the first one they list.

(Oh, and the installer is literally one click if you just let it do everything in automatic mode. No keyboard needed. The install image boots into a full GUI installer with mouse support, and if you want, all you have to do is click ‘automatic install’ and wait. Once it’s done and reboots, you’re in your new OS.)

Once you become an advanced enough user that you get annoyed by Snap packages or feel like you need more cutting-edge package updates … well, then you should also be advanced enough to do your own distro-hopping.

That’s the tricky part, innit?

A few good options:

A) Set up your backup/restore procedures immediately after setting up your fresh new system. And then immediately test them to see if you can successfully restore, before you’ve done anything important on the new system that you can’t afford to lose. If the restoration completely fails, no biggie. You just have to start over on setting up your fresh new system.

B) Attempt to restore your backup to a different system, not your primary one. You’ll need a second set of hardware to do that, but if you’ve got the hardware lying around, it’s a great way to test your restore procedure. If you’re upgrading your hardware anyway, it could be a good time to do this test – use your backup restoration procedure to move your data to the new hardware. (As an extra bonus, this doesn’t require any downtime on the primary system.)

C) Simulate a complete hard drive failure and replacement by replacing your primary system’s drive(s) with a blank new one. If the backup restoration fails, you should (fingers crossed) be able to just plug the old hard drive back in and everything will go back to how it was before your test.

D) Have multiple backups and multiple restore plans, and just hope to fuck that at least one of them actually works during your testing.

Option A can only be done if you’re proactive about it and do it at the right time.

Options B and C require extra hardware, but are probably the best choice if you have the hardware or can afford it.

And Option D will always have at least a tiny amount of risk associated with it.

Do you know how to transfer the files back if your OS has completely failed?

Verifying the files are there in your backup is only, like 10% of verifying that it’s a real, usable backup.

The important question is: can you successfully restore those files from the backup? Can you successfully put them back where they’re supposed to be after losing your primary copy?

At this point, I have to assume they’re doing it on purpose.

Eh, list has its place, and I’ll still use it sometimes.

List shows you more files on one screen, and it can show details of the files like filesize and last modified date without having to click on each file to get that.

Everybody else with these giant folders is fucking crazy.

Hey, man. Sometimes I’m dealing with images a lot, and it helps to have image thumbnails big enough to see clearly.

(And even the mini-thumbnails inside a folder’s thumbnail are visible enough to be helpful, giving me a quick sense of what’s in that folder.)

“we just copied all of your private keys and documents into our cloud and hid them”

And then deleted the originals on your computer so that your only copy is in our cloud.

Oops! Your cloud storage is full! Now pay us $25/mo or you will not be able to access your cloud storage.

How so? I want KDE to remember that certain programs should only open on certain screens

KDE has been able to do this for a long time.

System Settings --> Window Management --> Window Rules

Or, right click on the title bar of the window --> more options --> configure special window settings

From there, you can create a rule that forces a certain program to open its window at a certain location. And you can specify that location to be on the screen you want it to be on. Specifically set a rule for “Position”, enter the screen coordinates where you want it to go, and select “Apply Initially”.

(If the application isn’t behaving under that rule, try adding the “Ignore requested geometry” rule as well.)

But I would hate it with passion if my landlord would place his stuff into my flat.

Well, that depends… How valuable is his stuff?