How would you suggest I respond in the future?

We have a person, claiming that CUPS doesn’t work and they now uninstall it on every installation.

There is no context, no data, no information that suggests what the issue is, what they tried, when this occurred, on which platform, under which conditions.

In other words, the user was essentially saying “CUPS sux”.

Having used Linux as my main system for over 25 years, that sentiment did not match my own experience, does not help anyone, not me, not the user and not the OP who was trying to solve a problem, let alone anyone else reading along.

I responded accordingly.

This has not been my experience … at … all.

Perhaps it would be helpful to discover what exactly doesn’t work for you and fix that, rather than remove CUPS because one time it didn’t work for you seven years ago.

You could print to CUPS from the other devices and potentially bypass all those shenanigans.

Also, CUPS has a PDF printer which saves you from even heating up your printer at all … I haven’t had a printer in my life for over 25 years.

The point I was trying to make is that End Of Life is in the eye of the beholder. Just because it doesn’t get any updates from the manufacturer, doesn’t mean that the user has to throw it away.

Similarly, a user can give the device to a second hand store and the next user can use it … and so on.

As I said, it is not a fixed date or concept.

It essentially depends on what level of support you require.

End Of Life is a concept, not generally a fixed point in time … even though the likes of Microsoft are attempting to rewrite history and making everyone move off Windows 10 by a specific date.

And just like in that situation, you have options.

You can consider your relationship with Microsoft at an end and install a different OS, or you can continue the relationship and buy new hardware even though there’s absolutely nothing wrong with what you currently have.

The same is true for a router.

The decision around EOL is about what happens next.

Do you want to yell at the supplier if it breaks, or will you realise that yelling only happens if you spend money on lawyers, and in the meantime you can move on with your life and decide on an alternative path.

My car is worth $700 or so, even though I bought it new 15 years ago. Is it at the end of its life? It’s still getting me from here to there and back.

… and this is why we use YYYY-MM-DD as the date format.

Pointer Acceleration Profile and Sensitivity should be able to be adjusted to suit your requirements.

The Australian government has just emailed the following:

ASD’s ACSC is aware of targeting of multiple vulnerabilities within Australia impacting Cisco ASA 5500-X Series models, that are running Cisco ASA Software or FTD software:

CVE-2025-20333 (Critical) – A vulnerability in the VPN web server of Cisco Secure Firewall Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software and Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense (FTD) Software could allow an authenticated, remote attacker to execute arbitrary code on an affected device.

CVE-2025-20363 (Critical) – A vulnerability in the web services of Cisco Secure Firewall Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software, Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense (FTD) Software, Cisco IOS Software, Cisco IOS XE Software, and Cisco IOS XR Software could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker (Cisco ASA and FTD Software) or authenticated, remote attacker (Cisco IOS, IOS XE, and IOS XR Software) with low user privileges to execute arbitrary code on an affected device.

CVE-2025-20362 (Medium) – A vulnerability in the VPN web server of Cisco Secure Firewall Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software and Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense (FTD) Software could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to access restricted URL endpoints that should otherwise be inaccessible without authentication.

A number of versions of Cisco software releases are affected, including those within the following ranges:

Cisco ASA Software releases 9.12 to 9.23x and; Cisco FTD Software releases 7.0 to 7.7x.

Please see

https://sec.cloudapps.cisco.com/security/center/resources/asa_ftd_continued_attacks for specific version details.

Cisco reports active exploitation of these vulnerabilities has been observed globally.

Except that in civil discussion with experts, other ideas are what helps people arrive at a solution suitable for them and their situation.

I’ll also add that I’ve been a Linux user for 25 years and the toxicity you claim in relation to the Linux community is in my experience not evident as a “major reason”, instead I’ve found it to be innovative and flexible with a wide perspective and approach to problem solving.

Are there dickheads in the Linux community? Yes, just like there are everywhere in society.

The open-source alternative to Mailchimp, Brevo, Mailjet, Listmonk, Mailerlite, and Klaviyo, Loop.so, etc.

That’s the first paragraph of the project page.

Not to rain on the parade, but in my experience, having had to email customers in bulk … sending tickets and logistics requirements for large events … I can tell you that self hosting this is a complete and utter waste of time.

You’ll get blocked before the first batch of emails leave your mailer.

Not even paid MailChimp or Campaign Monitor could guarantee delivery.

The problem is not the platform for sending email, it’s the centralised nature of email hosting, much of it is behind Google and Microsoft hosted services.

I’ve run my business for over 25 years, and I haven’t had a printer in over two decades. I have needed to print something less than half a dozen times since making the decision to not replace it. Instead I print to PDF and if I need actual physical paper, I’ve put a PDF on a USB flash drive and taken it to my local office supplies store to print on demand.

I have a scanner, it’s been used perhaps a dozen times in the same period.

In other words, have you considered not buying a printer?

You don’t need the wildcard, and as others have pointed out, it doesn’t include "hidden " dot files by default.

tar -czf ~/package.tgz admin api mobile

You can even archive extended attributes with the ‘--xattrs flag.

Docker is not virtualisation, although it’s a common misconception.

A better way to think of it is a security wrapper around untrusted processes.

You can prove this for yourself by looking at all the processes running in a Docker host while one or more containers are running, you’ll see all the processes listed.

In other words, you don’t need a CPU capable of virtualisation to run Docker.

Use a bash command line:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6250698/how-to-decode-url-encoded-string-in-shell

This is what that looks like in real life:

https://github.com/aws/aws-cdk/issues/34892

When I last played with this a decade or so ago, there were several map tiling solutions in the geosciences that are self hosted.

From memory, “World Wind” is a good search term, but there’s others.

I use sshfs.

What is an Ubuntu LTS release?

An Ubuntu LTS is a commitment from Canonical to support and maintain a version of Ubuntu for ten years, with the initial five years available for free following Ubuntu’s mission. In April, every two years, we release a new LTS where all of the developments from the previous two years accumulate into one up-to-date, feature-rich release. These releases focus on performance enhancement and stability. The LTS is what we recommend to large scale enterprises, general users and businesses. However, for more dynamic users, every six months throughout those two years there are also developer releases. These releases are kept up-to-date and relevant, with the latest and greatest contributions, but are only supported for nine months at a time.

Source: https://ubuntu.com/blog/what-is-an-ubuntu-lts-release