Not that I’m trying to dissuade you, as I am on Gentoo and have been for about 1 year now, but if you’re only interested in other init systems, did you consider trying Artix?

I’d still say go with Gentoo if you want fine grained control over nearly every aspect of your system, as compiler flags, eselect profiles, and just overall minimalism make it superior for tinkerers imho.

That said, if you just wanted to experience other init systems like openrc, then Artix might be a good option. Prior to jumping to Gentoo, I was on Artix Linux with runit init system for 6 years. It was good, but I wanted to know more about Gentoo. There were some definite tradeoffs from Artix with runit, but I appreciated the fine grained control I got with Gentoo’s compiler flags, so I stayed on Gentoo.

The only advice I’d say when installing Gentoo is to choose your profile carefully during initial install and to choose your stage 3 tarball accordingly (just think about your ultimate use case). Also, if you need to use wifi, make sure to install wpa supplicant while chrooted into the live environment.

Anyways, hope this helps.

Just replace “it” in the first speech bubble with “your partner” and the humor kind of sort of makes sense.

Yeah, I’ve used systemd-less distros on desktops and servers for 9 years now. I know systemd can do cron related work too, but it’s harder to come up with comedic wordplay around it. Yet another reason to not use systemd, lol.

certbot? cronjob? certcronbotjob…croncertjobbot…certjobcronbot…cronbotcertjob…

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.

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.

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.

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…

I prefer an alias that actually reflects my feelings.

alias didistutter="sudo"

Fuck past me! That guy has fucked me over in more ways than I can count. And Fuck future me too! That guy is pissed at me for reasons I can’t possibly fathom. And fuck present me! That guy be lazy AF.

I’ve been using Links for years. I rarely meet another Links user, as TUI web browser use is rare in and of itself, and most go to w3m or lynx from what I’ve seen.

TUI browsers are surprisingly capable of getting you around the web even with more limited features, as long as you mainly are focused on accessing public text documents and communications.

I know one of the main uses I saw some utilizing Links for was when it was recommended during the Gentoo installation process when you had to download a stage 3 tarball. Most just had another browser or used a different Linux iso during installation, but if you were installing via the tty, and had no other device with a web browser on it, that was (and still is) a solid choice for finding and downloading the needed tarball.

Anyways, just a bit of lore. My only complaint with Links is it doesn’t let you change the keybindings and they default to emacs. No shade to emacs, but I am and probably always will be a vim user, so there’s that. Other than that I’ll always be a big fan of Links.

Gentoo, OpenRC, BSPWM, Nvim, Librewolf, Ortholinear Keyboard.

I was not aware of these. Thank you for making me aware of them.