I like it. Wonder if this could be retooled to work on rpm-ostree systems, because any layered packages installed from RPM files have the same limitation of needing to be manually upgraded.

I hope we see an evolution of licensing. Giant companies shouldn’t get a free pass if they’re just going to treat the original devs like a commodity to be used up.

If you appreciate autonomy, avoid MacOS. Their whole business model is to suck you into their technological ecosystem. The fact that their stuff works in any way outside of their expensive, walled garden is unintentional.

SteamFork is immutable so any changes may be lost, however it may be useful to update packages to work around a bug. To install packages locally temporarily:

• Log into desktop mode and make the filesystem writeable: sudo steamos-readonly disable
• Install or update the package: Ex. sudo pacman -Sy steamfork-customizations-jupiter

As cool as a new entry into the landscape is, this one still has the same filesystem limitations as SteamOS. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but I do wonder how this one will meaningfully distinguish itself from the others.

Spiral is to Debian as Endeavor is to Arch. It’s a painless way to get Debian (bookworm) set up.

Yes. If you want something easy, look at:

• Pop!_OS (Ubuntu-based, great for newbies)
• Linux Mint (Ubuntu-based, great for newbies)
• Spiral Linux (Debian, easy to set up, rock solid)
• Aurora (Fedora Atomic based, hard to break, automatic updates)

Okay, but this was but an example of that, so it’s not really a relevant grievance, is it?

Maybe this is the fork in the road for something new. These circumstances were kind of how GNU/Linux was born, after all.

“Old” doesn’t have to mean biologically old. In this case, it means people who have been doing it for a long time—long enough that they’re set in their ways.

So while I can understand the confusion, it doesn’t apply here.

In a twist of delicious fate, my instance doesn’t have downvotes. They get dropped before they even hit the database. So I’ll never know or “feel ashamed” if they don’t bother to take time to refute it. 🤣

Except in this case, it was a bunch of old C devs who aren’t just resistant but openly hostile to change, and they’d rather bully people into silence than try to progress.

And let’s not forget that printer vendors historically bungle even that much. That they work at all on Linux is a testament to the various Linux devs.

That’s true, it’s not just hobbyists. I meant that the paid effort is relatively small potatoes compared to giant companies like MS.

But that aside, do we give Linux too much benefit of the doubt relative to the “things that just work”.

No, I don’t think so. There should be an expected difference between Windows (for example) and Linux as far as “it just works” goes, simply by virtue of the fact that one is actively developed by a company with eleventy-bajillion dollars and the other is developed by lots of hobbyists and a handful of profitable companies.

If Windows doesn’t work, it’s not unreasonable to expect that it should. If Linux doesn’t work, it is unreasonable to expect that it always will.

I remember looking up how to use Colemak with vim, and the advice was:

• Change the mappings so the position is the same, but it has the downside that every tutorial won’t match.
• Keep the mappings and do awkward stretches for common functions like up and down.

So I just gave up and moved on.

Spin up a VM in the distro of your choice and try to install everything you might need or want (like VPN clients, remote desktop software, gaming platforms, video production stuff, etc.). See if you can do everything you need, and highlight any problem areas to see if you need to explore alternatives or if there’s things you can live without.

The DE is pretty surface level, these days, since they all work pretty well for most people, and the terminal apps are pretty standardized. Focus on how you might use your computer from day to day.

Installing software which isn’t in a repository

This is a massive one that’s often overlooked. For example, I love Bazzite, but it’s nigh impossible to install Private Internet Access’s client on it. On the other hand, installing the VPN my work requires is trivially easy, but you’d have to build it manually for any non-RPM-based distro.

Fixed it for you: Emacs.

Allow me to present to you my Ultimate Guide to Emacs.

I have silicone caps, and my OLED Deck fits just fine in the official case. Dunno what kind the person above is using, but mine are the ones from PlayVital.

It’s not that snug.