This has been my experience. I used Fedora for a while years ago, but rpm was already second fiddle to deb. Plus, I was already selling into my “old man distro” so I kept ending up with some Ubuntu version.

I did recently Manjaro and Linux Mint, but ended up with Ubuntu again, although this time Kubuntu, Ubuntu with KDE!

No shade from me though for going with Red Hat.

100% agree. You’re not selling the hardware anymore, leave it in an unlocked state. Same with games.

Yep, can confirm. I used Xubuntu primarily for years, and never had an account on the official XFCE forums or Git, because why would I? I’m just a user, the software is very stable, and stuff tended to just work.

The classic joke:

Rabbi Altmann and his secretary were sitting in a coffeehouse in Berlin in 1935. “Herr Altmann,” said his secretary, “I notice you’re reading Der Stürmer! I can’t understand why. A Nazi libel sheet! Are you some kind of masochist, or, God forbid, a self-hating Jew?”

“On the contrary, Frau Epstein. When I used to read the Jewish papers, all I learned about were pogroms, riots in Palestine, and assimilation in America. But now that I read Der Stürmer, I see so much more: that the Jews control all the banks, that we dominate in the arts, and that we’re on the verge of taking over the entire world. You know – it makes me feel a whole lot better!”

I accept no credit, I simply copy-pasted from Wikipedia.

Just started using Thunderbird again a couple of months ago. Like it! I never really stopped liking it, just stopped using it because all the webmail interfaces and “appification”.

Was just trying to get K-9 Mail working on my phone again (after years of using umpteen different apps) and it’s not as smooth as I remember.

I stopped distro hopping around a decade ago, and just use default Ubuntu LTS releases. No shade from me.

I’m not going to pretend that Ubuntu is the coolest, hippest, trendiest distro around, but it’s good enough, stake enough, and gosh darn it I’m just used to it.

I’m with you.

I sort of petered out distro-hoping 10-ish years ago, I’ve just used boring old Ubuntu LTS ever since. All the Unity/Gnome/KDE, Snap/Flatpak and systemd stuff I’ve successfully ignored.

I have no doubt that there are “better” distros out there, but Ubuntu works.

#1, whatever is default. The main advantage of the terminal is that it’s just a terminal, fundamentally the same terminal since the dawn of computing.

Having said that, I do sometimes install a non-default terminal. I haven’t seen any of them mentioned:

cool-retro-term It looks like an OG CRT! What other terminal emulator has this killer feature?

Byobu Technically a front end for tmux, but it gives some useful status info and multiple windows.

Hmm, maybe I can use it for the Compose key instead or Right Alt…

Ubuntu was the distribution that had me switch from dual-booting with Windows as default to dual-booting with Linux as default.

I also remember ordering an actual Ubuntu disc, with the extra donation to fund the mailing for free program.

Now years later after lots of distro-hopping I just run Ubuntu LTS, and stay on the very boring LTS branch.

It kind of makes sense. First I’ve ever heard about Ubuntu Christian Edition as well, but it seems to mostly be set up with filtering in mind, with the DNS tools and such. Add in productivity software aimed at preaching I guess, and you have a “safe” OS for kids and the laptop hooked up to the projector at a church.

It wouldn’t be terrible, as long as it’s based on an open source foundation. Although that depends on the specific open source license. As long as the engine can be forked, the worst of IE6 should be avoidable.

But yes, with Opera moving to Blink, you’ve got really only two-ish browser engines. KHTML/WebKit/Blink and Gecko. WebKit/Blink are Open Source, but I think mostly BSD, so Apple/Google could migrate to a proprietary license easily.

Gecko is MPL, which IIRC is somewhat Copyleft like the GPL, just a bit less stringent.

With the Apple/Google impasse with WebKit/Blink, I think we should be able to avoid an IE6 situation, but I would feel better with a stronger Copyleft license.

As much as I love Firefox, I think Firefox has less browser share than it did back in the IE6 days.

My local library uses some sort of Linux for the card catalogue. I don’t use the general purpose library computers, but I think they are some flavour of Linux as well.

My impression was that they were probably sold as a low maintenance plug-and-play solution.

My local library is part of a larger library system, so I’m pretty sure the librarians won’t know anything about them, that any computer maintenance is handled by somebody dispatched from the head branch. I’ll still try and have a look here in a bit.

Don’t give them ideas.

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I’ve been half expecting something like this for a bit. I hadn’t realized about redeployment from the Gaza borders, but it’s just one part of this bigger problem that Netanyahu was making.

Hamas was always going to “Hamas” as it were. I don’t believe there ever can be peace with Hamas (as per Hamas’ own constitution and public statements) but Israel absolutely can increase or decrease the amount of support Hamas can generate. Netanyahu has been more focused on his personal political fortunes rather than the long term health of Israel.

I do think normalizing relations with the surrounding Arab countries is necessary, and Netanyahu has made some progress in this regard, but in the meantime he’s been exploiting the retaliation cycle for short term gain back home.

It’s more that MS has leaned into the subscription model with Office 365 and such.

Windows is already kind of a “Freemium” OS, so I’m expecting them to continue in that fashion. Your are right, the article is mostly pointless speculation that was refuted anyways, but I’ll admit it sounded a bit off to me anyways. MS wants people to be running Windows, so they can seem then GamePass subscriptions, Office365 subscriptions, and whatever other services they can think of. As such, I expect the core OS to be very free. Just what constitutes core functionality versus Premium features might change.

I’m pretty sure that most of the solid anti-war protestors would expect Ukraine to just accept Russian territorial demands, up to and including complete annexation.

It turns into a reductio ad absurdum pretty quickly though. Putin didn’t seem to return Crimea or the occupied regions of Donbass and Luhansk when asked politely. Not even when asked sternly. Indeed, it would seem that when all he faced was stern disapproval he decided to come back for more.

There is no doubt in my mind that supporting Ukraine now is stopping more Russian aggression later. Besides, Putin can end this war any time. Just go back to the original borders. The only reason not to is his yearning for Imperial glory. The irony being that many of these anti-war protestors would probably proclaim themselves anti-colonialists.

Trump’s presidency certainly showed that the US is one election away from balking. I’m pretty sure that’s Putin’s plan in Ukraine now.

The actual infrastructure was horribly inefficient, but that may have improved with ETH’s move to proof of stake.

There’s other issues, but the idea of using the digital receipt as an “investment” seems fundamentally flawed.