The ones born after the Great Depression lived through an abnormal period of capitalism. One that featured a lot of socialist policies. As far as I’ve read, most people were well aware that capitalism was dog shit for the working class before that and a lot believed socialism was the solution.

14 f TO

pic?

Yeah, that’s all there’s to it, along with pure ignorance. In a past not so ideologically developed life, I’ve written code under Apache 2 because it was “more free.” Understanding licenses, their implications, the ideologies behind them and their socioeconomic effects isn’t trivial. People certainly aren’t born educated in those, and often they reach for the code editor before that.

A bit more useful, puts the different parent distros to scale:

High-res source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_distributions?wprov=sfla1

On desktop, yeah. Unity > GNOME, upstart > systems, snap. I don’t fuck with snap, I just use it as intended, I don’t try to remove it. I think I started actively using it in 2016. As a software developer I understand that only the happy path is reasonably tested so I try not to go too far out of it. 😂

I typically wait for the LTS point release before upgrading. I check the release notes. I check if anything is broken after the upgrade, fix as needed. I’m sure I’ve done some stuff when the migration to GNOME happened. But that’s to be expected when a major component change occurs. If you had some non-default config or workflow, it might require rework. E.g. some custom PulseAudio config broke on my laptop with the migration to Pipewire in 24.04. But on that legendary desktop install, the only unexpected breakage was during an upgrade when the power went out. Luckily upgrades are just apt operations so I was able to recover and finish the upgrade manually.

I think a friend is running a 2012 or 2010 install. 🥲

And I’ve also swapped multiple hardware platforms on this install. 😂 Went AMD > Intel > AMD > more AMD. Swapped SSDs, went single to mirror, increased in size.

I mean… once you kick the Windows-brain reinstall habit and you learn enough, the automatic instinct upon something unexpected becomes to investigate and fix it. Reinstall is just so much more laborious on a customized machine.

Interesting. We use it for work since 2016 (high hundreds of workstations) and I’ve used it since 2005 on variety of machines and use cases without significant issues. We’ve also used it to operate a couple of datacenters (OpenStack private clouds) with good results. That said I’ve been using LTS exclusively since 2014 and don’t use PPAs since 2018-20 and it’s been solid. My main machine hasn’t been reinstalled since the initial install in 2014.

Debian stable. It’s been here for 30 years, it’s the largest community OS, it’ll likely be here in 30 years (or until we destroy ourselves). Any derivative is subject to higher probability of additional issues, stoppage of development in the long run, etc.

If you’re extra lazy, Ubuntu LTS with Ubuntu Pro (free) enabled. You could use that for 10 years (or until Canonical cancels it) before you need to upgrade. Ubuntu is the least risky alternative for boring operation since it’s used in the enterprise and Canonical is profitable. The risk there is Canonical doing an IPO and Ubuntu going the way of tightening access like Red Hat did.

The machine that was last installed in 2014 is Ubuntu LTS. It’s been upgraded through all the LTS releases since then. Currently on 22.04 with the free Ubuntu Pro enabled. I use a mix of Ubuntu LTS and Debian stable on other machines. For example my laptop is on Debian 12. Debian has been the most reliable OS and community for over 30 years and I believe it’ll still be around 30 years from now, if we haven’t destroyed ourselves. 😂

Yeah, it seems counterproductive to ditch FOSS in the name of self-sufficiency. If it were about that, assembling an army of software people to learn and contribute to important FOSS codebases would be much more productive in my opinion. It feels like Harmony Next is about something else. Perhaps some wholesale insurance. Or someone’s plans grandeur.

That kinda makes sense at this stage. If you spend time understanding what those commands do, you’d understand how the system works, and most importantly how to not fuck it up. Keep in mind there’s a lot of misinformation and bad practices in guides out there. People who bare know more than you feel confident to share snippets without warning. Ten or twenty years ago much fewer people had experience with Linux and most people confident enough to write were technical people that knew what they were talking about. Destructive misinformation was less.

But yeah when you learn, the need or urge to reinstall disappears. I stopped reinstalling in 2014. Took me 9 years to unfuck my Windows brain and understand enough to not shoot myself in the feet. Main machine hasn’t been reinstalled since then. That’s with replacing multiple main boards, switching AMD > Intel > AMD, changing SSDs, going from single SSD to mdraid, increasing in size over time, etc.

Sir this is Linux.

This is a very accu explanation. ☝️

I also don’t like System76 hardware, but they’re doing this software work that they’re hoping to recoup with hardware sales. If this becomes a good replacement for GNOME, for me it would be worth paying whatever they’d make from a laptop. But I ain’t buying their laptop because I don’t like it and I don’t need it. So I’m gonna give them the difference somehow. 😂

If this becomes a good replacement for GNOME I’d pay the profit margin of a System76 laptop for it.

This is another reason why income and wealth inequality are bad for us. We have a natural level of psychopathy in the population. Some are bound to stumble into the kind of power given by obscene inequality.

Too good. I’m gonna change the title to it.

Meta employees gotta schedule some more meetings.

Termux doesn’t run arbitrary software. There’s a pretty large set that does but plenty doesn’t. A VM would resolve that.