If ony sane and normal people were trusted with root privileges, nothing would ever get done.

DOS? That’s ancient technology! Who still uses that relic!? Lol.

I like some assembly

So, do you work with minimum spec hardware, or are you just a masochist?

I once saw an application, I think some sort of old computer emulator tool, on a smartphone, read a punch card using the camera. Which made me think, QR codes are a difficult for humans to read way to put code onto a physical sheet of paper and them pass it to a computer, just like punch cards were, when it comes to technology, there is nothing new under the sun, and on a cycle, everything old is eventually new again.

I’ve seen this.

I have also done this.

I haven’t really understood Windows since XP died. I understand it even less since I started using Linux. All I know how to do is power cycle the machine a couple times. Which tends to fix a lot of things, not just Windows and not just PCs. If a reboot doesn’t help, all I’ll tell you is to ask someone more knowledgeable about Windows than I am, or reinstall the whole damn thing.

Hey, manual installation might teach you a lot about Linux, but at least installing my system took less than an hour and I have a functioning system with everything I need set up! While you Arch people almost always spent over an hour and a lot of effort, just to get a TTY booting, and you’re still missing things even once you do get your choice of desktop environment and your graphical programs installed and running!

(Tbh, I kinda want the AUR sometimes. But, like, I don’t need it, Arch has a reputation for being a pain and forcing you to really learn about Linux by causing you to constantly need to use odd terminal commands to fix problems, and most of my distro hopping urges in general are some combination of “think I understand Linux way more than I do” and “I don’t really want a new distro, I just want a new desktop environment.” And the funny thing is that so much of what actually seems interesting and new to me beyond just a different DE that’s shiny and new, is based on Debian. Lol.)

Okay, sure, every other month… Still way more failures per year than anything running Debian!

Updates? Now why would I want to do that, besides basic security updates? The whole point of a stable system is that nothing changes suddenly! I don’t need up to date packages, I need a system that won’t break unless I do something stupid to it (and probably won’t break even when I do stupid shit to it)! And if you really need the latest packages, there are ways to do that, but most people really don’t need the bleeding edge!

(I don’t actually have strong opinions on this. I actually did have something derived from Arch on my initial pre switch list of distros to try. Just happened to like one that happens to be based on Debian better. (I use pure Debian about as much as you use pure Arch, I guess. Lol.) But being sectarian towards Arch users who act like you is fun.)

Arch? ARCH!? No way, comrade, Debian all the way! Stability rocks! I may have out of date packages, but at least my system doesn’t fall apart every other day whether I update it or not!

Honestly, you make good points. I was in the mood for “argue about silly nonsense til blue in face” when I replied to you, but, yeah, the thing about Linux distros is that there’s a different best one for different use cases.

If we’re talking favourite distro of all time conceptually, antiX, hands down. If we’re talking daily driver I actually use, I like Linux Mint for that. Basic, yeah, but it Just Works and that’s what I want and need. Honestly, I think I’m a lot like you - I like Debian derivatives, I don’t have a good usecase for vanilla Debian though, but I’m not going to tell anyone preferring distros with a different base that they’re wrong or get all sectarian about it, that’s a waste of both our time and spoons at best and actively counterproductive at worst.

I do find the world of Official State Distros used/maintained by governments interesting from a political standpoint, especially in AES contexts, software sovereignty this, saving taxpayer resources that, yada yada yada, but I’ve never actually tried using any and don’t have strong opinions on any of the actual state distros in question. Except Red Star, my opinion on that one is that “it’s garbage and the versions we have here in the West are horribly out of date, don’t use it.”

Ahh, just terminal junkie things. I don’t understand or use the damn things enough to care beyond “whichever one my desktop environment comes with by default”.

Wait, you’ve actually done that? I just tried to imagine something ridiculously sectarian that I’d do if it wasn’t just bloody counterproductive. And then when it made me laugh for half a minute straight, I posted it here.

So, then, what’s the best distro? Obviously any real commie uses Linux, that’s a given.

“I’d make that group, but I don’t want to moderate it.”

Neat.

Eh, more accounts to keep track of sounds frustrating. And the kinds of people who call Hexbear unfounded insults on political grounds and defederate from us probably aren’t people I want to talk to anyway. I come on Hexbear and .ml for an explicitly leftist experience. I think I’ll stick with just Hexbear and the communities we are federated with for now.

Let me guess, libs who dislike “tankie instances”?

Tbf, a lot of versions of Windows sucked.

(I wonder if anyone wrote up one of these for MS-DOS back in the pre Win9X era. That’d be interesting just to see the roots of the copypasta, lol.)

Nice. Always neat to see that virus removed from a home. Are you running a Windows free home, then, or is it just your own individual tech that’s malware free?

Huh, never seen that comm before in the Linux comms. And the link returns an error for me.

I am convinced that everyone, including kids, should be forced to learn computers starting from a command line only. “You can’t have a GUI until you can operate competently without one.” Admittedly, I’m useless with a terminal myself, and a little scared of 'em, but that’s actually why I think this. I wish I wasn’t so scared of the CLI and reliant on “pointing and grunting” rather than “using my words”. I wish I hadn’t “learned computers” starting at 4 with shortcuts that make things easier but abstract away things I really should have had to know from the beginning.

We call them Tupperware parties where I’m from too, I think the comic just implies it said “container party” or similar to make the wordplay work.