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0:00 Coming Up/Intro 0:58 Timber Hearth/Attlerock 8:00 Brittle Hollow 14:17 White Hole Station and Beyond 15:27 A Fool Out of Air! 16:30 Timber Hearth/Attlerock 17:38 Hourglass Twins 22:01 Go With God 23:07 Giant's Deep 30:32 Twin Impact! 30:55 Timber Hearth 31:58 Hourglass Twins 36:49 Why Does This Keep Happening to Me? 37:27 Timber Hearth 37:49 Hollow's Lantern/Brittle Hollow 40:17 Giant's Deep 41:25 Moon 42:42 Sun Station Smash 44:04 Deep Space Impact! 44:48 Dark Bramble 46:41 Giant's Deep (Whoa...) 49:25 When Worlds Collide 53:59 Interloper (Success!) 56:16 Status Check 56:42 Brittle Hollow 59:55 Brittle Bash! 1:00:13 Timber Hearth 1:01:24 Giant's Deep 1:02:15 Hourglass Twins 1:02:55 Moonscan 1:03:30 Home Stretch (Watch for Fishies)
!SPOILER WARNING! If you haven't played Outer Wilds or its associated DLC "Echoes of the Eye," please do NOT watch this video (or any other) until you have. Outer Wilds is a game of discovery in the most rewarding way. Once you have that knowledge, a core part of the game can never be experienced again. It's such a blast to play, and I guarantee you'll thank yourself for doing so.
With that out of the way, welcome to my Archipelago Randomizer challenge! The aim with this attempt is to complete enough of the 87 randomized checks scattered throughout the solar system to help me warp to the Eye of the universe and finish it off, all in one session! These checks cover virtually every location within the base game. To clarify, the items/abilities obtained from the checks are random (as are other aspects of the game, such as shuffled ghost matter), but the locations of the checks are not (e.g. a random item/ability is always found* when reading the second scroll in the Construction Yard on Giant's Deep). *There can also be traps laid in a check, such as sudden ship damage or a suit puncture.
So, what's an Archipelago Randomizer? From the mod page: "Randomizers in the Archipelago sense—which are sometimes called 'Metroidvania-style' or 'progression-based' randomizers—rely on the base game having several progression-blocking items you must find in order to complete the game. In Outer Wilds progression is usually blocked by player knowledge, so to make a good randomizer we take away some of your starting equipment (Translator, Scout, Signalscope, etc), and turn much of that player knowledge into items (using warp platforms now requires a 'Nomai Warp Codes' item, using the special GD tornado now requires a 'Tornado Aerodynamic Adjustments' item, etc.). These 'items' are then placed at randomly selected 'locations' while ensuring the game can still be completed."
I normally incorporate the following rules: no map, no hints, no ship log, no meditation, and no velocity matching. However, this time all is fair game, as this is an "ANY%" run. In addition to that, I'll have specific mods applied, such as a certain "strange" large structure now visible in the sky so I don't accidentally run into it (again).
Finally, a big thank you to the great minds at Mobius Digital for developing such a stellar game and to the many contributors in the modding community for creating the perfect excuse for me to revisit the fun physics of this clockwork solar system! Check out the links below for more info on the game and mods:
Scrap tire recycling via thermal pyrolysis represents a critical engineering frontier for mitigating global elastomer waste. However, industrial operators frequently encounter operational inefficiencies when processing heterogeneous feedstock streams. Scrap tires are far from uniform; they vary dramatically by vehicle classification, manufacturing origin, structural reinforcement, and chemical compounding. Passenger car tires, commercial truck tires, and specialized off-the-road tires possess distinct morphological and chemical profiles that directly dictate pyrolytic heat transfer rates, volatile matter evolution, and the ultimate yield distribution of pyrolytic oil, recovered carbon black, and steel wire.
Elastomer Blends and Macromolecular Pyrolysis Kinetics
The core of any tire matrix comprises a complex blend of synthetic and natural elastomers, primarily natural rubber, styrene-butadiene rubber, and polybutadiene. Each polymeric constituent exhibits distinct thermal degradation kinetics and volatilization thresholds. Natural rubber undergoes thermal cleavage at lower temperature intervals, yielding high initial volatile fractions, whereas synthetic styrene-butadiene copolymers require elevated thermal plateaus to achieve complete depolymerization.
Consequently, tires with high natural rubber content decompose more rapidly under initial heating in pyrolysis machine, whereas heavy-duty truck tires—which heavily utilize synthetic blends for enhanced tread wear resistance—demand extended residence times and higher peak reactor temperatures to prevent incomplete thermal cracking and residual heavy tar accumulation.
Reinforcement Architecture and Thermal Conduction
Beyond polymer chemistry, the internal physical architecture of a tire exerts a profound influence on reactor thermodynamics. Passenger car tires typically feature high textile cord content and lighter steel belts, whereas heavy commercial vehicle tires incorporate dense, multi-ply steel wire matrices.
Steel Content and Thermal Conductivity Variations
The presence of substantial steel fractions alters the bulk thermal conductivity of the charge. Steel acts as a localized thermal conductor, accelerating heat penetration into the center of the shredded tire matrix. However, an excessive accumulation of unseparated steel wire inside a continuous tyre pyrolysis plant can cause mechanical wear, bridge feeding mechanisms, and interfere with uniform bed temperatures. Furthermore, the metal fraction absorbs thermal energy without undergoing volatilization, shifting the mass balance calculations and requiring careful calibration of the energy inputs supplied to the primary pyrolytic reactor.
Compounding Additives and Mineral Filler Impacts
Tire manufacturing involves intensive chemical compounding, incorporating reinforcing fillers such as commercial carbon black, mineral silica, sulfur vulcanizing agents, and metallic oxides like zinc oxide. These inorganic additions do not vaporize during the thermal degradation phase; instead, they concentrate entirely within the solid residue, fundamentally altering the quality of the recovered carbon black.
High-silica passenger tires yield a solid residue contaminated with amorphous silicon dioxide, which limits its direct reinjection into high-performance rubber compounding without prior acid leaching or chemical beneficiation. Conversely, heavy truck tires with high carbon black loadings produce a more structurally robust solid residue that, with proper mechanical milling and pelletization, achieves high market valorization.
Volatile Fraction Condensation and Liquid Oil Specification
The chemical composition of the input tire type directly dictates the boiling range and heteroatom concentration of the resulting pyrolytic oil. Passenger tires, containing varied plasticizers and synthetic rubber formulations, generate a highly complex liquid condensate rich in aromatic hydrocarbons, sulfur compounds, and nitrogenated molecules. This requires sophisticated multi-stage fractional distillation and catalytic hydrotreatment to remove contaminants before the oil can be co-processed in conventional refineries. Heavy truck tires, dominated by different vulcanization packages, yield distinct boiling curve distributions that necessitate precise dew-point control within the condensation train to prevent pipe fouling and coking.
Tailoring Operational Parameters for Feedstock Variability
The inherent variability among tire typologies necessitates flexible, highly responsive operational parameters within commercial pyrolysis facilities. Operators cannot apply a static temperature profile or uniform residence time to a mixed batch of passenger and truck tires. Optimizing thermal efficiency requires rigorous pre-sorting, mechanical size reduction, and feed-stream homogenization. By categorizing incoming scrap tires by vehicle classification and structural composition, facility managers can fine-tune reactor heating ramps, optimize syngas recovery trains, and maximize the commercial value of both liquid condensates and solid carbonaceous outputs, securing long-term economic resilience in the competitive chemical recycling sector.
The Bluefin experience for your homelab. Image-based, auto-updating, zero maintenance. One management suite for every node, every service, and every container you run at home.
The Community Camp 4 Palestine marked 2 years of being there 24/7, directly opposite the American Embassy... A constant protest against America's complicity and enabling of Israel's genocide in Palestine... A powerful day and I was blown away to meet Dr Ang Swee Chai... A woman I have maximum respect for... 44 years working as a surgeon for the people of Palestine... The video is rough and ready, unedited but worth watching .
Municipal wastewater treatment facilities generate astronomical volumes of dewatered sludge daily, presenting an escalating logistical and ecological challenge. Comprising complex organic matrices, pathogenic microorganisms, heavy metals, and persistent trace pollutants, raw sludge resists safe long-term containment. Traditional management pathways, including direct agricultural application, landfilling, and conventional incineration, face tightening regulatory constraints due to groundwater contamination risks, greenhouse gas emissions, and toxic ash management burdens. In response to these vulnerabilities, industrial pyrolysis—defined as the thermal degradation of carbonaceous matter in an oxygen-depleted environment—emerges as a premier engineering paradigm for harmless disposal and resource valorization.
The Imperative of Advanced Municipal Sludge Sanitization
Ensuring total pathogen destruction and the elimination of emerging organic contaminants is the foundational requirement for any municipal sludge management protocol. Conventional biological stabilization techniques frequently fail to eradicate resilient pharmaceutical residues, endocrine-disrupting chemicals, and pathogenic spores completely. Thermochemical processing bridges this critical performance gap. Exposing the sludge matrix to elevated temperatures eradicates biological activity entirely, instantly decomposing volatile organic compounds and thermal-sensitive pollutants. This complete sanitization shifts the operational framework from hazardous waste containment to sustainable material transformation.
Thermochemical Mechanisms and Reactor Kinetics
The execution of sewage sludge treatment plant with pyrolysis technology relies on precise thermodynamic control within specialized industrial equipment, such as indirect-fired rotary kilns, fluidized beds, or continuous screw conveyors. Operating typically within a temperature threshold of 450 degrees Celsius to 850 degrees Celsius, these reactors supply the necessary thermal energy to drive the endothermic cleavage of high-molecular-weight polymers, including proteins, lipids, and humic substances. Because the reactor operates under sub-stoichiometric or completely inert conditions, complete combustion is prevented. Instead, the reaction kinetics favor devolatilization, carbonization, and structural aromatization, yielding three distinct product streams: a stable solid carbonaceous residue, condensable bio-oil, and non-condensable syngas.
Volatilization and Carbon Matrix Encapsulation
As thermal energy transfers through the moist sludge matrix, interstitial water is rapidly vaporized, paving the way for thermal cracking of organic fractions. The volatile gases escape the solid phase and are subsequently captured or condensed, while the remaining solid fraction undergoes severe volumetric shrinkage. This process forms a dense, highly stable pyrolytic char. Crucially, inorganic mineral phases and heavy metals—such as chromium, nickel, lead, and cadmium—are chemically and physically encapsulated within the expanding carbon lattice. This structural entrapment drastically suppresses their environmental mobility and leachability, neutralizing the primary ecological hazard associated with raw sludge disposal.
Environmental Abatement and Heavy Metal Stabilization
Atmospheric protection and leachate mitigation represent core advantages of pyrolytic treatment over traditional incineration. Because pyrolysis avoids the oxygen-rich combustion environment characteristic of incinerators, the formation of noxious sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides is profoundly suppressed. Furthermore, volatile inorganic compounds and condensable tars are routinely captured within integrated scrubbing systems or thermally destroyed inside secondary reaction chambers. This inherent emission control architecture bypasses the requirement for capital-intensive flue gas cleaning trains, offering municipal authorities a compliant, streamlined operational profile. The resulting solid residue, exhibiting negligible leachability under standardized testing protocols, eliminates long-term sub-surface liabilities.
Energetic Autonomy and Resource Recovery
Beyond environmental decontamination, industrial pyrolysis achieves exceptional thermodynamic efficiency through internal energy recovery loops. The non-condensable gases generated during thermal cracking—comprising hydrogen, carbon monoxide, methane, and light hydrocarbons—possess significant calorific value. By scrubbing and recirculating this syngas to feed the primary thermal reactor or power auxiliary mechanical drives, the facility achieves operational energetic autonomy. This closed-loop configuration neutralizes the massive thermal energy penalties typically incurred during the preliminary drying of high-moisture municipal sludge. By converting a persistent environmental liability into a secure geomaterial and a reliable energy source, pyrolysis establishes an indispensable foundation for advanced municipal resource recovery.
In the competitive road and bridge construction industry across Latin American markets, securing reliable machinery while controlling capital expenditure is a constant challenge. Project contractors and equipment dealers frequently face a tough decision when sourcing new production units: should you invest in a equipment locally assembled within Latin America, or should you import a complete plant directly from Chinese manufacturers? While both options have distinct advantages, understanding how each model affects your upfront capital output is essential for making a sound financial investment.
To make an informed purchasing decision, contractors must carefully evaluate every factor that contributes to the final price tag. The initial acquisition cost encompasses not just the factory base quote, but also international shipping rates, import duties, assembly labor, and regional supply chain factors. By breaking down these cost components, contractors can accurately determine which sourcing strategy delivers the best value for their specific operational needs and budgetary limits.
Analyzing the Base Asphalt Plant Price Breakdown
When comparing local assembly against direct imports, the base asphalt plant price(precio de planta de asfalto) remains the primary benchmark for budget planning. Chinese manufacturers benefit from massive economies of scale, extensive supply chain networks, and lower raw material procurement costs. As a result, direct factory quotes for complete imported systems often come in significantly lower than local assembly alternatives.
Local assembly facilities in Latin America typically import key technological components—such as burners, control software, and high-precision sensors—from global suppliers, while fabricating heavier structural elements like aggregate bins, dryer drums, and frame supports locally. Although this hybrid approach reduces international freight volume, higher local steel prices and smaller production runs can elevate the base production cost. Consequently, the ex-factory asphalt plant price for locally assembled units often reflects higher manufacturing overhead compared to direct Chinese imports.
Import Tariffs and Custom Duties Impact
Customs duties and trade agreements play a pivotal role in shaping the final landed equipment cost across Latin American countries.
Trade agreements: Regional trade pacts can make locally assembled machinery more appealing if components move tax-free between partner nations.
Tariff variations: Direct imports from China may face varying tariff brackets depending on the destination country, sometimes adding a noticeable percentage to the total outlay.
Tax incentives: Certain infrastructure initiatives offer temporary import tax exemptions for complete machinery, offsetting potential tariff penalties.
Understanding these trade dynamics helps contractors calculate whether local assembly tax perks outweigh the lower base price of direct imports.
Total Investment for Compact and Portable Systems
For short-term projects, urban road repairs, or remote bridge access roads, contractors often prefer smaller or movable setups. Evaluating the mobile asphalt plant price(planta de asfalto móvil precio) requires looking beyond the sticker price to account for freight and logistics complexities.
Cost Factor
Chinese Direct Import
Latin American Local Assembly
Base Manufacturing Cost
Lower due to scale
Higher due to component imports
Shipping & Logistics
Higher overseas freight fees
Lower local transportation fees
Delivery Timetable
Longer transit time
Faster regional delivery
Customization Options
Standardized modular designs
Tailored regional adaptations
Mobile Units Freight and Mobility Logistics
Transporting fully mobile equipment involves shipping multi-axle chassis, towing mechanisms, and compact mixing units across ocean routes. While Chinese suppliers offer highly competitive initial machinery costs, long-distance maritime freight and heavy-lift handling fees can inflate the final delivered mobile asphalt plant price. Conversely, local assembly plants can deliver portable units directly by road, cutting down international shipping expenses and simplifying overall transport logistics.
Mini Units for Targeted Projects
For niche applications requiring modest output, a mini asphalt plant(mini planta de asfalto) provides an economical entry point for small-to-midsize contractors.
Reduced capital expenditure: Small-capacity mixing units require significantly less initial capital, lowering the barrier to market entry.
Faster installation: Compact designs mean minimal foundation work and rapid setup times on bridge decks or narrow site paths.
Lower shipping volume: Small footprints allow a mini asphalt plant to fit inside standard container units, drastically cutting ocean transport costs for Chinese imports.
Because smaller equipment fits standard ocean containers, buying a compact system from overseas often preserves the low base price advantage without incurring excessive heavy-cargo shipping surcharges.
Key Considerations Beyond the Initial Price Tag
While upfront cost is a decisive factor, equipment long-term value depends on operational reliability, spare parts availability, and technical support.
Component Quality and Engineering Standards
Chinese machinery producers have made substantial advancements in build quality, leveraging automated welding, precise laser cutting, and standardized modular manufacturing. Meanwhile, regional Latin American assemblers often tailor structural designs specifically for local aggregate conditions and rugged terrain, which can enhance equipment longevity in demanding environments.
After-Sales Service and Spare Parts Availability
Local support: Regional assembly plants usually offer faster technician response times and immediate access to replacement parts stocked domestically.
Digital support: Leading export suppliers provide 24/7 remote diagnostic assistance and maintain regional distribution hubs to dispatch critical components quickly.
Contractors must weigh the convenience of immediate local service against the overall cost savings offered by direct overseas purchasing.
Making the Final Sourcing Determination for Your Project
Choosing between local assembly and direct importing ultimately comes down to your project timeline, overall budget, and logistics capabilities. Importing directly from Chinese manufacturers generally yields a lower base asphalt plant price, especially for containerized units and small-scale machinery where shipping costs remain manageable. On the other hand, local assembly models offer advantages in delivery speed and local regulatory compliance, though often at a higher initial capital outlay.
By analyzing the full picture—including the mobile asphalt plant price, freight logistics, customs tariffs, and site requirements—contractors can choose the model that delivers maximum cost efficiency for their asphalt production operations. For contractors looking to maximize profitability on limited bridge and road construction budgets, opting for a high-efficiency mini asphalt plant or standard imported unit remains one of the most effective strategies to lower initial procurement expenses.
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Pretty much what the title implies. I enjoy the feature itself and find it useful for browsing and discovering applications on F-Droid that I didn't know existed, but there are certain categories of applications that I have no use for and would find it easier to filter them out rather than ignore.
A video capturing a joyful and wonderfully messy moment at the Herperduin, featuring Koa, a handsome and energetic young chocolate brown Labrador Retriever pup. Koa, sporting his signature small strip of white fur right in the middle of his chest, is happily trotting along the sandy shore on a light blue leash held by Yolande. Cynni is walking behind them, acting as the videographer and capturing all the action as they film the scenic walk. Because the pond is quite low from a dry summer, the recent rains have created a gloriously thick, squishy border of mud along the water's edge. Unable to resist the allure of the muck and an abandoned ball, he enthusiastically marches right off the dry sand and plunges his paws straight into the deep, wet mud, his tail wagging with pure delight. Yolande carefully navigates the slippery bank, keeping pace with the eager pup while jokingly calling him a "smeerkees". Koa happily splooshes through the shallows, thoroughly investigating the mud and treating himself to a very enthusiastic, messy spa day. Cynni follows along, making sure this hilarious adventure is perfectly documented for the memories.
The video opens with Koa, a handsome, chocolate brown Labrador Retriever puppy, lounging comfortably in his cozy, light-green dog bed on a wooden floor. He is happily and diligently gnawing on a brand new, large, pale chew stick, completely absorbed in his treat. A small blue toy sits ignored nearby on the floor. Cynni is filming the peaceful scene, capturing his young puppy energy focused entirely on enjoying his delicious snack. Suddenly, his attention shifts. Koa looks up directly at the camera, his bright, loving eyes locking onto Cynni. With the giant chew stick still held proudly in his mouth like a prized trophy, he scrambles up from his bed. He trots enthusiastically straight toward the camera. The video ends in a hilarious and heartwarming "snack attack" as Koa shoves his sweet, goofy face and his beloved chew stick directly into the camera lens, playfully showering Cynni with puppy love and giving them a very close-up view of his new treasure.
This year I decided to switch my “default license” to EUPL-1.2. This is an OSI-approved free software license created and published by the European Union. And it is quite a divergence from the licenses I’ve used in the past. EUPL is a strong copyleft license that closes the “SaaS loophole” by requiring reciprocal licensing regardless of how the software is distributed.
Over the years it has been clear that we in the “open source” camp (as opposed to the “free software” camp) were wrong all along.
We won the debate, and gained little for users or developers. All that our efforts did was to make it easier for big corporations build things more cheaply and for billionaires to become trillionaires.
And so it is time to stop messing about with permissive licenses. If corporations don’t want to use our software under our terms, they are free to spend the effort or tokens to build their own.
In the last 28 years of publishing software, I’ve had three distinct eras of software licensing. All of my recent stuff is available under the European Union Public License 1.2, and I thought to explain why.
Personally, I also think that much of the hate which one would find e.g. on reddit or the orange site against copyleft licenses in general, and the GPL specifically was probably astroturfing from corporations for which it was just an obstacle to appropiate more unpaid volunteer work for the commons for free.
The same is true, by the way for the GNU Guix project: Very few arguments against it are logical or really hold water. It is, for example, perfectly possile to publish a Guix channel for a commercial game or proprietary software on ones own web site - just as you can do with a docker image. And the way Guix takes care of dependencies and updates makes it probably the easiest way to do such. Because you can use Guix as a package manager on most distros - I use it both on Debian and Arch - I find it more reasonable than using snaps, docker, or flatpaks.
The reason for the hate is likely something else: That you can't commercialise and embrace the whole, source-based ecosystem.
For example, you can't use the Guix infrastructure (e.g. their mailing list or download server) to promote or advertise commercial, non-free stuff. But expecting or demanding to be able to do that is just ridiculous: Nobody expects from Microsoft or Apple that they feel obliged to promote or market Adobe or Oracle products. Alone the idea that companies could demand that shows how entitled the corporations behave in respect to free software.
Could be. At least when I still was on r/linux a few years ago there were about three usual suspects who would pop up every time a topic even went in the general direction of licensing and spewed their toxicity. To me these people had less of a corporate shill vibe and more of a undiagnosed mental health issues vibe, but I obviously can't say for sure.
Not good enough. Companies are still allowed to use this software freely, make massive profits without anything going to the developer. It is truly free labor.
They are even allowed to modify it, even make derivative work, without open sourcing it, as long as they don't distribute said derivative work.
I read the EUPL-1.2 license and i think is very interessing, though i don't think i will switch from GPL or AGPL because i don't have much of an idea of what advantages it could give me, anyone who is more proeficent with legal stuff than me could help?
It's good start, but is it kind of too late given how easy ai using our code to train their model. I appreciate their hardwork, but I hope someone can find a good solution to stop ai abusing open source repo.
Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 00:44 Sponsor: TuxCare 01:45 Brave say they outperform every other major browser 04:49 Firefox 155 should load pages faster 06:36 CERN leaves Red Hat for Debian 09:42 Debian says yes to AI 12:14 GNOME 51 will improve hybrid GPU support 13:52 Plasma 6.8 adds more accessibility features to Wayland 15:19 KDE's theme engine supports more KDE apps now 16:39 Artix drops XLibre after it pushes a maintainer to resign 18:59 KDE Connect redesign ready for testing 20:29 FOSS Minecraft Luanti taken down by Microsoft 23:25 KDE Linux makes more progress towards its beta 25:24 Grab bag of gaming news 28:45 Sponsor: Tuxedo Computers
There's a Dutch commercial from the 1980s with a tagline that's widely recognised in the Netherlands to this day and used as an expression to refer to conflicts of interest:
We of Toilet Duck recommend... Toilet Duck.
Anyway, while Firefox can hardly be described as being blessed by brilliant leadership today, whenever I look at Brave, I can't help but feel it dodged a bullet.
Looking for advice on which distro to try out for what I suspect is not a common use case.
I want to use my personal laptop to connect to my work PC running windows 11. My laptop is a pugged in to a couple of screens via a dock. The company I work for uses Citrix workspace and RDP for this purpose.
So far I have had a go with Mint 22.3 / Cinnamon and had a lot of trouble with Multi monitors. Best I can do is run the remote session windowed and have it dragged over two screens. This is not adequate by any means. Even getting the connection bar to appear in cinnamon is a nightmare of hitting atl and F10 and hoping it happens.
I've also added KDE plasma to my mint install. So far it is more reliable at getting RDP window to restore so I can drag it over 2 screens, however still no luck with full screen across all screens.
Does anyone else use citrix workspace from linux over multiple screens in full screen mode successfully?
Not the type of software I'd use so nothing comes to mind, but if nobody responds, maybe try also asking on !artificialintelligence@lemmy.world, !ArtificialIntelligences@lemmy.world and/or !bots@lemmy.world?
Thank you! I like to live a busy multitasking lifestyle. But still would be useful for folks with disability issues.
A lot of downvotes for me. I should maybe mention to those folks that I'm guessing most of the AI direction humans have gone, but I'm not against all AI.
This entry was edited (Saturday, September 5, 2026, 11:34 PM)
Every 1~2 years there is a new source of mob mentality, some times a few. AI seems to be the one of the newer ones. So I wouldn't sweat too much on downvotes for not being automatically against AI.
Only one I know of is dicio, but it is very limited and "ai" is always used for voice recognition to start with. TTS mainly uses "ai" now, but there were non neural solutions before.
As the title and the website say, I'm currently making a distro with the goal that you don't have to compromise between ease of use + safety and bleeding-edge + performance optimizations.
As I will likely be able to publish the 0.0.1 source code to the GitHub link and the ISO to the website sometime next week, I would like people to be aware of my project so I can have some feedback for further improvements when I release the first version. I have not posted this anywhere else yet, as I value the opinion of this community more than Reddit or whatever.
If you have any questions or any criticism, please voice it, I would love to hear it, good or bad, in the end I want to make a proper OS. (I'll go to bed now so expect replies to take a few hours from posting.)
Pu-239 is an atomic Arch Linux distribution: sealed read-only root, ostree A/B deployments with automatic rollback, and the 1000 Hz linux-cachyos kernel.
this is something else i guess, it's not about UX but about how the system works kind of. i'm not exactly sure about how silverblue does it but think of it this way. not everything in your system needs to be mutable (your home dir does) so those parts are isolated and made immutable, the user cannot modify them, this helps to keep a more stable system. they can be changed when the system updates them , but it's more like they are replaced and a one image is built rather than a modification if you will.
Jup, you got it right, the "easier and accessible" part just arises as a byproduct of making Arch atomic. By nature this will make the install pre-configured and thus easier to get into even if this isn't even the goal but rather just stability and peace of mind.
As has been noted in the ArchWiki that is expected to be read by users, one should always check for package-related news before upgrading their Arch system. This is because package changes and breakages that require user intervention do occur, and ignoring them can sometimes leave a broken system. Arch isn't really hard after getting over the bootstrap hurdle, but simply requires more upkeep effort than most point release distros would.
I think the biggest one in recent (past year) would have been the upgrade tree to nvidia-open, which would break 10-series and older support without changing package on affected systems. Definitely a lot of the more recent breakages are not large-scale problems, but they do still exist.
Nope, I don't find it that hard either, but we are in a bubble here. The average "which distro should I pick" post suggests SteamOS but only with a full AMD system and when people suggest CachyOS, it's met with "bUt YOu cAN't sUgGesT aN ArcH bASeD diStrO tO a BegInNer" so I hope to bridge the gap for people that are waiting for a general-purpose SteamOS release PLUS the CachyOS performance on top. Also some distros do offer people to add the CachyOS repos, which is however forbidden due to their repo policy. Yes it is open source, but they understandably don't want their servers and mirrors to be used by people not even running their distro. As I will compile the kernels for now, ALL packages in the future and host them myself, I actually comply with their repo policy as one of the few distros.
It used to have more problems. As others have noted, there is always the possibility of updates breaking something with the rolling release model. But for the last few years, it has been stable enough that a user knowledgeable and willing to read a log and modify a configuration file has likely been fine.
i haven't tried it yet as my daily drive so i can't say for sure. but some things are undoubtabtly really good implementations. the way apps are installed ensures a clean way out of dependency hell, the fact that you can declare your config and reproduce seamlesessly. in a way nixos works kind of like an atomic distro if you will because for example you could do crazy things like built your system from the ground up every morning if you feel like it. why do you mention about cpu? is it because of the compiling while installing apps?
Why the name? I find distros with these names that are hard to say annoying to speak about, so I would suggest better name. Something short, catchy and easy to say for people with different languages. But don't make it too general either so that it is also easy to search for.
Okay, I'm just going to reply to this one really quick before sleeping, my intention was for this to be the short version of Plutonium-239 so it matches better with the logo. I kind of hope for this to be colloquially refered to as just Plutonium, but that itself as a name sounded boring. You are right to point it out and I agree, it was a placeholder at first however that name eventually grew on me too much and the domain is already purchased haha
Might I suggest Hesperium (earlier alternate name recommended by Fermi) or Plutium (a name Seaborg considered before deciding plutonium sounded better)?
Hmm, in my head I'm pretty set on Plutonium already, but I will take your advice and make the written out name more prominently visible so people will hopefully develop the habit of refering to it as "Plutonium". If I should decide to have multiple spins on it, I'll remember that Hesperium and such are cool alternate names, thank you for the ideas!
my intention was for this to be the short version of Plutonium-239 so it matches better with the logo. I kind of hope for this to be colloquially refered to as just Plutonium
My first thought when I saw your domain was not plutonium-239, it was P U 239, your website doesn’t reference plutonium until 8-9 paragraphs in.
Oh shit, you are right, I had it in my head to include the written out name in the first paragraph but kinda just forgot about it, thank you for pointing it out!!
Aha, I get it. And I like that its kinda nerdy. I dont think majority of the people will get it though. Just Plutonium would be fine, sounds actually real good and I think searching for plutonium os should be distinct enough (given the fact plutonium is not an element of everyday life). However if you still insist on the shorthand, what I saw people do, have a paragraph explaining what the shortcut means and how to call the os. Something like "the p-239 stands for plutonium and that is what we call the os - Plutonium" or variant of that. Maybe have it on the homepage even as a part of some baner or simly as second or third element under header. And it can also link to the full story (that it was a codename at first..)
This entry was edited (Saturday, September 5, 2026, 8:20 AM)
Second comment because I just remembered: my initial idea was to simply call it Arch-Atomic, but just the fact of being atomic alone already would violate their trademark policy, which is why I went with my favorite isotope!
I think the main point is, that this new distribution is operating in an atomic form. Similar to how SteamOS or Bazzite works in regard that, but more general compute oriented like CashyOS and not a gaming distro. When I understand this correctly.
Please let people have fun with computers, thank you. This doesn't sound like the 100th Arch reskin and doesn't sound like "just a bunch of config files" either.
Thank you for the comment! Omarchy is pretty much just a facists vibe-coded Hyprland rice shipped as a distro used for money-laundering while I try to provide something useful that bridges a gap between stability and performance. Scroll down to the disclaimer section, click on the link and see me struggling to make an ugly logo instead of asking an AI lmao
Love it!! You seem to have a similar stance on LLMs as I do. They're useful if used correctly, but still destroying the world for nothing in 95% of cases, because most people using them are stupid and talentless.
Jup, I DO use AI and bought an Intel B70 to run stuff locally with my own llama.cpp-sycl AUR package, but just to automate meaningless and tedious work. For example I have a .sh script that I run once and compile all four kernel versions and push them to my website automatically. That .sh is completely vibe-coded locally, the only person I could harm by that is myself haha. That way I can save time and pay attention to the actually relevant stuff. But vibe-coding stuff that could harm the user's experience is a hard no for me.
This entry was edited (Saturday, September 5, 2026, 5:54 AM)
Still expensive af. I have an RX 7800 XT and paid half of what you paid for your GPU, and still was annoyed it cost so much. Computing should be something accessible by the masses, not a hobbyist elite like us.
Yeah, it's a shame that consumer hardware has gotten this expensive, but compared to the cost of other alternatives the B70 is a fantastic deal, especially at the old price. Cyberpunk 2077 still runs at 100fps at 3440x1440p with max settings RT off, Qwen3.8-27B at UD-Q6_K_XL with 131k context runs at up to 35tok/s TG and 900tok/s PP with my llama.cpp-sycl AUR package.
I'll just mostly copy the comment above because it answers my intentions:
I have NEVER had less issues with an OS ever since running Arch and/or CachyOS, however issues COULD arise and that is enough for the usual Reddit dickhead to talk someone who’s asking for their first distro out of using anything Arch based. I’m tired of hearing these fucking “no you can’t recommend CachyOS, a new user should not touch Arch”, “CachyOS will break three times within your first week of using it”, “it has the AUR so you will contract HIV instantly by using it”, I just can’t hear it anymore which is why I want to provide people with an option that still has them on an Arch based distro but with added peace of mind and speed optimizations out of the box. You know, that’s the thing, I personally find Arch easy and intuitive and don’t get where people get the idea that it breaks all the time from, but that IS the perception however.
You know, that’s the thing, I personally find Arch easy and intuitive and don’t get where people get the idea that it breaks all the time from
I've been using Arch since 2008 or 2010, idk. I find it easy and intuitive but I still managed to fuck it up multiple times by now. All of those major fuckups I can remember could probably have been solved by what you're trying to do with Pu-239.
List of major fuckups off the top of my head, chronologically:
Once it had suddenly contracted some kind of computer AIDS which made the windows pink and caused other graphical errors. Never figured out why, a reinstall solved it.
Another time I installed a bunch of packages without doing a full repo sync before (pacman -S instead of -Syu), which left the system in an inconsistent state. Had snapshots of the root partition I could roll back to.
The third time happened only recently and made my desktop unusable for half a year because I couldn't be bothered to fix the fucking bootloader. Huge update (4-5GiB in size, didn't update for a few weeks or months even) slowed down the whole system due to btrfs having some exhausted inodes or sth, which made the system crash and the bootloader disappear. This even fucked up my firmware so for whatever reason the system can't boot from /boot, only from the EFI system partition. My current workaround is copying the files from /boot to the ESP until I can be arsed to figure out the issue.
Damn that sounds like a pain in the ass. Yeah, I personally have btrfs snapshots set up on my main workstation and had to use them once, but I just envision having peace of mind that you won't even noticing that something broke.
I see. When I wrote that out it was more of a "Why would some one pick this over CachyOS or plain Arch?" and I think you've adequately answered that.
I have NEVER had less issues with an OS ever since running Arch and/or CachyOS
I can say the same, except I've never had a real issue with Arch in the 15(+) years I've known of it and used it. Every issue I've had with it was my own fault and was just part of learning of how package managers work. Nothing unique to Arch is inherently confusing or prone to user error in my opinion. But that's just my own bias.
Good luck with this distro. My only bit of feedback is that distros with a bus-factor of 1 usually die out quickly (burn out is real). I would say if you're planning to have any support channels look into on-boarding some trustworthy comrades to assist you with this. Other than that wish you the best homie!
Thank you! Yeah, especially at the start you are bound to make a few errors but after a while it becomes smooth sailing. Regarding the burnout, I have autism and if it interests me and I use it for myself I will likely never burn out from it, I've put about 100 hours into this the last 12 days and I hate going to bed today instead of testing more on my ThinkPad haha
I have no idea what people keep talking about when they say Arch/CachyOS is "unstable". I have had so many more issues with running Debian (usually on servers) over the years. Since I swapped my desktop to CachyOS over a year ago, I have basically no issues at all. Just one very minor thing that fixed itself after a few days (bug in kde on new version released). For like 15 months of use, that's spectacular compared to any other system I've ever used (especially including Debian and of course Windows, obviously).
What exactly is the goal? How do you make "no issues" and "it just works" more stable?
I have no idea what people keep talking about when they say Arch/CachyOS is “unstable”.
a) stable in the sense of not changing, or more specific not changing dramatically the user experience and not breaking compatibility, so you can rely on being the same, and b) stable in the sense of not breaking by bugs and issues. Those are two different topics sharing the same wording of stable/unstable. It's a similar issue of the word "Free", which could mean either Open Source or no cost in money.
Archlinux is unstable, in the sense that it changes frequently, without warning for most of the time, and this can break compatibility or user experience. Compare the other extreme Debian, which is very stable.
Compare the other extreme Debian, which is very stable.
In the sense that is unchanging, sure. But that's one hell of a bad word to describe that in this context. In my experience the incompatibilities caused by only ancient versions of things available in the repo of even a newly released Debian are not helpful. Stable wouldn't be the word I choose to describe the situation, or the fiddling and tinkering that results from that. Often having to go outside of the repo to solve, defeating the whole point of said repo.
Arch in my limited experience is much more stable, in the sense of "just works" and always having up to date software. If I want to use something, I can just install it (from the repo), the chance of it not being the current release are slim.
The word stable for describing unchanged is a common way of doing so. Especially to differentiate them from their development or experimental versions. That contributes to confusion and disagreements with the other meaning of the word. Unfortunately this word is common usage in both cases. In example Archlinux as a rolling release is unstable by definition. It does not mean its unstable in sense of issues, however depending on the user and use case it can be unstable a lot (or stable a lot).
You're coming into a discussion about two different linux release models misunderstanding both their established terminology and their purposes, and then claiming one of them is "bad" because you tried to use Debian in a way it wasn't intended to be used.
Also I didn't "try to use Debian in a way it wasn't inteded to be used". I am using debian on 90% of my servers/vms/containers to this day. Have been for literally decades. To give a specific example: I was running a nextcloud, which required PHP, and wanted to update that. The newer version reuqired a higher PHP version, because the currently installed PHP version was EoL and not supported anymore (by PHP maintainers or Nextcloud). So updating required removing the debian-provided PHP version and installing one from other sources (external repo or compile from source), which honestly defeats the point of a "stable" distribution if the software provided is EoL, doesn't it?
And to be clear this is just one example I can specifically remember. The "issues" I encouter when using debian are usually of that general type. And to be clear, that's mostly the point of using it on a server, where I use it, but even there it sometimes goes a bit too far.
And finally: I was originally arguing the semantics of calling debian stable and arch UNstable, which it is not. It is rolling, it might be bleeding edge. It's also isn't the same as having a stable and unstable release branch (within the same distro) when applying the label to the most stable release of different distros.
This entry was edited (Saturday, September 5, 2026, 12:27 PM)
which honestly defeats the point of a "stable" distribution if the software provided is EoL, doesn't it?
Again, the point of a stable release model is that its packaged software doesn't have breaking changes for the lifetime of the release. Install something from those repos and it's guaranteed to run in the same way for the full lifecycle while still getting minor and security updates. So if the software you're externally layering on top of that suddenly requires new dependencies that you have to install externally too, and you don't like that, that's more a problem based on a misunderstanding of Debian than a problem with Debian.
This is why we should call it "bleeding edge" rather than "unstable" it's a much more accurate name and it exemplifies the advantages (albeit leaving out the (minor) disadvantages)
Stable vs Unstable does not mean anything to do with bugginess or prone to breakage
It would be great if that's how the words were actually used, but in most discussions I've seen it is certainly not the case. Also, when talking to new users, they are supposed to magically understand and know the word is used in a niche way in this context? It certainly won't be what they take from it when hearing or reading it.
Unstable means packages update frequently including major versions
That's what we have rolling or bleeding edge for. Sure, unstable can mean that when used within the same project/context. So having different releases be stable and unstable for the same thing, but across projects/distros that's just confusing, especially for new people. Yes I'm aware of the historic reasons and the roots in software development, but I'd argue it isn't helpful to convey the practical reality of the differences.
This entry was edited (Saturday, September 5, 2026, 12:33 PM)
I don't disagree that it causes confusion and that people conflate the two meanings especially for those unaware of what it is supposed to mean.
And inherently as well being an unstable distro as far as package updates goes likely leads to it being "unstable" in day to day use as far as bugs etc obviously goes hand in hand which further conflates the meaning.
I'm completely on your side, I have NEVER had less issues with an OS ever since running Arch and/or CachyOS, however issues could arise and that is enough for the usual Reddit dickhead to talk someone who's asking for their first distro out of using anything Arch based. I'm tired of hearing these fucking "no you can't recommend CachyOS, a new user should not touch Arch", "CachyOS will break three times within your first week of using it", "it has the AUR so you will contract HIV instantly by using it", I just can't hear it anymore which is why I want to provide people with an option that still has them on an Arch based distro but with added peace of mind and speed optimizations out of the box. You know, that's the thing, I personally find Arch easy and intuitive and don't get where people get the idea that it breaks all the time from, but that IS the perception however.
I didn't say "it suddenly breaks". I said I have more issues with it, which is decided different from "it just works", which has been my experience on CachyOS. Specifically I mean issues with installing (up to date) software, or using software that has requirements that I just can't install the required version cause the repo has a version from 3+ years ago. Not everything has to be "bleeding edge", but being so stable that everything is utterly outdated is also a kind of unstable.
Sometimes this goes so far that the "stable" version shipped by debian is already unsupported upstream with all the security implications that entails (I had that once with PHP, I think).
IIRC the CachyOS optimizations were basically a rounding error. I'm thinking of just switching my gaming PC to Fedora (and switching my Fedora Laptop to OpenSUSE maybe).
This entry was edited (Saturday, September 5, 2026, 2:05 AM)
Two reasons. Firstly because it's illegal to have the same distro on two different machines, and secondly because I've been meaning to switch back to OpenSUSE for a while (but I ain't gonna be gaming on OpenSUSE).
Firstly, my general rule is "upstream or Mint (because screw snaps)". CachyOS was a decision I made prior to this rule but otherwise I have 6 options (Arch, Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, and OpenSUSE). - A rolling release is out of the question, so Arch's out. - Ubuntu's always out. - Based on what I've heard, Fedora and OpenSUSE are the two leaders when it comes to desktop security on Linux. I value security so Mint and Debian are out. - Fedora tends to adopt new technologies fast, which isn't really what I want.
So by process of elimination, OpenSUSE it is.
Another part of it is nostalgia. I used it briefly when I was first switching to Linux full-time. I ran into various issues and moved off it. Private internet access wouldn't install, I didn't even know what proprietary media codecs were at the time, and tumbleweed had a few bugs that caused me trouble. Despite all that, I'm nostalgic for it partly because of the themes I ended up installing.
This entry was edited (Saturday, September 5, 2026, 10:44 AM)
Honestly, for the packages I do agree. You are not going to notice if your damn font is compiled with v3 flags or not lmao. The kernels however do apply a meaningful improvement, even if it's just in general desktop use, you DO notice the jump from 250Hz to 1000Hz. Currently I'll just ship the regular linux-cachyos kernel with the EEVDF scheduler which is more general purpose, but if you select BORE for gaming or (I forgot the name) for throughput, it becomes even more apparent. I get almost a minute shaved off compiling the kernels when I use a good kernel!
I do plan to have a way too "unlock" it so you can for example enter a console command to be able to install packages like vanilla Arch but they still get applied atomically. I dislike Flatpaks myself so for me to use it on my main workstation, I'd have to be able to never touch a flatpak as well haha. For the average user that wants a "just works" distro like SteamOS but also some of the speed-up from CachyOS, Flatpaks seem like the most intuitive decision however.
Sounds great and exactly how I'd want it! So you basically have a base set of packages which are guaranteed to be stable, but you can still layer stuff on top?
Maybe you can also have multiple boot entries like a "safe mode" or a way to boot different combinations of packages.
I'd really like to have a somewhat declarative way to manage the software on my laptop and desktop both, the latter being a superset as I need gaming and LLM related software there (which I don't need on my laptop).
I'll certainly play around with your distro as soon as it's out. Don't know when though, as I need to take a few precautions to not fuck up my data first 😅
Currently you can select either KDE Plasma or Gnome in the calamares installer and other than that it just slaps Intel and AMD CPU firmware on it along with Intel, AMD and NVIDIA drivers so yeah, a boated but working list of packages. I thought about making a quick tick-box solution but decided to just make it work right in the first place and get a proper hardware-detection going. The first version will be shipped with just that, for 0.0.2 to be released, I want it to have that kind of developer access where you can add or remove the packages you want, just like on a pre-configured Arch distro. That's the first priotity after the initial release so thank you for your interest and I hope you will be happy with it in the future!!
Check out the comment I just left, I implemented a solution that pacman is now completely usable so it's literally just vanilla Arch but atomic instead of being Flatpak-only!
Man, good question, I'm still torn about this. Initially I was forced to use GitHub specifically from my university, now it kind of stuck. I haven't pushed much yet anyway so I might even make the switch.
Well, you could use Github's free (as in beer) infrastructure to host artifacts, which means they'll have to pay (as a company) instead of codeberg (as a non-profit). The issues and development can be hosted on codeberg. Kind of like how the Linux Kernel does it, Github only being a mirror, not an endorsement.
This entry was edited (Saturday, September 5, 2026, 4:56 AM)
Hmm, I will definitely take your suggestion to heart. For now I'll focus on actually getting the first ISO ready to be rolled out, after that I'll take a deeper look into it, thank you!
I took your suggestion to heart and decided to say fuck it and move my whole GitHub over to Codeberg. The non-profit nature, being hosted in Germany where I'm also from and ditching the last Microslop service I have make this something I should have done sooner. The only thing left is the repo for the website itself, I'm gonna set up the actions to automatically sync it with Hetzner tomorrow, I'm done for today!
Als Deutscher kannst Du ja auch Mitglied im Codeberg e.V. werden wenn Dir das wichtig ist. Oder, wie gesagt, die Artefakte bei Microsoft hosten, um dem Verein Geld zu sparen. Microslop darf das gerne bezahlen, oder? 😄
Mal sehen, GitHub war das letzte Big Tech, bzw. USA-basierte was ich genutzt habe und war mir deswegen schon seit langem ein Dorn im Auge, bisher habe ich aber nie die Nerven gehabt zu wechseln. Jetzt war aber der beste Zeitpunkt, da das Hauptrepo noch leer war und ich meine restlichen Projekte aussortiert habe. Die kompilierten Pakete und ISOs kommen eh alle auf meinen Hetzner Webserver, Codeberg hätte quasi "nur" den Source-Code, sollte also verträglich genug sein und GitHub einfach komplett zurückzulassen!
Seconding that. I've just read through the website. Got interested. Then my eyes went to the top panel again finally, I've read "GitHub", and my thoughts are "Huh? But this mismatches the rest of the page, especially with the AI stance and some push for simplicity combined with competence.". Went back here to write about it.
\/me a ~10 year old ArchLinux user (using Arch for this long, my Earth age nobody cares about including me anyway). I'm thinking if I wanna actually try this for real. I currently have manually written packages that define the OS dependencies and configuration, and I don't like the mutability of everything, the default update handling of no-longer-dependencies, the .pacnew... I still like and appreciate Arch obviously, but the pain points connect.
This entry was edited (Saturday, September 5, 2026, 7:18 PM)
Ah, and please add the stock -Suy process to the pain points. It alters the local database even when downloads haven't fully finished yet (as it is out-of-the-box at least), so if downloads fail mid-ways you have to remember to not dare installing any particular package before a full upgrade still. If you forget, you're toast.
This entry was edited (Saturday, September 5, 2026, 5:10 PM)
I took your suggestion to heart and decided to say fuck it and move my whole GitHub over to Codeberg. The non-profit nature, being hosted in Germany where I'm also from and ditching the last Microslop service I have make this something I should have done sooner. The only thing left is the repo for the website itself, I'm gonna set up the actions to automatically sync it with Hetzner tomorrow, I'm done for today!
This is very cool! I like the idea of atomic distros although I haven't really gotten into them much, if you keep on working on this project I might join it.
Question: I'm a bit confused about the package management system you talked about. Flatpaks for user level packages? What about the official arch repo and the AUR? I know other atomic distro's don't really work with traditional package managers, what does this mean for Pu-239? If there's no AUR then there is no Arch Linux at least for me.
Also that name could probably do with some work lol. Maybe work on a shorthand way of spelling it and a better way to pronounce it? I'm not sure.
This entry was edited (Saturday, September 5, 2026, 6:16 AM)
Thank you a lot for your interest! So as I pointed out in the other comments, out of the box and for the 0.0.1 release it's intended to keep the system itself atomically updated through pacman and the user is advised to use flatpaks to install his applications. This is the most user friendly way of going about it, however I'm absolutely on your side and wouldn't use it that way myself. 0.0.2 will have a way to "unlock" it so you can use the distro like vanilla Arch BUT you get peace of mind from knowing that you have a failsafe way of knowing the system will not break.
For the name, I did want Arch-Atomic at first but noticed this would violate the Arch Linux trademark policy and just went with my favorite isotope as a placeholder that unfortunately grew onto me. I will get off the couch now and edit the website so it's apparent that Pu-239 is just the shorthand and people will refer to it as Plutonium-239 or just plain Plutonium in the future!
Check out the comment I just left, I implemented a solution that pacman is now completely usable so it's literally just vanilla Arch but atomic instead of being Flatpak-only!
Not personally interested,but a big question with something like this is how much time you have and how do you plan to maintain it in the long term? Don’t want to dissuade you, but I really don’t know if we need yet another distribution based on arch.
Yeah I get you, recently with everyone vibe-coding their stuff, there have been a lot of useless distros, but I really feel like I'm onto something useful. I'm self employed and basically temporarily took on less orders so I can work on this full-time until I get the first version out and actual full on development turns into maintaining and improving. I can definitely manage it and actually look forward to it as it's super fun to me! Also I used today to make some changes as you can read in the comment I just left.
Check out the comment I just left, I implemented a solution that pacman is now completely usable so it's literally just vanilla Arch but atomic instead of being Flatpak-only!
I took your suggestions to heart and updated the website to reflect the changes I implemented today. The big change is that I found a way to keep pacman fully intact and functioning, but make it apply the changes atomically. So now this isn't just limited to Flatpaks, but LITERALLY Arch Linux but made atomic.
The new intro reads:
"Plutonium-239 is Arch Linux, made atomic. It combines the rolling release model of Arch Linux with an atomically updated root filesystem inspired by SteamOS on top of the heavily optimized CachyOS performance kernel. Unlike immutable distributions that lock you out of the native package manager and force you into sandboxes, Pu-239 keeps the core Arch experience intact. You still get the full power of pacman and the official Arch repositories, with the peace of mind of an unbreakable safety net underneath."
For more information, please check out the updated "How it works" section. Thank you all a lot for the feedback!
Can't speak much about OP's distro or CachyOS, but I can talk about how Fedora Atomic differs from simply doing btrfs backups before every update.
First, updates are not the only thing that can modify the base system. Installing packages, installing plugins or extensions, manual user modifications, etc, can all end up bricking the system. Fedora Atomic makes the base system immutable so that the only way of making modifications is via rpm-ostree, which ensures that you always have a way to rollback.
Second, one of the issues with traditional update mechanisms is that over time, updates might not do proper clean-up and leave artifacts. This is a harder problem than people realize, because users can have all sorts of permutations of packages and versions installed, and the update mechanism has to account for all of them. Over time, and many updates, a system can accumulate tons of small update errors and finally fall over. I've had this issue myself and heard of this issue from multiple sources. Fedora Atomic solves this by ensuring that every update is like a complete re-install.
Third, since every Fedora Atomic user uses the same base system as their distro maintainers, they can be sure that their base system is well tested. Bugs are more reproducible, and thus can be fixed faster. None of those "works on my system, you're on your own" issues.
Fourth, this one isn't a benefit to the user but the community. Fedora Atomic (and universal blue) distros are easy to fork. This is why there are so many flavors now. Bluefin, Aurora, Bazzite, Secureblue, Wayblue, etc. Instead of one generic distro with a huge community relying on a few maintainers, like Fedora used to have, now you have smaller specialized communities with their own leaders, and users can choose which community they align with more. And you can even switch communities, since rpm-ostree allows you to "rebase" to a different distro (eg Aurora -> Bazzite).
Honestly, I haven't even thought about that yet. I don't see anything speaking against using other init systems at first glance, but that's gonna be very low on my future priorities rn. If I should have some spare time after checking every mayor box then sure, I don't mind systemd but I'm also not a huge fan.
Nice to hear! It might be the case that you will have to do some tinkering at first, but I would really appreciate any info I can get so I can get this to be stable as fast as possible!
Looks neat. I'm often skeptical of new games that come out of the blue like this for being vibecoded soon-to-be abandonware, but that doesn't seem (at least in an obvious way to this layman) to be the case here.
How do you add new application to this "All Applications" menu (and optionally to some of categories) without using GUI "Edit Applications" menu (named "KDE Menu Editor")?
It may sound like a simple task but I've already spent several hours on this with no success.
When you download an app instead of getting it from package manager, you may want to add it to Application Launcher so it will not get lost.
I have myapp.AppImage file, it's working, I've created .desktop file and tried to place it into some system directories (e.g. ~/.local/share/applications/myapp.desktop) or calling xdg-desktop-menu install myfile.desktop but to no avail. New app doesn't appear in All Applications or specified category, it appears only as a search result, when you start typing its name.
Creating new menu items with GUI "KDE Menu Editor" affects "/home/user/.config/menus/applications-kmenuedit.menu" XML file, but this file doesn't look like it should be edited manually.
Can you please try adding custom executable to this menu yourself and see if you will succeed? Am I trying to do something quirky and is wrong about expecting this task to be simple?
Yes, I've tried quite a lot of commands and combinations, restarts etc, but seems like problem was in some obscure tag in some obscure XML file which I've never touched before. I've added a comment with solution.
Ok, finally I've found solution! Obviously I found it 0.0001 seconds after I publicly asked this question.
Problem is that "Games" menu in mentioned /home/user/.config/menus/applications-kmenuedit.menu XML file does not contain a <Merge type="files"/> tag, that's why KDE Kickoff Application Menu was ignoring .desktop files if they belong to this category. And every sample .desktop file I've created probably belonged to Games category.
Also, btw, you're the best kind of question asker, because you figured out an obscure problem and then provided the answer for the rest of us. I learned something and bookmarked this thread in case I ever run into such a problem and forgot how to fix it. Cheers and thanks, mate.
This entry was edited (Friday, September 4, 2026, 6:49 PM)
Interesting. I have managed all of mine on a recent Kubuntu 26.04 install through the GUI and it does indeed seem to automatically add that information to the XML file, because I have never run into such a problem but when looking at the file you referenced I indeed see the <Merge type="files"/> a lot of places.
This entry was edited (Friday, September 4, 2026, 6:46 PM)
To me it looked like this command just copies provided .desktop file to ~/.local/share/applications/ directory. Also, there's xdg-desktop-menu uninstall whatever.dekstop which is effectively the same as removing .desktop file from this directory. Probably just copying and removing files is more natural.
First wayland DE (?) that looks nice to me. Thinking about switching from KDE but I doubt it's as polished... The plugins seem to be nice, as they seem to be using many of the same software stack as I do (Syncthing, Tailscale, KDE Connect, scrcpy, ...).
Οι «γκρίζες ζώνες» στην νομοθεσία της Ε.Ε. για την προστασία των ανηλίκων γίνονται κερκόπορτα για ολοκληρωτική άλωση της ιδιωτικότητας των επικοινωνιών. Πως ψήφισε η κάθε χώρα – Η στάση της Ελλάδας
Έρευνα των Data Journalists: Πώς η ΕΕ θα σκανάρει το WhatsApp μας και πώς θα λειτουργεί το Chat Control στις μεγάλες πλατφόρμες. Το «κλειδί», η κρυπτογράφηση και το Dark Web.
Γιώργος Πλειός στους Data Journalists: «Οι μεγάλες πλατφόρμες εμπορεύονται προσωπικά δεδομένα. Τα μέτρα είναι μέρος μιας παγκόσμιας τάσης καταστολής ελευθεριών».
Ο ρόλος της Τεχνητής Νοημοσύνης: Όταν ανιχνεύει ένα αρχείο που θα κρίνει ως ύποπτο, θα το αναφέρει στο Κέντρο Δεδομένων κι Αξιολόγησης συμβάντων, το οποίο θα κρίνει αν θα παραπέμψει την υπόθεση στις Αρχές των χωρών της ΕΕ.
Το περιεχόμενο των επικοινωνιών θα σκανάρεται στις συσκευές των χρηστών (client-side scanning), πριν κρυπτογραφηθεί και αποσταλεί, και θα αφορά ακόμη και τις κρυπτογραφημένες συνομιλίες (end-to-end encryption). Άρα κρυπτογράφηση δεν θα υπάρχει…
Πως φτάσαμε ως εδώ: Οι ψηφοφορίες και τα στάδια στην μακροχρόνια προσπάθεια επιβολής του μέτρου.
Κωστής Πιερίδης στους Data Journalists: «Υπάρχουν γκρίζες ζώνες και ζητήματα νομιμότητας. Μετά την 11η Σεπτεμβρίου, η Ασφάλεια υπερίσχυσε της Ελευθερίας».
Σε ιδιώτες η επιβολή του νόμου – Το SOS των ειδικών κρυπτογράφων.
Just like society, the web moves forward when people think, compare, and discover for themselves. Vivaldi believes the act of browsing is an active one. It is about seeking, questioning, and making up your own mind.
Across the industry, artificial assistants are being embedded directly into browsers, and pitched as a quicker path to answers. Google is bringing Gemini into Chrome to summarize pages and, in future, work across tabs and navigate sites on a user’s behalf. Microsoft is promoting Edge as an AI browser, including new modes that scan what is on screen and anticipate actions.
These moves are reshaping the address bar into an assistant prompt, turning the joy of exploring into inactive spectatorship.
This shift has major consequences for the web as we know it. Independent research shows users are less likely to click through to original sources when an AI summary is present, which means fewer visits for publishers, creators, and communities that keep the web vibrant. A recent study by PewResearch found users clicked traditional results roughly half as often when AI summaries appeared. Publishers warn of dramatic traffic losses when AI overviews sit above links.
The stakes are high. New AI-native browsers and agent platforms are arriving, while regulators debate remedies that could reshape how people reach information online. The next phase of the browser wars is not about tab speed, it is about who intermediates knowledge, who benefits from attention, who controls the pathway to information, and who gets to monetize you.
Today, as other browsers race to build AI that controls how you experience the web, we are making a clear promise:
We’re taking a stand, choosing humans over hype, and we will not turn the joy of exploring into inactive spectatorship. Without exploration, the web becomes far less interesting. Our curiosity loses oxygen and the diversity of the web dies. Jon von Tetzchner, CEO, Vivaldi
The field of machine learning in general remains an exciting one and may lead to features that are actually useful.
But right now, there is enough misinformation going around to risk adding more to the pile. We will not use an LLM to add a chatbot, a summarization solution or a suggestion engine to fill up forms for you, until more rigorous ways to do those things are available.
Vivaldi is the haven for people who still want to explore. We will continue building a browser for curious minds, power users, researchers, and anyone who values autonomy. If AI contributes to that goal without stealing intellectual property, compromising privacy or the open web, we will use it. If it turns people into passive consumers, we will not.
We will stay true to our identity, giving users control and enabling people to use the browser in combination with whatever tools they want to use. Our focus is on building a powerful personal and private browser for you to explore the web on your own terms. We will not turn exploration into passive consumption.
In a March 2025 analysis, Google users who encountered an AI summary were less likely to click on links to other websites than users who did not see one.
Right? 100 years of “progress” have been thrown out the window in the pursuit of no accountability. Let’s drink to the insanity! #Redonkulas #LindsayClancy #ModernWomen
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This is what computer programming means for me. You can build your own tools. You can share them with others. When you build and share such tools, you meet other people that perceive and interact with the world in the same way as you do. You make new friends. I guess this is what I've been trying to do in my life. Get people to understand this process. With computers, you can make your own tools, and so you can augment yourself, and others, to accomplish more things. This is something special about computer and especially open source tools. It costs no money at all to try this.
This idea isn't really new, either. Steve Jobs called the Macintosh "a bicycle for the mind", referring to the fact that the human on a bicycle is the most efficient animal on the planet. And before Jobs, you can see similar ideas in Douglas Engelbart's Mother of All Demos, where a whole section is about the human-computer interaction loop, and how their hardware (the mouse, the keyset, the realtime display) was designed to improve this loop and make the tool as transparent as possible (update: actually the segment I was thinking about is in a later talk from Douglas Engelbart in 1986). Just like when you ride a bicycle, and you're not particularly thinking about pedalling and braking and shifting gears and keeping your balance. It's as natural as walking.
But then, there is a limitation on that as soon as you're not the one building the tool. Say you buy a Macintosh or a Windows machine. Someone has designed it to work a certain way. And their design will shape how you perceive and interact with the world.
I've got a refurb laptop coming to me soon and I've been wanting to mess with immutable distros for a while... I have no idea what sort of specs the laptop has.
Anyone have any opinions on good immutable distro(s) to try out and why?
Only distros on my list so far are Bluefin and Vanilla (Gnome isn't a favorite these days though).
The only immutable distro I've tried is Bazzite. It's gaming-oriented, but can work well as a desktop. It also does offer a KDE edition, but for some reason they intentionally ship with some GNOME programs instead of the KDE ones. For example, a fresh KDE edition installation includes Ptyxis instead of Konsole.
Also, DistroWatch's search has the option to only show immutable distros. It's under the Distribution Category option. I figure that might help you find a few more options.
I run NixOS as a daily driver and on a box for docker containers. I will say that it is stable to point that since nothing seems to ever really break, I don't feel I really understand the configuration as well as I could (since I'm not having to fix things and learn).
I started with just traditional NixOS but later moved to using flakes. Because of flakes input pinning, it's much more reproducible but also even more stable. The biggest benefit I see to flakes is the use of local git for updating. Since I have git logs for auditing, if something were to go wrong, I'd just find that change in log and revert to before that commit hash (or just revert to different generation).
The biggest problem I've had is how procedurally some tasks change and sometimes are made more difficult. Symlinks is a good example of that. In Arch, symlinking is just a basic one-liner. In NixOS, it's a matter of writing config more verbosely to the configuration.nix file :
(pkgs.writeTextFile {
name = "tst";
destination = "/bin/tst";
executable = true;
text = builtins.readFile ./scripts/tst;
})
That's a good takeaway from NixOS: things are more verbose in setup, but tend to get set once and never again.
I like Fedora Atomic with bootc for this reason. While Nix language is quite confusing and gets even more confusing when you find online advice that has a different setup than you that introduces compatibilities, bootc is just an OCI containers that I can run bash commands in to get stuff set up.
It's still not one-to-one. Generally, I find that using bash to set things up makes more things easier than harder compared to Nix. Though Nix does make some stuff simpler.
That being said, I haven't tried NixOS in a while. I'm sure that with a decent LLMs, today its easier than ever to make a competent NixOS config. I've been meaning to try, but haven't found the time.
I run Silverblue on 2 devices (my main computer and laptop) for half a year. It works and I didn't have any major issues with it. Though as you might have experienced with other immutable distros, some things like configuring gdm might be a bit more work. But for most things there is a flatpak. The only software that couldn't be installed that wat was my vpn.
If you want to try out something new, NixOS or Guix might be more up your alley
All distros are immutable if you lost your root password.
I think NixOS is the way to go currently, but I personally would not use it due to the extra amount of work for little to no benefit on a single-user home machine.
I'm currently working on one, will release the website this weekend and the first public in-development build next week. I'm combining the kernels and CPU-specific optimizations from CachyOS (compiled and hosted myself to be in line with their repo policy and licenses) combined with the way SteamOS makes Arch-Linux atomic/immutable, implemented a little more to the way Fedora Silverblue does it. So pretty much unbreakable PLUS fast and optimized.
depending on your needs, putting nix on an immutable distro is a very good combination. people around here fiddle with kionite plus nix. seems cool so far.
I wish I had more experience with other immutable distros but Fedora Silverblue has been so stable on both my laptop and PC the past couple years that I haven’t had any reason to try anything else.
I like to tinker with an Arch Linux install using a VM to iterate quickly then translate almost ALL of the home dotfiles and preferences to deterministic nix code that absolutely LOCKS everything into place.
Some essential features/projects to incorporate into a decent nix config: - nix flakes - home-manager - content-addressed and dynamic derivations (Eelco’s original paper writes about CA derivations as the holy grail) - cachix (local cache) and community substituters - forgejo (local forge with local CI to test nix flake updates for breakage and warm the local cache) I call it my “update canary”) - nixos-anywhere/netboot/initrd boot scripting influenced by NixOS-anywhere but extended - disko - impermanance (lots of work up front declaring what persists between boots but this one is ESSENTIAL. This module makes it virtually impossible for a compromised package or virus to survive a reboot if things are done right.) - sops-nix - nixos-needs-reboot - devenv/direnv
This entry was edited (Friday, September 4, 2026, 3:31 PM)
As a proponent of better, faster, more foolproof, and more elegant, I’m often jealous of some of the features that our brothers in GUIX are building with the benefit of hindsight. Also, I will admit that it really feels like NixOS is doing the hard work exploring a paradigm (and its inherent rough edges) that will effectively obsolete FHS entirely in the Linux world someday.
This entry was edited (Friday, September 4, 2026, 3:29 PM)
I like the universal blue distros. If your laptop specs aren't great I would recommend Zirconium, as it's a Niri-based atomic distro and runs great on my 10yo laptop. Bluefin is gnome based, Aurora is the KDE-based equivalent. Bazzite has both KDE and Gnome variants, and is similar to either of them but with more game tools steam installed at the system level. I am biased towards these distros because they've been the best linux user experience I've ever had for day to day use.
Omarchy has been on something of a roll now. Funding for its foundation has been climbing fast, from an $8 million launch to $10 million a few weeks later, and now crossing $13 million with the most recent pledge.
What's drawn my attention are the first two Corporate Patrons, 1Password and 37signals, both of whom have decided to pitch $100,000 a year for the next three years. Now, 37signals I get; DHH is heavily involved there, but 1Password was a surprise entry.
Naturally, not everyone's onboard with their pledge.
Signs of disagreement
This has not gone well with employees working at 1Password, with company leadership having to take certain damage control measures to assure their staff.
An internal Slack message has surfaced (courtesy of The Verge), which shows cofounder Roustem Karimov downplaying the criticism, telling team members that:
people have different personal opinions. You believe in your heart that DHH is evil, that you have the moral high ground, and that nothing will change your mind.
However, not everyone believes that. It is not fair to claim a monopoly and ostracize team members who might disagree with you. There are people who are afraid to speak up simply because they will be personally attacked.
CEO David Faugno responded on a different note, telling employees the company doesn't endorse DHH's views, while also noting that Omarchy is the second most used Linux distribution among 1Password's own users. Why the backlash?
DHH is known to be someone who firmly falls on the "right" side of the political spectrum, someone who doesn't shy away from putting his opinions in public view.
He regularly posts blogs that show where he stands on certain societal issues, and some of his recent writeups are what's fueling this particular backlash.
His recent July post, titled "Wolves, sheep, and gypsies," compares Denmark's wolf population with the Romani people camping in Copenhagen parks, where he argues: "When gypsies take over public spaces, you deport them."
Then there's "As I remember London" from September 2025, where he laments about London losing its native Brit majority and a nod of approval for a Tommy Robinson march.
Of course, these aren't the only factors behind his disapproval, but you get the gist of it, right?
Users could jump ship
If you search for the terms "1Password" and "Omarchy" right now, you are bound to run into the many comments made by disgruntled 1Password users on Reddit and Hacker News.
They are calling the choice tone-deaf, given how many smaller open source projects could've benefited from the money. Some are already jumping to alternatives like Bitwarden, while others suggest self-hosting Vaultwarden or going with KeePass and its forks instead.
I see the issue compounding too. Back in February, 1Password raised subscription prices, taking effect at renewals from March 27. Individual plans went up 33 percent from $35.88 to $47.88 a year, and family plans went up 20 percent from $59.88 to $71.88.
Its community forum already has a long thread full of longtime users saying they were leaving over it. If 1Password continues playing with its users' trust like this, who knows what kind of exodus it will see next?
Uuuuhhhh... those prices... kinda have a, um, theme.
I see the issue compounding too. Back in February, 1Password raised subscription prices, taking effect at renewals from March 27. Individual plans went up 33 percent from $35.88 to $47.88 a year, and family plans went up 20 percent from $59.88 to $71.88
I'm glad to be aware of FOSS alternatives nowadays for pretty much any service I use/require.
I would never pay these prices for a password manager (not even the initial price), specially considering my sensitive data would be sent to a 3rd party company through a closed source project which no one can verify.
Even using Bitwarden free (which admittedly I use for convenience) is not exactly comfortable to me, even being mostly open source. I'm constantly considering moving back to KeePass as I used to do some years ago.
I'm guessing it's more of a critical thinking issue.
"Huh, that's a weird number. I wonder why that is..." is harder than "That number is associated with Nazis!"
That being said... Maybe 1Password should offer an annual subscription discount. Both because buying in bulk often comes with a discount, but also to avoid the number that's associated with Nazis.
Netflix do not sell a product that costs $107.88. There is no option to spend that amount on their website. No sniggering 4Chan gremlin set the price of Netflix to a number that is used as a call sign of Nazis.
These cunts have a whole menu of products that all have fixed prices that they specifically decided should end in 88. They could have rounded up or down to the nearest dollar, or use the same .99 price as everyone else, but they didn't and, the more I read of these people, the less I'm thinking it's accidental. And you're defending them.
You want to criticise other people for their maths skills, maybe brush up on your reasoning skills first.
This entry was edited (Thursday, September 3, 2026, 9:19 PM)
Sounds bad...until you realize that this is how math works. Any subscription whose monthly price ends in .99 will have an annual price that ends in .88.
Netflix @ 8.99 a month? That's 107.88! Nazis!
Crunchyroll @ 9.99 / 13.99 / 17.99 a month! Nazis!
Xbox Gamepass @ 9.99 a month? That's 119.88! Nazis!
Only people who are bad at math and committed to finding Nazis, real or imaginary, hiding in every nook and cranny even think about this.
If that that's not enough consider that prices ending .99 have been a sales tactic since forever. It's sometimes called "Charm Pricing" or "The 99 Effect".
As I said to the other almost identical comment you made defending them and criticising everyone for not being as wise as you: you can't buy Netflix for 107.88. That's just not an price they sell anything. But you can buy a whole selection of products from these dicks for .88 prices, which is a fixed price they specifically picked. Not a coincidence, a deliberate and conscious decision. As you rightly said, most businesses would have picked a .99 price or even a whole dollar amount. These people picked .88. What kind of person picks .88?
I just looked at their website, there isn't a .88 price anywhere. If you select annual payment, it shows the price as "$3.99 per month, billed annually", which turns out to be the 47.88 from the article if you multiply it with 12.
ETA: I don't want to defend 1password, but we should criticize them for things they actually do. Like funding facists.
This entry was edited (Friday, September 4, 2026, 5:11 AM)
88 is a white supremacist numerical code for Heil Hitler. Read more about the meaning behind the numbers, as well as how it’s used in non-extremist forms.
I switched to Bitwarden over this and the only thing I had to redo was my passkeys. Everything else migrated seamlessly with the simple import and export.
All of these morons are the same dumb assholes who 3 weeks ago wanted to rice their Arch installs to be as minimal as possible. Now they're re rolling a vibe coded reskin for babies. These are some of the dumbest people alive
Yeah, I don't get it either, and I don't get why this guy/project specifically gets funding... The only link I can see is that he's openly far-right, which might appeal to the "dudebro prepper" type of crowd.
They don't. DHH is a rich guy with rich friends. This is just friend's donating to a friend's project to show support.
And that also means that the CEO of 1Password really has no problems with DHH as a person, those who talk about Omarchy being revolutionary/special or anything like that at best have rose-tinted glasses.
This entry was edited (Thursday, September 3, 2026, 9:44 PM)
88 can absolutely be a fascist dog whistle. (It may or may not be here, hard to tell.)
Here's the explanation of they dog whistle: the phrase "Heil Hitler" becomes just the pair of letters "HH", which then becomes "88" since H is the 8th letter of the alphabet.
88 by itself is kind of rare, you'll usually see it paired with 14, most often as 1488. The number 14 is a reference to the 14 words which is a fascist saying that I can never remember but can always recognize. To paraphrase, it's something about securing the future for white children. It's pretty easy to find if you just search "14 words"
Keepass has always been great. If you aren't regularly sharing account logins with other people, you just have a file you can sync using whatever method you want. For clients, I recommend KeepassDX on android, and KeePassXC on PC.
I have been using keepassXC on Linux and keepass2android offline on Android for the last years too! I started with syncthing as a method of syncing the KeePass file, but now that I have all my files in nextcloud, I'm just using that.
Works flawlessly! Especially for me, as I am the only user.
what is the selling point of 1P? my work place are using it, if it's not open source I am not touching a password manager, trust me bro will not cut it
This is unfortunately a side effect of "Year of the Linux Desktop". With adoption comes "market share" so...
It's on the radar now, of everyone who ruined everything else for us. They're gonna try to infect Linux with their cancerous greed and surveillance capitalism as well.
I've come to the point I just hate business. Ugh. Can't we just be fine and left alone?
CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, besides being well known for its Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is known among longtime Linux users as a RHEL/CentOS shop
The key reason for doing this, as stated in the article:
ultimately they say "the straw that broke the camel's back" to abandon Red Hat Enterprise Linux for their industrial accelerator-control computers was the "-march=x86-64-v2" compiler flag default as "forced obsolescence" for old hardware.
From what I understand, the v2 option requires relatively newer CPU instruction sets, making it incompatible with some older CPUs, even 64 bit ones. I don't know what is gained by using the v2 flag, but I would imagine that it may be something performance-related, by more fully utilizing those newer instruction sets.
This entry was edited (Thursday, September 3, 2026, 4:11 PM)
I would imagine that it may be something performance-related, by more fully utilizing those newer instruction sets.
Or they're deprecating shit just because, the mantainer must be just a late zoomer that drank the cool aid saying that removing old hw support is the way to go.
This entry was edited (Thursday, September 3, 2026, 9:54 PM)
x86-64-v2 gives you guaranteed support for SSE3, SSE4.1 and SSE4.2, which is relatively old, we're talking CPUs from 2008. The real boost comes with x86-64-v3 which gives you AVX.
It's worth noting that the archlinux devs found very little benefit for switching to v2 in their benchmarks (not that a benchmark ever covers every usecase) lists.archlinux.org/pipermail/… v3 has significantly more notable benefits but you loose even more hardware support.
Find out why Red Hat recommends building Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 for x86-64-v2 and what you can expect from this new, optional microarchitecture level
CachyOS uses -march=x86-64-v3 or newer. I have a windows 8 era secondhand PC that I'm performance testing, and it shows marginal but statistically-significant gains over vanilla Archlinux.
V2? That's from the transition from Windows Vista to Win7 iirc.
I've enjoyed Fedora for some time, but I may follow suit, more due to RedHat's DoW and "kill-cycle" work in Israel than anything else. Would be nice to use an OS I can actually contribute to without at least directly aiding genociders.
This entry was edited (Friday, September 4, 2026, 2:29 PM)
I mean you only need duckduckgo it, but here's an example link covering it, here's the original paper bragging about how RedHat lets the US DoW do much more murder.
The U.S. Air Force and its mission partners are fielding new mission capabilities ... to compress the kill chain. ... Red Hat® Device Edge embeds captured, analyzed, and federated data sets in a manner that positions the warfighter to use artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) to increase the accuracy of airborne targeting and mission-guidance systems.
Arch with a makeup in a vibecoded repo posing as a legitimate distro, whose only claim to fame is an injection of fascist money? get that shit out of here
Can somebody explain to me what's the thing with Omarchy? I enjoy Arch my own way, but I get constant video recommendations on YouTube from Tech Bros telling me to install this thing, and then 90% of Lemmy hate it, why? And why 1Password donate $100k to them instead of Debian or even Arch?
At a time when a massive fraction of the open source world is thrashing around trying to figure out how to align themselves to ai that stands out.
E: people on lemmy hate it because the creator has incoherent European migration politics that come to the opposite conclusion of their own incoherent migration politics.
This entry was edited (Thursday, September 3, 2026, 4:39 PM)
Tech Bros want you to install it because DHH is a fellow tech bro and a millionaire
90% of Lemmy hates it because of DHH's post about how he used to idolize London as a kid but now stays the fuck away because not enough white people.
What makes it special is that it comes preinstalled with hyprland so you don't have to pacman it. What makes hyprland special is that it's a tiling wm for wayland made by someone who, judging by their behaviour on discord and github, is 13 years old. You can just install it on Arch. You also get it as an option in the installer for CachyOS, meaning you can get it preinstalled on Arch without using Omarchy.
Also you can just use Sway, which is also a tiling wm for Wayland. Less eye candy, but probably more stable and less likely to have significant security issues.
The U.S. State Department’s latest report on Cuba revives allegations against U.S. solidarity activists that were made by the FBI and CIA in the 1960s and 1970s — claims historian Teishan Latner says were never proven.
In this interview with Belly of the Beast journalist Yohan Rodríguez, Latner discusses the history of U.S.-Cuba solidarity, the Venceremos Brigade, the Black Panther Party and growing pressure on people in the U.S. who oppose Washington’s policy toward Cuba.
He also examines whether the report is helping lay the groundwork for military action against Cuba.
@peter_link I am more a liquidarity person, solids are stagnant, dead, don't move, liquids flow, I flow.
On a serious note, I feel US policy towards Cuba and the world in general is stupid, it treats the world as a zero sum game, but that's not the reality, and with respect to Cuba we have a situation where we don't want something 90 miles form our territory in the Russian sphere of influence.
But I would ask this, if I were a small nation next to a large belligerent nation, and that nation were keeping me in abject poverty, would I want to be like them? Or would I be more likely to want to be like them if they allowed me self determinism but provided good standard of living and freedoms for their citizens? I think the latter which is why in my view our treatment of Cuba is not only unreasonable, it is foolish.
What does it mean for a file to live somewhere?This question is less trivial than it appears. This video walks down through the filesystem, covering paths, d...
Parents live far away, so I sent them a qr code generated by my local SimpleX per email.
All they have to do is open their local SimpleX, go to one-time link and scan the qr code, right?
Once our devices have been connected, connection details remains saved in our local SimpleX and I don't need to send a new qr code before I want to talk to them again, right?
That's it. Just one time and you're permanently connected. Unless, one of you deletes your connection, clears data, deletes account, etc. Then you lose access to any previous contact and have to reconnect.
Please don't send people a QR code, those are for in-person sharing, and it just greatly complicates the process. It generates a link as well that you can send.
But to answer your question, yes, that's how it works.
I'm working on a window switching tool for Wayland that's kinda like Alt-Tab. However, it seems like there's no compositor agnostic way to do things like:
List all currently open windows
Ask which window is currently focused
Focus a specific window
Therefore, if I want my tool to support multiple compositors, I have to re-implement this logic for each compositor.
Is the motivation security through program isolation? That doesn't quite make sense to me since programs still can do the above things, they just have to do it compositor specifically: hyprctl clients on Hyprland, niri msg windows for Niri, etc. Also, you could just have a Wayland API that requires elevated privileges for doing these things, which the user would have to opt-in to for a specific program.
I feel like this design of Wayland causes a lot of fragmentation. There are a lot of tools that are for example Hyprland-only.
Could you please enlighten me on why Wayland has this design?
There's probably a PR or a thread somewhere with a bunch of very angry nerds fighting over whether this is even a useful feature and there’s no API because they can't reach a compromise. There is no design.
That said do you know of the wlr foreign toplevel management protocol? A lot of the smaller compositors support it. But yes a lot like e.g. Mutter and I think kwin do not.
This entry was edited (Saturday, September 5, 2026, 2:26 PM)
The design of it is not compatible with the old paradigm of graphical interfaces which were the ones created by teams of researchers trying to figure out how to most effectively open a dialogue between computer and user. There is no reference implementation. It’s broken in a million little ways. No xscreensaver.
But if I had to name just one main thing: the whole point of wayland is to make it easier for the programmers of x to handle a large complex codebase, which they accomplished by throwing everything out and starting over from scratch instead of migrating to tools, process and even languages that make that precise problem easier to manage and at the time of waylands conception we had forty fucking years of history showing vast improvement in the tools, processes and languages aimed at big complex shit.
The fact that anyone will defend the decision to abandon x for the absolute slop delivery tube that wayland became in an age where we have access to, like it or not, the ultimate programming tool in the form of cheap and fast large language models is insane.
Even if my heartfelt love for the op overcame my revulsion for wayland I would not put any effort into fixing this issue because the structural problems with wayland make it a battle with an entrenched system of powerful organizations with skin in the game and outspoken users looking for a fight as opposed to a simple pr.
Think for a second about the context of what you are aligning yourself with in these replies to me: wayland, a collection of protocols and apis in a trenchcoat, doesn’t have a standardized one for alt tab. That’s not because of a cabal of stereotypes rubbing their hands together and laughing over a meeting table shaped like the Mercator projection, but because the wayland devs abdicated responsibility by not making a reference implementation and that left space open for anyone who wanted to to stake their claim.
Now rather than looking at the design and deciding that we need 12 foot posts to support the back side of the building as the land slopes off we are at the mercy of whatever the supplier brings to the site today.
Why would I volunteer my time to that? Why would anyone?
The op is flailing, trying to use the system you’re at the very least fine with but I now suspect you feel a certain affinity towards but they can’t. They can’t use wayland unless you help. Their various windows are shuffled on top of one another and require the use of a mouse to switch between. You could be helping the op instead of trolling. But you’re not.
So people trying to use it could more easily do so.
Because you believe in the principles behind it and want to bring them in harmony with the ops problem.
As an action in support of the open source principles you espouse, improving the commons for no other reason than your empathy and love for the human spirit!
It clearly has a serious problem that the op is experiencing. Why not help the op instead of dismissing their concerns? It really seems like you’re trolling or at least engaging in bad faith here…
I already answered that. I don’t think wayland should exist let alone be fixed and even if I wanted to I described the development environment around it as sclerotic and sycophantic.
everything you could want and more already was dreamt up and has a PR for it, you can thank Gnome for stonewalling everything for half a decade or more
Some of the unstable extensions have wide adoption, so perhaps take a look at each of them to see if they provide the functionality you want. Good luck!
As for gnome, I couldn’t find anything that seemed suitable, other than writing a gnome extension specifically to support this. I imagine that doesn’t fit within your vision for your project though.
Anyway, I had fun looking into this. Once again good luck!
The spirit of the BSD Cafe is to try to create a serene, open, friendly, positive, and welcoming environment for all who want to be a part of it. I am just the Barista. I can't solve the world's problems, but I can try to keep the counter clean, keep the machines running, serve a good BSD coffee, and ensure that, at least here, friends can find a moment of peace and constructive sharing. We need more bars and fewer shopping malls.
This is the text I wrote for my part of the talk “Liberating the Social Web Using *BSD“, presented together with the great Jeroen (@h3artbl33d) at EuroBSDCon 2025 in Zagreb. It’s not a transcript – it’s the base I worked from, the thoughts I organized before stepping on stage. What I actually said may have been slightly different in places, as it always is when you speak from the heart rather than read from a page. But these are the words, and the spirit is exactly the same.
Today, I’m not just here to talk about technology, but about how the principles of BSD systems can help us build healthier and more resilient online communities. And I’ll do this by telling you the story of the bar I founded, the BSD Cafe.
The idea for the BSD Cafe was born long before its launch but, as I often do, I thought carefully about whether to proceed. On 27 December 2022, I decided to register the domain. The name came from careful reflection with my wife. The idea was to create a virtual space that resembled not so much the cafes scattered around the world, but the Italian “Cafe” (which are called “Bar”).
For many years (and in many contexts, still today), Italian bars have been at the center of people’s recreational social lives. The Barista, the manager of the establishment, is not just a keeper but a point of reference: they don’t just serve coffee, but they listen and, if asked, offer advice with the wisdom of someone who sees many people and many things, even just out of the corner of their eye, and hears many stories. It used to be said that the best advisors were priests and bartenders, but that the latter certainly gave more entertaining advice.
And the bar is precisely the place where people go to relax. There are often televisions, tables for playing cards, and recreational rooms. The bartender ensures that everything runs smoothly, but also that everyone feels comfortable: that the person passing through gets directions to their destination, that the person who just walked in gets their coffee at their preferred temperature, and that the person who entered a little earlier, who needs some rest today, has a table in a more private area.
The spirit of the BSD Cafe is the same: to try to create a serene, open, friendly, positive, and welcoming environment for all who want to be a part of it. Those who just want to read can do so. Those who post a lot are welcome. Everyone should have the experience that makes them most comfortable and at ease. No one should ever feel forced to do something they don’t want to do; no one should ever feel uncomfortable. Therefore, everyone can choose a noisy and active table, or a more reserved and quiet one.
We can therefore assume that the BSD Cafe has an infinite number of available tables. We can thus call it a Turing cafe. 🙂
In Italian bars, people used to go (and in some areas, still do) to find their “bar friends”. These are people you meet at the bar without an appointment. You go to the bar freely, when you have the time and inclination, and you find the people who regularly frequent that place. And the choice of the bar often aligns with the theme of the bar itself. For example, in Italy, there are many “Bar Sports” where people meet to catch up, watch games together, and read and comment on sports news. The idea of the BSD Cafe is the same – a bar where enthusiasts of BSD systems, Open Source, and technology can be found. And for me, although I might occasionally talk about users (out of technical habit), at the BSD Cafe, there are only “bar friends”. The BSD Cafe is a place where we are “for”, not “against”. Supporters, not haters. Bar friends, not opponents. This doesn’t mean that opinions on other software can’t be expressed, even extremely negative ones (I do it myself from time to time), but the general spirit is that of open source: to build, to discuss, to understand. Wars against other solutions, especially if they are open source, are not part of the atmosphere of the BSD Cafe. We have our preferences – we support our ideas and solutions, but we are not here to “destroy” others. Among our users, there are people who develop Linux distributions – and for me, that is extremely positive!
When people are at ease and in a serene environment, they are often encouraged to be serene themselves. Some are negative and aggressive because they absorb it from their environment. Some users of the BSD Cafe have told me exactly this: the civil, friendly, relaxed, positive, and constructive level of the BSD Cafe is good for their mental health. Conversely, there are unfortunately people who find pleasure in causing trouble, in muddying the atmosphere. For these people, unfortunately, there is no solution, but the Cafe is not the place for them.
Political discussions can be part of our lives and daily routines, but the BSD Cafe is not a political group. In recent years, politics has become a topic not of discussion but of conflict. It has always been so to some extent, but commercial social media platforms have understood that hatred and conflict generate engagement, and engagement means selling advertising – a lot of advertising. Therefore, at the BSD Cafe, you might occasionally hear talk of politics or the political repercussions of technical decisions and choices. And that is perfectly okay. But it is not a place from which political conflicts should arise. We are for – supporters, not haters. We are here to build, not to destroy.
The BSD Cafe is therefore a place centered on the BSDs, and all services are, therefore, based on BSD operating systems.
All technologies used must be able to run “from my garage”. I am a professional – so this is not a hobby project – but it must not depend on any proprietary solution or “Cloud” solution. Today, there is a tendency to standardize (too much?) everything related to technical choices. If it’s pro, it’s Kubernetes/cloud/serverless/etc. – if it’s not, it’s “old” or “not pro”. I am, and have always been, a proponent of OwnYourData. And this is a mantra at the BSD Cafe. All services are based on Open Source solutions, outside the dynamics and centralized management of the usual companies. We must be free and maintain our technological autonomy; we cannot create a system where our communications and our data depend exclusively on third-party companies. I have enough experience to understand that, sooner or later, even the most solid companies can fail or change their business model. The BSD Cafe is therefore always in favor of self-hosting. Sometimes this means losing users, but not bar friends. It happens, in fact, that at a certain point, friends decide to try the BSDs and start self-hosting their own services. For me, that is a success: one less number in the statistics, but one more success on a technical and ideological level. And for all intents and purposes, they remain bar friends, even if their “handle” is different from “bsd.cafe” – it is the spirit, not an extension, that unites us.
From time to time, I have migrated the main VM of the BSD Cafe. Sometimes I have given notice, other times not (the downtime is minimal). In some cases, the system has run from my home desk, from the Mini PC I used as a home server and now use daily as a workstation. At the core of the technical choices, in fact, is the decision not to depend (strictly) on any specific technology or hardware. For this reason, the structure of the BSD Cafe is replicable and malleable, as well as described in its Wiki: it is a community of technology enthusiasts, and I want them to judge the choices transparently and autonomously, without hiding anything.
The BSD Cafe was not created to be just a Fediverse instance but, from the beginning, to provide a series of services powered by the BSDs for enthusiasts and friends of the BSDs. To date, the main services are:
A Mastodon instance – the beating heart of the BSD Cafe in the Fediverse, which currently has about 500 total users (now 600 – of which about half have been active in the last 30 days). This is where we chat, get informed, joke, critique, build, discuss, and get to know each other.
A snac instance – also for access to the Fediverse. Snac is an example of lightweight software, with no dependencies, that is stable and easy to self-host. It does not use a database but the file system and is the basis of another project of mine, FediMeteo. The snac/ZFS combination is fantastic. The developer is a caring, helpful, and fantastic person. It is my first choice for personal projects and more – it currently has more or less 30 users.
A Lemmy instance – blendit – which, however, is giving me problems and headaches. I’ve been thinking about it for a while; it might be the first of the BSD Cafe services that I will be forced to retire. More about this later.
A Matrix server – based on Synapse, it has become the hub for many interesting topics both in the thematic channels (BSD-themed) and in the Lounge, the general channel, where we talk about a bit of everything. The server is federated, so it is also an access point for channels and groups on other servers. We chat, we discuss, we ask – a bit like with the Fediverse, but on Matrix.
miniflux and freshrss – RSS is not dead – it is alive and well and still a fundamental tool for updates and consultation. Two jails, two services to give our friends a way to read the news. This is our reading corner, the newspapers, the newsletters. Here, you remain autonomous and in silence, you choose what you want to read, and you savor the content. Without advertising, without interruptions.
wallabag – called “press” – to save your bookmarks, sites, articles. Save the web. Freely. Our post-it notes, but private.
myip – by connecting to myip, you will get your IP back – both v4 and v6 – via telnet, http, https, ssh, etc. – ideally, it is an echo chamber, to “hear” the reflection of your own voice – that is, your own IP.
wiki.bsd.cafe – the project’s homepage and a series of articles and content about the BSDs. It is not very rich in content at the moment, but some friends contribute regularly and keep the information in it updated. It contains articles on how the BSD Cafe is structured (for each service, an explanation of the division into jails, etc.). Our recipe book – for the coffee machine, but also for the BSDs!
brew.bsd.cafe – powered by Forgejo, it has become the home for many projects by friends of the BSD Cafe. I use it daily for my own needs, and it is a way to avoid using centralized tools controlled by the “usual suspects”. And, unlike the main and most famous similar service in the world, it also supports IPv6! It is our creative workshop, the development den. The garage where we have our tools and build, collaborating.
journal.bsd.cafe – the latest, in chronological order, added to the BSD Cafe. Our journal, what we want to tell the world and leave a trace of. It is a WordPress blog, federated in the Fediverse thanks to the ActivityPub plugin, where authors can create and publish articles, even those not strictly related to the BSDs. So far, various articles have been published, and some of them have had some success on sites like Hacker News or Lobste.rs – because quality is still appreciated, especially in the world of standardized and imprecise content from LLMs (or “AI”, as is fashionable today).
There are other active services but not publicly usable, such as “tube” – our TV – Peertube. They are currently experimental.
Let’s get into the technical details:
The BSD Cafe is not “cloud ready”. The BSD Cafe was not created to be serverless. We love our servers, and we don’t need the “cloud” to run our services. The BSD Cafe started with a FreeBSD VM on Hetzner in Finland for €3.29 per month. It is still active and is the primary for the entire infrastructure and is named “bsdcafevm”. It hosts the reverse proxy, in a jail, which routes all incoming connections, and is the “router” for the larger VM. This VM also hosts a “ns2” jail, which is the secondary DNS, and the “backup” instance of Mastodon, which helps with queue management and becomes primary when I shut down the other one during updates. For IPv6, Hetzner assigns a routed /64 block. I have divided it into /72 subnets so that I can route to other VPSs, services, etc., and provide an IPv6 address to any jail.
The main VPS, which hosts the services, called “bc01”, connects to this VM via Wireguard. bc01 has some particular characteristics, including:
It was originally a VM on Proxmox, as I was using hardware I already owned. It is now on bhyve, on a FreeBSD host under my control (in Germany).
It does not have a public IP assigned, but connects to the Internet only via NAT on the host. This is a clear choice: this VM should only connect to bsdcafevm. BSDCafeVM will forward connections from the reverse proxy and will handle “NATing” outgoing IPv4 connections from bc01. The Wireguard rules on BSDCafeVM will also ensure that IPv6 connections reach the jails of this VM. The purpose is simple: this VM must be able to be moved anywhere, and the services must be able to resume functioning immediately. And this happens because all it needs is a Wireguard connection to BSDCafeVM, so there are no services exposed directly. This is the reason why this VM has been moved many times without any changes to IPs, addresses, etc. More information on this VM later.
A small VM (for one euro per month) based on FreeBSD that, within a jail, has the ns1 nameserver, which is the primary authoritative one. This VM also serves other purposes from time to time, such as monitoring the rest, etc.
A jail within one of my FreeBSD hosts in Poland, on OVH, contains the media files for the Mastodon instance. This is the most voluminous part of the entire hosting setup because Mastodon downloads and reprocesses all the multimedia content it encounters. This is for two main purposes: to clean it, in order to possibly remove malicious content, and to ensure that users of one’s own instance only have contact with their own media repository, not with that of the original instance – both for performance and privacy reasons. This server has spinning disks. Initially, I used Minio, but over time, performance plummeted. A few months ago, I migrated to SeaweedFS, and I am very satisfied with it. The outgoing bandwidth of this machine is not very wide, and I have other services on it. For this reason, I applied a solution that I described in an article on my blog.
I have used some VMs or physical hosts (spread across Europe and the USA) to act as a CDN. The BSD Cafe’s DNS will return the IP (both v4 and v6) closest to the caller, among those available, and this host will connect directly to the media server, then caching the content. The problem, in fact, does not arise when a user scrolls through their timeline, but as soon as they publish multimedia content: all known instances will connect to download and reprocess that file, generating a spike. This has little impact if it is a normal post, but it is extremely voluminous if it is content of a considerable size, like an image or a video. In this way, the various CDN nodes will download the content only once and serve it to all instances in their area of competence. These CDN nodes also do other things, can be activated or deactivated based on my needs, and are based on FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD (one of them is on OpenBSD Amsterdam).
Another FreeBSD VPS (which I use for other things) contains “status.bsd.cafe“, which is the jail with Uptime Kuma that shows the status of the services or any of my communications about them. I do not receive notifications from this host, but from another monitoring system, so it is only to show the status of the situation.
In practice, the BSD Cafe mainly needs the “endpoint” VPS, the VPS with the services, and the jail with the media, which could be condensed into a single system if desired. Everything else is optional and I keep it active as I have resources available on external hardware.
Many of the technical choices have been documented in articles on my blog or in the BSD Cafe Wiki.
But all of this requires backups. And the BSD Cafe has a clear and defined backup procedure.
The main VPSs – namely bsdcafevm and bc01 – are based on FreeBSD and, therefore, ZFS. Both have the same type of backup, defined as follows:
A local snapshot every 5 minutes, kept for two hours. In this way, in case of problems, it is possible to “clean up the coffee drop” before the tablecloth is indelibly stained—as well as one per hour, kept for 24 hours.
An external backup, performed at regular intervals, to an external backup host. The frequency varies from 15 minutes to an hour, depending on the available space and the load, which I modify according to my needs. All datasets of the VMs are copied, including system ones, for a possible quick recovery in case of a disaster.
An external backup to a backup server of mine, one meter away from me. This happens every 24 hours, and I consider it the “extreme disaster recovery” because, in my opinion, the safest data is the data that is physically reachable. The disks of this server (which also contains other backups) are all encrypted with GELI, so in case of theft, they are unusable.
Last but not least, the physical FreeBSD host on which bc01 currently rests is also backed up every 15 minutes to another external backup server, so the entire disk image. An additional layer of redundancy, to help me sleep better at night.
From a technical standpoint, therefore, I have tried to create a simple but secure infrastructure, with the most granular separation possible (for example: the main Mastodon instance has a jail for Mastodon, one for the Redis for the queues, etc., one for the Redis for the timeline caches (only in RAM, does not write to disk), and one for the database (PostgreSQL).
Then there are the common service jails (unbound for DNS resolutions, smtp for sending and receiving emails, etc.).
Being the Barista of the BSD Cafe is a privilege and an honor. The success of the project has exceeded my expectations, and this has filled me with joy. The BSD community is fantastic, mature, intelligent, and positive. The friends who approach the BSDs absorb all of this and transmit it to others, creating a virtuous circle. But it’s not always roses. There are problems, from time to time, that need to be solved. And, to quote my previous talk: “The main challenge is often ideological, not technical“.
Apart from the problems with blendit – Lemmy – which accumulates all the media it sees in a frenzied way and never deletes it, as well as having created serious update problems – all the software is on average stable and reliable.
The most complex part of my role as a barista, in fact, is not technical, but human: moderation. The techniques of scams and disturbances are constantly improving, and it is increasingly difficult to distinguish a new friend of the bar from a troublemaker. But the biggest challenge is maintaining balance.
Our philosophy is clear: to be for, not against. Supporters, not haters. This principle is a conscious choice, in stark contrast to the dominant model of commercial social media. These platforms are often designed around an engagement economy, where algorithms optimized to generate conflict and outrage maximize the time spent on the site and, consequently, advertising profits. The BSD Cafe rejects this model. We are not here to capitalize on anger, but to build a refuge from the toxicity of the internet.
This approach manifests itself in the way we handle controversial topics. Recently, a technical theme with strong political implications has begun to appear in discussions. My line is not to censor the topic itself. I firmly believe in open discussion. I only intervene when the discussion ceases to be a critical analysis and becomes a personal attack. For some, this is not enough: they would like a total ban on certain topics and the immediate exclusion of those who introduce them. My experience, however, has shown me that a more patient approach is often more constructive. I have seen people support controversial software solutions simply because they did not know their background. Thanks to civil and informative discussions, they have understood the context, thanked the community, and made more informed choices. Banning them instantly would have been unfair and would have denied everyone an opportunity for growth.
However, this philosophy of constructive positivity has attracted a specific criticism: that of promoting “Toxic Positivity”. The accusation is that, in our desire to maintain a serene environment, we end up excluding those who are suffering, invalidating their negative experiences because they “clash” with the atmosphere of the bar.
This is a criticism that I take very seriously, because it touches the heart of the project. And my answer is that it is a fundamental misunderstanding of our purpose. The goal is not to deny that pain, injustice, and suffering exist in the world. On the contrary: the BSD Cafe exists precisely because the world is often a difficult place.
Our purpose is not to pretend that those who suffer should stop suffering, but to offer them a place where, for a while, they may not be defined solely by their suffering. A place where they can be, first and foremost, a technology enthusiast, a FreeBSD expert, a curious OpenBSD user. A friend of the bar. We are always ready to support, console, and help those who need it, but we want to protect that mental space where shared passions unite us and give us relief.
Fortunately, this vision is confirmed by the very people we are trying to help. The number of private messages of appreciation I receive from people going through terrible times far exceeds the criticism. They write to me that “the civil, friendly, and constructive level of the BSD Cafe is good for their mental health”, because it allows them to disconnect from daily dramas that would otherwise be unbearable.
I am just the Barista. I can’t solve the world’s problems, but I can try to keep the counter clean, keep the machines running, serve a good (BSD) coffee, distribute (many) stickers, and ensure that, at least here, friends can find a moment of peace and constructive sharing. But a bar is nothing without its regulars. And the success of the BSD Cafe is not mine, but that of the BSD Community and the friends who are part of it. The richness of this place is not only the quality of the Coffee (which, being BSD, is very high), but mainly the human richness of the friends who are part of it. And to them, to all of you, I say thank you. From the bottom of my heart.
We need more bars and fewer shopping malls, and that is why I recently also founded the illumos Cafe. We want people who sit down, who socialize, or who simply enjoy the atmosphere of an environment that is familiar, friendly, and positive to them. Like this conference and all the BSD Conferences, because the environment is the same. Enough of shiny shop windows; a good hot drink, in the company of friends, can help you live better. “From the people, for the people“.
The slides, the video, and the text behind my presentation at EuroBSDCon 2024 and BSDCan 2025 - Why and how we're migrating many of our servers from Linux to the BSDs.
U.S. Rep. Carlos Giménez (R-FL) says Cuba’s healthcare system “sucks” and “doesn’t work,” pointing to hospitals without medicine and deteriorating conditions.
But this criticism leaves out a major part of the story: the policies Giménez has championed are the reason why Cuba’s hospitals are collapsing. U.S. economic warfare has restricted Cuba’s ability to obtain medicines, medical equipment, fuel and other resources needed to keep its healthcare system running.
In 2027, your operating system is going to ask how old you are. California's age verification law (AB 1043) takes effect January 1st, and AB 1856 just carved Linux out of it. But the law still leaves many questions open, here's the good, the bad, and the ugly.
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⏱️ TIMESTAMPS 00:00 CA AGE "VERIFICATION" 00:30 THE "GOOD" 01:36 THE BAD 03:02 OUR SPONSOR: CAKE WALLET 04:34 THE UGLY 07:40 WHAT YOU CAN DO #california #privacy #techlore
We got to thinking. What would happen if Europe decided it wanted to go to war with Russia and the US said “Nah, we’re good here.” - and took all our toys, and went home? Let’s wargame that scenario... Oh yeah - you're going to want beverages and snacks for this episode... And blood pressure meds if you have them...
As much as the Fascist that the fools who voted for his very specific promises to destroy freedom of the press("We are going to jail journalists!" crowd roars (paraphrased, but not far off, I think the original was even wilder)) and being the Project 2025 Puppet is a Worthless Tool, I do have to clarify something here.
The implication was very much clear, but he did not explicitly say "trangender people will end." He intimated that if they lose the ground they deserve to lose that it "will never end."
We have to be accurate in our commentary about and towards the Fascists. To devolve into their tactics is to give them ammunition to fuel the brainwashed.
He absolutely wants our Family dead and gone--Project 2025 literally laid out the plan to make our Trans Family illegal(criminalize porn, redefine porn to include transgender persons, thereby making it illegal to exist). But we have to report accurately, not fuel the Apologists who will look at this article and go "look at this radical--Fearless Leader never said that."
The Annoying Orange will eventually fade, but the Nazis(GOP) will remain trouble nonetheless. Let us accurately report their idiocy so people can wake up.
This entry was edited (Tuesday, September 1, 2026, 8:21 PM)
To devolve into their tactics is to give them ammunition to fuel the brainwashed.
I agree with this message but not your reasoning. Fascists don't care about what is true. If we only speak objectively, make rational arguments, emphasize logical consistency, stick to our principles, etc, they'll just lie and take things wildly out of context to feed to their base. They don't need us to feed them ammunition.
However, we should still do these things for our own sake. If we fight their misinformation with our own, we erase any hope objective truth and shared reality have of coming back. A lot of Trump voters and supporters don't support every aspect of modern fascism. If the Epstein files or Iran war gets some of them to realize they've been lied to, they might look around to other ideologies. We need to represent the values of transparency and truth that the MAGA movement pretends to uphold. If manipulation and deception eventually defeats fascism, it would still be bad. The new normal and values of the new leadership would continue manipulating and deceiving people to the benefit of the rich.
FrOSCon 2026 in Sankt Augustin, Germany, was a first for F-Droid as well as for me. It was the first time F-Droid had a booth at FrOSCon, and it was also my ...
It's cool they are able to go to these type of cons, but man do I hate when people do titles like "< insert group > goes < insert con name >" instead of "goes to". More of a pet peeve than anything, though.
At the behest of a friend, I tried out Omarchy (bear with me) and found it to be a perfectly serviceable custom arch install with hyprland (bear with me) and others configured relatively sanely out of the box. What really sold me on it was how easy it was to "custom brand" my laptop with our business name & logo -- I'm a sucker for that kind of thing.
After recent, uh... Revelations, I no longer wish to be a bump in Omarchy & hyprland's user numbers. I have plans on where to go next and what WM(s) I'll be trying (OpenSUSE Tumbleweed + Sway), but will gladly accept recommendations on other projects I may or may not have thought about. What I'm really looking for, though, is how to do the branding. My personal brand and logo were on login, lock screen, and the screensaver, all of which I greatly enjoyed.
So how might I best accomplish that? Thanks in advance.
I'm confused. If you're technically fluent enough to discern a "perfectly serviceable arch install" you're probably savy enough to apply some theming to the dozen or so greeters and DEs available for Linux distros.
A fair point! You'd be surprised where some people's deficits lie. I've used Linux for many years, but never bothered messing with the theming for greeters or the like before -- I never really cared. 🤷♂️
So while I would definitely say I'm technically savvy enough to accomplish the task, it's also something I've never poked before. Figured it couldn't hurt to pick the collective brain of the Internet for knowledge and recommendations. Maybe someone out there knows a trick I wouldn't find elsewhere, or a lovely piece of software I should look into.
True. I was hoping for an element of human experience, more general guidance and personal preferences than a step-by-step.
I'm sure the Arch Wiki probably has a page in it somewhere that covers the basics, and I definitely plan on looking for neutral resources like that. I'd also love to hear from the community, likes or dislikes, different software solutions. I always find it interesting and enlightening to learn how other people are doing things. 🙂
If you liked Ormachy then I think you'll feel very comfortable with CachyOS + Sway. (I can't in good conscience recommend hyprland anymore) The CachyOS team deliver sane configuration files to start a desktop. Then delve into how to setup greeters and lock apps, it's usually small changes in each config file with your own images and setup.
I could let AI think for me, or I could learn how to manage in on my own.
If you seriously want to employ AI effectively, I find knowing how to do what you're asking it to do is the best way to get good results. Otherwise... Who knows what's going to come out the other end!
I like to handle my system myself. Managing my install is fun for me. I'm just looking for general advice, not for someone to do it all for me.
If you want scrollwork you use a scroll saw. If you want molding you use a router table.
If you want to make some other distro look like Omarchy you use an llm.
The distro of which youre trying to duplicate the setup you had is very ai forward. If youre trying to do something the omarchy way that would be using ai.
I'm not trying to mimic how Omarchy looks. I am looking to replicate a very specific end result not "turn another distro into Omarchy."
There is one specific part of what Omarchy does that I am asking about: how to achieve the custom branding of certain aspects of the OS. Nothing else. I don't care if the path to the end result is the "Omarchy way" or not, I'm trying to see what avenues exist to achieve that same end result. Linux has many ways to do the same thing.
I don't need an LLM for that. I don't want to use an LLM to try and achieve it. And I don't have to. That's the beauty of choice. I won't be replying to you past this point, as there's no merit here. Thanks for your engagement, have a nice night, day, or whatever time it is wherever you are!
hasan piker (guy on the right) is actively making abdul el-sayed’s chances at election worse and i am frustrated about it given the stakes so i made this meme.
because like. my absolute BESTIE abdul el-sayed is out here working miracles at home trying to keep poc, migrant, low-income, queer, etc. people alive and doing the actual work of building a coalition, including making real inroads with his Jewish constituency, while being explicitly pro-Palestinian and rejecting AIPAC money.
hasan piker has made a handful of appearances with both abdul and zohran, but now abdul is getting viciously smeared for hasan’s own words, with fox news literally turning things hasan said into attack-ad material against him. and hasan just will not read the room and step back.
this is the same BOZO hasan piker who wears mao outfits, plays literal terrorist propaganda videos for his friends and goes “they’re just very musical people,” denies the Uyghur genocide, supports the invasion of Tibet, lies about queer rights in China while going on tours, and has said enough insane shit that even my OTHER bestie zohran mamdani disavowed him months ago. and the room is STILL unread and some people are trying to tell me i have to fall on the sword for piker.
How to preserve edge quality, color, and predictable alpha transparency
Transparent images are easy to create badly. A background may look removed at first glance while still leaving gray halos, jagged edges, or half-transparent pixels that become obvious on a dark layout. A repeatable workflow helps avoid those problems.
Start with the best source
Use the highest-resolution original available. Compression artifacts around the subject make it harder to separate foreground and background accurately. If possible, choose an image with clear contrast and even lighting. Keep the original file unchanged so you can return to it if later edits damage the edges.
Remove the background and inspect the alpha channel
I use Make Image Transparent for the initial background-removal pass. After downloading the result, place it over at least three test backgrounds: white, black, and a saturated color. This reveals light fringes, dark contamination, and missed pixels that are difficult to see on a checkerboard alone.
Zoom in around hair, fabric, glass, and curved product edges. These areas often need softer transitions than hard mechanical shapes. Avoid deleting every partially transparent pixel; a small amount of edge antialiasing usually produces a more natural composite.
Standardize size and color
Resize only after the mask is clean. Keep one master PNG at the largest required size, then export smaller variants from that master. Converting repeatedly between formats can introduce new artifacts.
For web use, sRGB is the safest color space. Use meaningful filenames and record the pixel dimensions so teammates do not accidentally stretch an icon or product cutout beyond its intended size.
Validate the final asset
Open the exported PNG in more than one browser or image viewer. Confirm that transparency is real rather than a checkerboard baked into the pixels. Then test the asset in its actual context: a website header, presentation, marketplace card, or mobile interface.
A short validation checklist saves time later. Check edge halos, transparent padding, file size, color consistency, and readability over both light and dark backgrounds. Once those checks pass, the same asset can be reused confidently across layouts without repeating the cleanup work.
Make image transparent for free with AI. Remake an uploaded photo or create a transparent PNG image from text, then download the result for any design.
Humanitarian conditions in the Sudanese city of El Obeid and two camps on its outskirts are dire and deteriorating, according to people on the ground, as civilians displaced by fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia continue to pour in from the surrounding countryside.
The UN says more than 15,000 families have arrived since mid-July, joining more than 200,000 people who arrived in the first half of the year, according to government figures cited by Save the Children.
“The situation is very harsh and is deteriorating as El Obeid is receiving IDPs [internally displaced people] on a daily basis … The city is shockingly overcrowded,” said Maryam, a humanitarian volunteer whose name has been changed for her safety.
The new arrivals came on foot, carrying almost nothing, she said. “They also suffer from a shortage of food and they definitely arrive traumatised.”
I mean, surely its a bit tongue in cheek, but following the rules of the ten commandments is something that leads to a somewhat healty community... sooo...
following the rules of the ten commandments is something that leads to a somewhat healty community
Except the first four is all about how you must follow and obey the Xian god. It's the last six that are fairly practical, almost to the point of common sense.
Common sense now, that is thousands of years after they were written.
I do not disagree with either of you, I am not christian but I mostly appreciate and abide by the ten commandments. I doubt I would if our morals were not forged over those commandments over the past 2000 years.
I am not christian but I mostly appreciate and abide by the ten commandments.
Please re read the actual ten commandments, then your own comment.
If you're not christian, you're not following the commandments, because they're 40% contractual obligation to worship the christian god exclusively.
Agreeing not to steal, murder, or fucking your neighbours' goats, on the other side, is hardly something christians have a monopoly on.
But then, all of the Old Testament is really Jewish with some minor edits to retrofit it for the sequel. Guess somebody coveted their neighbour's scripture and broke its fundamental rules to swipe it.
While unusual and on the face of it perhaps not very relevant to a project to develop an operating system, in the context of freely and generously sharing the project, explicitly open to all, including all religions, and a meritocracy, I don't find sharing one's sincere beliefs offensive. While the focus might be on computers and software, the open source community is, first and foremost, a community of people with values that lead them to share their work. As long as he is sincere in his beliefs, I respect his promotion of them, even if I don't entirely agree with them. Better that than the likes of Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Elon Musk and so many others.
At least call it LunOS or something. See Debian, which is Deb+Ian, but it at least sounds good and has a sweet backstory. LCOS sounds like an illness (PCOS, anyone?).
I liked the guy way back when but some day he just seemed to become a bit crazy. Made his content unwatchable. What narcissism and trauma does to people...
I sincerely hope he one day gets treatment for his trauma which probably caused the shift in personality, and I hope Bryan will be a healthier and better person one day.
That said, why try an OS by one guy which doesn't even offer anything above what is already on the market. At least be creative and innovative...
Follow bandali / boost his new fediversal snac please! This recording has several more minutes than the live one. snac.kelar.org/bandali gopher://gopher.kelar.org
Debian 12 is one of the last holdouts of 32-bit support if you're like me and have some pretty old devices still kicking. Just a couple years left.
Originally I was an advocate for dropping 32-bit support, but now that getting newer devices is increasingly unaffordable... I actually think it might be a good idea to reverse course on that just a little and keep 32-blt support for just a little longer. At least until after the AI bubble finally fucking pops.
This entry was edited (Monday, August 31, 2026, 5:52 PM)
I started using 32 bit stuff after experiencing how they tend to be much lighter on memory. A 32 bit os can make a 2~4gb machine very usable. I even find myself thinking if changing everything to 64 bits was really necessary
There is the x32 ABI that tried to have that 64bit cake and eat it too, but it didn't catch on, probably for good reasons. Gentoo still allows you to run it on modern hardware in case you want to try it out.
iirc the Linux kernel dropped support for pre-Pentium x86 in the last few years, so any distro with 486 support now would be using an unmaintained kernel.
I think if you want a maintained operating system for your 486 today, NetBSD is probably the thing to run.
I am surprised to learn it was May of last year, with the 6.15 kernel being the first to drop 486 support and the 386 family dropping out back in 2012.
After a touch more research to figure out what the oldest currently-supported computers would be: I also hadn't realized the first Pentium debuted in 1993. Pentium and compatibles are still operable, so there are maintained distros out there like Tiny Core Linux that will work on computers made 33 years ago. Just amazing.
Selecting a pyrolysis plant is not simply a matter of choosing the largest processing capacity or the lowest equipment price. Feedstock composition determines thermal behavior, reactor requirements, pretreatment needs, product characteristics, and emission-control considerations. A suitable system must therefore be matched to the physical and chemical properties of the material being processed.
For investors evaluating a tyre recycling project, understanding feedstock-equipment compatibility is particularly important because the tyre pyrolysis plant cost can vary according to processing capacity, automation level, reactor configuration, pretreatment requirements, and environmental-control systems. The same principle applies to plastic, biomass, rubber, and other carbonaceous feedstocks. Equipment selection should begin with the material rather than the machine.
1. Evaluate Feedstock Characteristics First
Before selecting a pyrolysis plant, several feedstock parameters should be assessed:
Moisture content
Particle size
Volatile matter
Ash content
Fixed carbon
Chemical composition
Contaminants
Bulk density
Daily or annual availability
These characteristics directly influence heat transfer and residence time inside the reactor. High-moisture biomass, for example, requires additional energy for drying, whereas relatively dry tyre feedstock has a fundamentally different thermal profile.
A detailed feedstock assessment can therefore prevent operational instability and unnecessary equipment modifications.
2. Match the Reactor with the Material
Different feedstocks respond differently to thermal decomposition.
Waste tyres generally require robust feeding and conveying systems because whole tyres or tyre chips have high mechanical strength and elastic properties. A tyre pyrolysis plant must also accommodate the recovery of products such as pyrolysis oil, carbon black-like residue, steel wire, and non-condensable gas.
Waste plastic presents another set of considerations. Polyethylene and polypropylene can generate substantial quantities of liquid hydrocarbon products, while mixed or contaminated plastics may require additional sorting and pretreatment. Reactor temperature and condensation configuration are particularly important for controlling the resulting oil fraction.
Biomass such as wood chips, sawdust, rice husk, and agricultural residues generally contains more moisture and oxygenated compounds. Drying and particle-size control can therefore become crucial parts of the system. The desired product also matters: a system designed primarily for biochar production may use different operating parameters from one optimized for liquid products.
3. Consider Processing Capacity
Capacity should correspond to the actual feedstock supply rather than an optimistic projection.
For a small and relatively stable waste stream, batch pyrolysis equipment may provide operational flexibility. Larger projects with continuous feedstock availability may benefit from continuous pyrolysis technology, which can support more consistent throughput and reduce frequent reactor start-up and shutdown cycles.
Capacity planning should consider both daily availability and seasonal fluctuations. Agricultural biomass, in particular, can exhibit pronounced seasonality.
4. Examine Pretreatment Requirements
Pretreatment can strongly influence the efficiency of a pyrolysis plant. Tyres may need cutting or shredding. Plastic waste may require sorting, crushing, and removal of unsuitable materials. Biomass may require drying and size reduction.
The objective is straightforward: create a more homogeneous feedstock that can be processed predictably.
Ignoring pretreatment can lead to inconsistent feeding, excessive energy consumption, lower product quality, or accelerated mechanical wear.
5. Compare Energy and Thermal Integration
Thermal efficiency is another critical selection criterion. During pyrolysis, combustible gases are generally generated alongside liquid and solid products. A properly engineered system can recover and utilize these gases as an internal heat source.
This reduces dependence on external fuel and improves overall energy integration. Insulation quality, heat-transfer efficiency, reactor configuration, and gas circulation all contribute to the thermal performance of the plant.
6. Account for Environmental Requirements
Equipment selection must also reflect local environmental regulations. Emission-control requirements can differ considerably between jurisdictions and feedstock categories.
A plant may require combustion chambers, gas purification, dust removal, condensers, or other treatment equipment depending on the process design and applicable standards. Environmental compliance should therefore be considered during the initial engineering stage rather than added as an afterthought.
7. Look Beyond the Initial Equipment Price
The purchase price is only one component of project economics. A more meaningful assessment should include feedstock preparation, energy consumption, labor, maintenance, emission treatment, product recovery, and expected operating life.
For example, a lower-cost system may become less economical if it requires extensive manual handling or consumes significantly more external fuel. Conversely, higher automation and thermal integration can increase the initial investment while reducing recurring operating expenses.
Ultimately, the right pyrolysis plant is the one that creates a coherent match between feedstock, reactor technology, capacity, pretreatment, energy utilization, environmental controls, and project economics. This systematic approach provides a more reliable basis for evaluating equipment and developing a commercially and technically viable pyrolysis project.
I now have 4 computers running Linux, each with an almost perfectly set up distro (which took days to perfect) and would want to create backups so that I can move and restore these between all of my computers.
Here is a list of my computers:
Surface Go 1 128gb SSD 8gb of Ram running Fedora Silverblue
MacBook Pro 2012 (upgraded with 512gb SSD and 16gb of Ram) running Pop!_OS
NUC7i3DNB 128gb SSD 8gb of Ram running LibreELEC
Steam Deck LCD 256 SSD 16gb of Ram running Steam OS
I was planning on using Clonezilla to create backups of these, store them somewhere (kDrive and external hard drive) and be able to restore these between each of these (and my future) computers if needed.
I've succesfully used Clonezilla in the past, but I've also encountered a dead end issue when trying to restore my Surface Go 1 backup on an old Acer (probably 5737Z) I had lying around. I don't remember what the problem was, but something related to UEFI and EFI legacy stuff I think..
So, as all these computers are quite different and not all of them so Linux friendly, I wanted to know if you think I'll encounter issues when trying to move installs between them or not.
In order to save space, I'd probably shrink every partition so that it's the same size as the data it contains and then extend it again once restored on another computer.
Thanks in advance for your help!
Edit: Thanks for your help. In the end, I think I’ll keep building installation tutorials for myselt to be able to reproduce my distros and might one day try NixOs on one of my computers
Some things like firmware or drivers can be auto-detected and installed on demand. Symptom would be that e.g. your WiFi or video card does not work.
The safe way is to back up user data (including config) and install newly. This will work almost always as the kernel provides hardware abstraction - that is its main purpose.
Installers like Debian are also quite quick.... quicker than restoring a backup.
An alternative to complete cloning (which gets out of date fast) would be to manage systems with ansible.(or puppet, or chef).
You can script configurations, package installs, users, etc. And it also allows for hardware/architecture specifics when needed (e.g. drivers for the different platforms).
You would then just install a base os and run your playbook. No need to store gigs of data and easier to update the base os to newer versions. You could even mix
You can also push out changes without needing to snapshot a new image and re-install it everywhere.
This entry was edited (Monday, August 31, 2026, 9:07 AM)
I understand where you are coming from but I would take the opposite approach, namely not how quickly and conveniently you get back to exactly the same state (because that's actually really hard) but rather how quickly and conveniently you can get to work, or play, or do whatever you do, from the most generic of hardware and software, including of course yours. What this perspective suggests though is NOT to consider your stuff precious but on the contrary, to assume it will inevitably disappear, due to any reason, from a freak event, e.g stolen to the mundane, e.g. hardware failure over time.
IMHO it's much more relaxing to consider hardware disposable. My own heuristic for this is to understand what a distribution does, save only MY data (e.g. things that I produce, for example in a data it would be my saves but not the game itself) and buy only well supported hardware.
This entry was edited (Monday, August 31, 2026, 1:44 PM)
Consider your perfect settings as the part you want to keep (as well as all your documents etc, of course), but the OS will change.
Tomorrow you'll do an update and 2 applications and 10 libraries are now newer... so you probably don't want to store a "golden image" for too long without redoing it to consider all the updates.
Now... with that situation in mind, it's generally easier to just do a clean install of the distro and reapply your settings.
So, depending on what you've setup, installed, tweaked & configured, saving that can be done with config files in /etc and /home and maybe a 1-liner for applications to install.
That will be smaller and more easily reproducable on all your hardware (and maybe some VMs)
How you do that depends on what you've changed and your skills... maybe bash, maybe ansible, maybe just copying files - whatever makes sense to you.
As others say, where the use cases are so specific to each machine, it'll be a headache juggling all of those images if your needs and workflow change down the road.
But I'd be remiss to say I don't practice a form of what you mention, I would go insane if I actually had to reinstall from distro defaults. I have a single perfected VM image with customizations and software common to all of my machines. And yes, if you were to go this route, there are little quirks to iron out manually each time I image to a new machine, even old and well-supported ones. Some just cosmetic, some preventing graphical output. Although still much less time than setting up from scratch.
It works well enough for me, but it also frankly leads to a poorly-documented system that will accumulate cruft with updates, and can't propagate changes in the VM to my existing systems easily, so I'm interested too to see what other people here suggest. Particularly for those niche customizations that land outside of /home and /etc (e.g. /usr/fonts, packages not provided by the distro).
This entry was edited (Monday, August 31, 2026, 2:37 PM)
I think your solution is a 'declarative operating system', where you just have a config file and the system builds it-self from that. You can decide if the system is locked to certain versions if you like. I know of Guix and NixOs, but maybe others exists. Alternatively an external scripting solution.
You still need to backup valuable local user data oc.
The best open source alternative to Ansible is Puppet. If that doesn't suit you, our users have ranked more than 50 alternatives to Ansible and many of them is open...
For most people today, public elections are synonymous with democracy. However, between 508 and 322 BCE, Athenians favoured a lottery system known as ‘sortition’. They largely believed it to be more fair, representative and responsive to the public interest than elections, which are often influenced by money and can foster destructive political polarisation. In this animation, Michael Vazquez, associate director of the Parr Center for Ethics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, breaks down both the potential of lottery-based systems and their limits. In particular, he highlights an updated lottery system conceived by the US philosopher Alex Guerrero, designed to address flaws in earlier models and some of the most pressing problems in contemporary electoral politics.
Election by lottery. Every eligible citizen is entered into the lottery to serve in the Senate. Each year on December 1st, 100 citizens are randomly selected to serve a 10-year term, to report to their duty by January 1st. The Senate will consist of 1000 of these people, with 10% of them replaced every year. (If a Senator dies, retires, or otherwise becomes unfit for office during their term, they are not replaced until their term ends, and the Senate will be slightly smaller than 1000.) The first year and the last year of your service in the Senate are special. During your fist year, you will be mentored by a more experienced Senator; you will have full voting rights, but you will be "Silenced" -- not able to propose new bills/votes or address the Senate -- until your second year. During your last year, you must choose at least one new Senator to mentor.
If selected, service in the Senate is considered mandatory, like being selected for a military draft. Individual Senators can be excused from service or allowed to retire before the end of their 10-year term, but only with approval from a 66% supermajority vote of the Senate. (This is important to help avoid selection bias in the Senate. Otherwise, certain demographics may be underrepresented if that demographic is more likely to refuse service or retire early. It's also important because the people who don't want to be in government are exactly who we need in government. If citizens are allowed to refuse service in the Senate, that would bias selection toward the type of people who want power, which may defeat the entire purpose.) Being a Senator should still be a prestigious, respected, and well-paid position, of course -- that will only further encourage people to accept their selection if chosen.
If, at any time or for any reason, the Senate has less than 500 Senators, a special selection will be performed immediately, and enough random citizens will be selected to bring the total number of Senators back up to 1000. (This includes the very first selection, since you'd be starting with 0 Senators, which is less than 500.) Since 100 new Senators must be placed every year, replacing the longest-serving ones, some of these Senators chosen in 'special selections' may end up serving terms of less than 10 years. (For example, in the very first year of the Senate, 10% of the Senators chosen will only serve for one year.)
The Senate can vote to "Silence" individual Senators -- to prevent them from proposing new bills/votes and prevent them from speaking to address the Senate, with a 66% supermajority vote. This can be a temporary punishment or a permanent injunction for the remainder of that Senator's term, at the Senate's discretion. Must have an individual vote for each individual Senator to be Silenced -- you can't Silence entire voting blocs with a single vote. Silenced senators, though, will still be in the Senate and will still vote just like any other Senator.
The Senate may (optionally) appoint a Chief Officer, who serves as the head of the Executive Branch, at the Senate's pleasure. The Chief Officer (and indeed any official in the government outside of the Senate and Judicial Branch) can be removed and replaced at the Senate's discretion at any time, with a simple majority vote. This Chief Officer can be a Senator, but doesn't have to be. Doesn't even have to be a citizen. It can be literally anyone the Senate agrees on (except for any previous Judge or Commander in Chief). Or, if the Senate chooses, they can have no Chief Officer at all, and instead have the heads of each individual department of the government report directly to the Senate. In the event of an exactly tied vote in the Senate (which will probably be very rare), the Chief Officer (if one exists) may cast the tie-breaking vote.
The Senate may (optionally) appoint a Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, only if the Senate has declared war on another country. They may choose to appoint any General or Admiral who is currently serving or has previously served in the military to this role. The Senate will delegate control of the country's military to the Commander in Chief, who may make sweeping and rapid decisions about the military without consulting the Senate, on the presumption that their experience and ability to respond quickly will enable them to achieve better military results than the Senate or Chief Officer could. The Commander in Chief may only serve during times of declared war, and must step down from their position at the end of the war, ceding control of the military back to the Senate (optionally through the Chief Officer). Like the Chief Officer, the Commander in Chief can be removed and/or replaced at any time with a simple majority vote from the Senate, even if the war is still ongoing. No single person can serve as both Chief Officer and Commander in Chief -- not concurrently nor successively.
The Senate will also vote to appoint judges to the higher courts, including the Supreme Court, with a 57% vote required for successful appointment. They may only nominate well-qualified and experienced judges who are well versed in the law and the (new) constitution. These judges will serve for 20-year terms, after which they must retire and may never again serve in government in any other capacity. They can only be removed and replaced with a 75% supermajority vote from the Senate. (To prevent a constitutionally misguided Senate from quickly and easily replacing any judge that rules their new law to be unconstitutional.) And their most important job (as is supposedly the case already) is to rule on whether or not laws passed by the Senate and actions taken by the Executive Branch are allowable and enforceable according to the (new) constitution.
This ensures:
The Senate always consists (mostly) of regular people with no political background, and people who are not particularly associated with or beholden to the ultra-wealthy.
Some institutional knowledge and experience is built up and retained -- at any point, ~10% of the Senate will have 9+ years of experience in government.
There will be reduced motivation for 'lobbying' and bribery. Since nobody is running for reelection and election campaigns as a whole are a thing of the past, Senators have no need to seek out donations and campaign contributions. They will not be concerned about their voting record having impacts on future campaign contributions. (And if any of them are greedy, well, the Senate is in full control of Senator's salaries. If they want more money, they can just vote to give themselves more money. No need to seek out bribes.) There's also no need for the society as a whole to go through the effort and expense of election campaigns anymore -- now they can put this effort and money into more useful causes.
Nobody can have a lifetime career as a Senator. Every Senator will come from a non-political background and will probably be expecting to return to a non-political life after their 10-year term. They will (generally) understand the struggles and perspectives of common people, and (unless they're very old when selected) they will expect to have to live as a common person under the laws they passed once their term ends -- if they vote to pass a terrible law, they'll have to experience the consequences of that terrible law later.
As the saying goes, "Those who want power the most are the ones you least want to have power." In this system, the Senate will be full of people who never wanted or asked for power, and the people who want and seek power won't be able to get it by running for the Senate, at least, because there's no way to try to be a Senator -- it's all just random luck. (Though they could still seek out positions in the Judicial Branch, the Executive Branch, or private industry. In the first two cases, it would be up to the Senate's judgement to prevent them from gaining that power.)
The Senate will always be (approximately, statistically) representative of the people. Generally, all demographics and ideologies of the citizenry will be proportionally represented. (If the country is 50% female, you can expect ~500 Senators to be female. If the country is 7.2% gay, you can expect ~72 Senators to be gay. If 12% of the country is black, you can expect ~120 Senators to be black. If 20% of the population is atheist, you can expect ~200 Senators to be atheists. Etc.)
No powerful "President" or "Prime Minister" or anything will exist. The Chief Officer (if present at all) is only there to be a manager on behalf of the Senate, to handle the day-to-day mundanities of running government services and/or respond to urgent situations that are developing too quickly to organize a vote in the Senate. The Chief Officer's power is inherently fragile and limited, because they can be replaced quickly and easily at any time if they displease a majority of the Senate.
I like this and think it would be a big improvement over the current system. However, I do see some potential problems:
These senators would be normal people only on their first day. Once they are an important person with power and money, they will change. Your work buddy that gets promoted to supervisor suddenly becomes a dick. Imagine they got promoted to senator. Their needs and incentives will no longer be the same and they won't be able to represent their previous life as well.
The first year being silenced and mentored by a senior senator exacerbates this problem. When they are most close to the common person, they will be least powerful. I would expect the senior senator to represent the needs of a retiring senator and to influence the new senator to do the same. If anything, they should be most influencial their first year and silenced their last year.
A former senator is unlikely to return to normal life. They spent a decade being highly paid and powerful. If they were a truck driver before, they aren't going to return to driving trucks. They're going to get book deals, start a consulting firm, etc. I would expect the sitting senators to shape society to that end so they can retire comfortably when their term is up. You would end up with a class of sitting/former senators and the normal people.
Who gets included in this lottery? A reasonable answer would be "citizens". We've seen the path to citizenship made harder in recent years. It could selectively be made harder for certain immigrants. A Norwegian immigrant would have an easier and quicker time gaining citizenship than a Venezuelan refugee. Would there be a minimum or maximum age for the lottery? Should non-citizens with permanent residence get in?
With no elections, I would expect the senators to be relatively unresponsive to public pressure. Also, with no voting or way to participate in political matters, I would expect the average person to feel like powerless subjects rather than vocal advocates.
I would expect the senators to be more susceptible to lobbying, not less. The public can't influence me, but this oil company might be in need of a consultant once my term is up.
Like I said, I still think this would be an improvement, but I think you're making a mistake in thinking that people will bring their values with them once they become senator. I think our values are highly shaped by our incentives and the incentives of a senator will change their values.
@alyaza [they/she] Bigger question, is Democracy even possible WITH elections, if it is, is it desirable? What about tyranny of the masses? Here voter roles are badly corrupted and polluted, ballots don't reliably make it to counting, dead people vote, people who haven't lived here for 13 years vote, etc. And what we get is property developers building apartment buildings nobody can afford, homeless encampments with mass fentynal addiction and prostitution everywhere, and mostly by illegal immigrants who don't speak our language or desire to integrate with our culture, just give me that welfare check so I can buy more fentynal and I'm good. Not a way anyone whose brain chemistry hasn't been hijacked by external input would choose to live, but here we are.
Recently I gave two presentations in quick succession to the Dutch Network of Government Service Providers and the Dutch Advisory Council for Science, Technology and Innovation about AI.
Wait... So if Linux doesn't have the api (sorry, the "signal" 🙄) how will sites that require it respond? What does it mean to be "exempt" - every user is considered to be an adult?
AB 1856 doesn’t explicitly say that repos aren’t app stores, but a store’s main obligation under the law is to request an age signal from the user’s OS provider and pass it to developers; an exempt open-source OS produces no signal.
So what's the outcome of that? Are covered applications and application store to treat users as children when they don't get a signal from the OS?
Great This could drive more people to linux than ever Especially if the law will eventually require users to verify their age with an ID. I wonder if big tech will still be this exited about implementing age verification once they start seeing people ditching their softwares in favor of FOSS alternatives!
got a great deal at an estate sale, i9-9900k, 32gb ddr4, rtx 2070 for $350.
I started with debian but unfortunately it's an Nvidia card. the big thing I want to try with this thing is emulating bloodborne, and maybe local AI models so performance is key.
will I be fine with debian or are the packages just too old?
edit: lmao debian wouldn't boot or even successfully launch the terminal in recovery mode after installing the nvidia drivers so fuck that I switched to kubuntu since it's what I have experience with it worked as expected beep boop bop. thank you for your suggestions everyone!
this is my first time with a prebuilt and it's weird working with someone else's HW choices. ugh the RAM rgb can't be switched off I might try to mod it.
I would second this. They key as a beginner I think is to choose a distro with a reasonable release cycle, give yourself some room to breathe.
Debian is too slow, their release cycle is basically 2 years. You could use Testing or Unstable instead of Stable but they're not officially meant for public consumption and come with no guarantees. It's great as a minimalist, rock-solid foundation for a server where stability is paramount but not great for any purpose with a faster pace of technology.
Arch-based distros on the other hand are extremely fast ("rolling distro"). Most of them sit in the range between "drinking from the firehose" (release packages as fast as they come in) to something like 2 weeks for a "slow" distro like Manjaro.
Distros like Mint, Fedora, Ubuntu, PopOS have ~6 month release cycles so you end up with reasonably recent packages but not too recent to catch all the new bugs.
Yeah, I switched my desktop and laptop for work and never looked back. As time goes on I'm learning more and more how to fix any oddities or bugs and find myself less and less familiar with Windows bullshit. I have one windows install in a VM to adjust my camera because it just refuses to work with Linux, but I set it and forget it. It's so so so much nicer and runs nice and snappy on my cheep work laptop that barely booted the windows 11 it came with.
I'd go catchy just for the bootloader btrfs support. If you fuck something up just go to your last image and its not fucked up anymore. Basically save states for learning linux
Yeah I updated the system with too little space left on disk and it stopped booting. I rebooted, choose an older boot image with BTRFS and bam I was back in games.
I can also confirm AI local stuff does do well on Cachyos.
Between linux distros on the same kernel and a similar DE setup the difference in performance between them is within the margin of error. If it's greater than that then something is broken with the setup. You'll likely get worse performance and hardware compatibility on debian or mint, just because they run older kernels by default. You can get newer kernels backported to debian if you add the right repositories, but I don't think it's recommended.
I run the desktop version of bazzite and can not say enough good things about it. It's been more stable than debian for me and the "immutible" distros i've been on have been such a good and trouble-free experience that I don't want to touch traditional distros anymore. It has all the codecs and a bunch of extra hardware support enabled by default, a bunch of scripts to easily set up things, and a bunch of QoL improvements set up on install. Having to open up flatseal every now and then to grant permissions to a flatpak is so much less trouble than what I've experienced on traditional distros where updates can straight up break shit and randomly send you on a troubleshooting goose chase. I don't understand how anyone finds that normal and acceptable. You can get local AI set up pretty easily with the right flatpaks (alpaca) or certain appimages.
If not being able to mess with system level stuff, or the niche quirks of an immutable distro are a dealbreaker, or you want to jump around on different DEs and not mess with a VM: Fedora is good, generally stable and decently updated packages. Mint generally stable but might have slightly older packages. CachyOS for an arch based option that's highly regarded, because it has a lot of useful options, but with rolling release distros the risk of updates causing an issue slightly higher than usual. I've also heard nothing but good things about OpenSuse Tumbleweed which is also rolling release but reportedly very stable.
Well. I still hate nvidia under Linux. Mesa support is bad. Drivers for gaming still require you to install the proprietary drivers. While Amd has the kernel drivers sitting directly into the kernel. New kernel. New drivers! Jeej.
I like NixOS but there's a large amount of stuff to learn if you pick that distro. I don't know what the best entry-level distros nowadays are but I would pick Fedora over Debian since it's more modern, the immutable distros like Bazzite are also worth looking at
This entry was edited (Monday, August 31, 2026, 7:04 AM)
I think CachyOS is very nice - it's as simple to setup as Bazzite for gaming but you don't have to virtualize software that doesn't come as a flatpak so it's more flexible. As another commenter said, btrfs gives a really nice safety margin. The only prpblem is that Arch-based distros like Cachy should be updated quite frequently(I wouldn't go longer than two weeks) so its not good for secondary PCs you interact with infrequently.
Among Ubuntu-Debian-ArchLinux, with whom I have actual hands-on and long-term experience, I'd rather recommend Arch if you can survive its installation process. Otherwise I'd think about Cachy or Ubuntu - based again on my limited experience in Linux, even if spanning 15 years and really liking it.
I don't have a ton of experience with different distros, I've probably tried out 5-6, but I was a fedora user for several years. After a string of headaches, I switched to Mint, and the experience has been wonderful. I was avoiding it because its a "beginner" os, but honestly its been so nice having something that just works every time. On the same PC, apps which would freeze my system run smoothly, there's no buggy little quirks like buttons that don't work, so far everything I've tried installing on it works great, including docker which I could not get to work on fedora, also was able to easily install graphene os which would not work on fedora (and I bricked my machine trying).
Most people will recommend Linux Mint. I'd like to recommend Fedora. Fast, reliable, looks good (especially the KDE plasma version) and stays out of your way when you do things. I've been using linux as a daily driver for the past 8 months and Fedora has become something I'm so used to, that I really can't see changing at all.
Mint or Fedora if you're starting out. Bazzite if you want a more gaming focused version of Fedora. CachyOS if you want something more cutting edge. Ubuntu is generally fine but functions at the whims of Canonical, who are both Linux weirdos and corporate weirdos, which leads to some interesting decisions.
That's not normal, Debian works fine with NVIDIA cards including with their proprietary drivers. You can follow wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphics…
How do I know? Been running such a setup for years including for gaming, even VR gaming, and tinkering with local AI models for evaluation (and disappointment) and works well.
oh yeah I know it's not normal. there was something about a "kernel error (bug)" and failing to interpret a BIOS symbol, and also ACPI errors that may or may not be related. the hardware is kinda old, it's a z390 taichi motherboard. the 1st m.2 slot failed on me during the first installation attempt and I had to go to a backup so obv it's not in the best shape. I figure I'll worry about a clean (canonical free) distro when I can also be free of nvidia. for now It's just bloodborne :3 time unless I gotta upgrade the card right away, 8gb VRAM is kinda rough.
A security issue in Omarchy’s default Docker configuration meant that
essentially every program running in the user’s desktop session could escalate
to root without a password, sudo, or a privilege prompt.
I use the word "meme" very lightly here, which is a mixture of hate, second-hand embarrassment, making fun of the distro and its users and so on. For the issues it had in the past and being no longer trustworthy for many. Also people meme about Ubuntu for the Snaps, and the focus on Rust (I personally like Rust...), being best friend with Microsoft and so on.
I wouldn't take that statement too seriously, some people really like to gatekeep. The simple fact is that Ubuntu has done a lot to make Linux more accessible to a lot of people who otherwise would still be using another OS. That also makes it an easy target for ridicule.
Having said that, they also made a lot of unpopular decisions, especially amongst Linux purists.
Ubuntu was my first Linux distro and I liked it back then. I would've recommended the old Ubuntu to non-tech-savvy people, or people who want a Linux that "just works" (although back then no Linux "just worked", there was always at least a bit of debugging for me). However it's enshittified a lot. A lot of basic software is only available as snaps. It generally feels quite corporate these days.
The hard question becomes is it better for Linux (where anyone can contribute labor) to get the attention and donations or for commercial software where only nonhuman corporations benefit.
This entry was edited (Monday, August 31, 2026, 2:04 PM)
The more power such people have in such positions, the more money they get, the worse it gets. And the bigger the cult might get, which could suck people into the views and so on. Do not underestimate that.
It was all just a bunch of rich tech bros that made that $8M investment, with $1M from DHH himself.
Its not the standard investment from another company where they do some due diligence. This was just a "we think this is the future of Linux" vibe investment.
Its not the future of Linux, most likely a fad. The most it will be is a cult OS used by people on the far right.
The only thing good I can say about it is that it has interested some people into Linux because of how all of the components are unique compared to Mac and Windows. Cosmic could be the main stream option for those users once it becomes more stable.
Definitely agree with the cosmic take. It is the desktop for my distro AstrOS, anyways, this shouldn’t be self-advertisement. COSMIC delivers the beauty of tiling with ease of use. I could never use Hyprland.. hmm, maybe because the dev is banned from freedesktop? This same person gets money from this whole “sponsorship” now
Ugh, I stopped reading when he segued from wolves being a danger to humans straight into the "gypsy problem" 🤮
Also had a look at the site for this distro, he really seems to like cars and seems to be pretty full of himself about some neither-new-nor-original arch+tiling_wm distro.
This entry was edited (Monday, August 31, 2026, 10:18 AM)
That I'm not sure about. It's part of the official install docs for docker, though there is a big scary warning saying that that group gives you root permissions. Either way, I place the fault on docker more than Omarchy directly since it's a group that gets automatically when you install it on any distro.
That's fucking delicious. I am so not surprised that people who focus only on aesthetics (by that I mean those behind omarchy and hyprland) would fuck up the most basic things where substance has any importance. Aesthetics is for idiots! I will never want the Linux desktop to take over because of coolness, I want the software that attacks important questions to take over. These reactionaries have proven themselves to be utterly incompetent once again, and they will continue to prove their incompetence because they all lack insight and think of themselves as being god's chosen ones.
Are there any hard forks or similar to Hyperland that are for Wayland? I was going to try it on my Pi5 (it is my main "messing with random Linux stuff" device that I don't care if I break something), but then I saw people talking about the far-right/fascist stuff and didn't bother. It looked nice when I saw people in random videos running it (wasn't the focus of the videos and just stood-out).
I know there are other well known tiled window managers which I might end up trying since I keep meaning to see how I take to them. The look of Hyperland is nice with some stacked window manager elements if needed (which I imagine other projects also have). I just don't know which TWM projects are "better" (for starting with coming from only using SWM). Some level of aesthetics would be nice but am fine with adding after install.
I hadn't, but it certainly has some aesthetics that look cool! Will for sure try it out since it the other two commenters seem to like it. Really happy to have a few options to know about so quickly. Thank you!
Seconding Niri, but also I've seen swayfx setups that have Hyprland-like aesthetics.
If you don't care about fancy effects, I've been a river user for years and I like it. Nowadays it is just a compositor and the WM is separate, but river-classic (which includes a WM) has a dwm-like tag system, is programmatically configured (ie you speak to the river IPC in any language of your choosing—by default it's a shell script but the WM just executes ~/.config/river/init on startup, so that file can be any executable), and is simple and lightweight. The new 0.4.x release separates the compositor and WM, so you can pick or write your own WM that suits your own workflow/use-case, if that's your thing—it might not be if you don't want customisability and you just want something that makes the decisions for you to a good enough standard.
Thank you for such a good overview! I will likely hop between three advised (Niri, swayfx, and river) since it will be fun to get the feel of TWM options.
My favourite WM has always been dwm. The default keybinds are absolutely awesome, and its default looks are just fine for me. Though it's not really all that usable without patches/other suckless tools.
why do you have to shit on hyprland? you could have the most boring aesthetic experience on earth but as far as i know this is an omarchy issue, hyprland doesn't have any vulnerabilities, and it's not just an aesthetic thing, you can do a lot of shit beyond simply aesthetic on hyprland. security and good looks are not mutually exclusive. and i dont think hyprland is here like "the thing" that will attract users. i don't see new linux users using hyprland except in this case because it comes preconfigured, otherwise it's for power users.
I am shitting on Hyprland because DHH, who is responsible for the mess that is Omarchy, is in bed with Vaxry and they both enable each other. I did not say that Hyprland has any vulnerabilities. I said that people who have a hard on for aesthetics do so because they are compensating for a lack of substance most often. I was specifically referring to this privilidge escalation fuck up.
and i dont think hyprland is here like “the thing” that will attract users.
Well, the attempt is made for it to be part of just that. See Omarchy.
it’s for power users.
Almost all programs that implement some sort of GUI the way XFCE or dwm does are for power users, it's called being on Linux. The exception here is maybe the latest GNOME release. Hyprland is also for the r/UNIXPORN crowd.
This entry was edited (Monday, August 31, 2026, 1:19 PM)
When I explained X11 on FreeBSD to Windows users 25 years ago, I said, "you start from the pretty side and work towards the ugly. I start on the ugly side and make it pretty."
Omarchy is turning a perfectly decent OS and putting a pig outfit on it and giving it lipstick, then calling it pretty.
As soon as I was old enough to travel on my own, London was where I wanted to go. Compared to Copenhagen at the time, there was something so majestic about Big Ben, Trafalgar Square, and even the Tube around the turn of the millenium.
There seems to be a notable amount of FOSS coders of the old guard (90s til 00s) that are like that.
I long frequented a place called linuxquestions.org. You wouldn't believe how right-wing to libertarian most of the people there were. Still are I guess.
Some gained status (Ruby on Rails was a big thing 1 or 2 decades back) and started spouting things because they knew people were listening.
Some people in such communities recognize that there's something off here, and they have this excuse ready: all coders/nerds are basically on the spectrum (they don't phrase it like this though) and don't know how to phrase things politely, they just blurt it out.
As if that makes things better when you think like that guy.
Footage of a massive iceberg flipping in Greenland has gone viral. The feat took place off the coast of Ilulissat and was caught on a nearby livestream camera. Icebergs shift like this because they melt unevenly, with submerged areas melting faster. As the underwater shape of the iceberg changes, the buoyant forces shift relative to the iceberg’s center of mass, and it flips, eventually settling into a (temporarily) stable orientation. This situation is simpler in the lab version, though; as the video here shows, real icebergs can also rapidly lose mass if they start breaking apart. That, too, can necessitate a flip. (Video and image credit: AfarTV; via Colossal)
Watch the complete collapse and rollover of a massive iceberg near Ilulissat, Greenland, on July 25, 2026. Non-Timelapse version (55min long): https://www.yo...
I had a blindspot and didn't really knew what CVE's was. Digging a little:
docs.kernel.org/process/cve.ht… "Common Vulnerabilities and Exposure (CVE®) numbers were developed as an unambiguous way to identify, define, and catalog publicly disclosed security vulnerabilities.
The number of CVEs fixed in each Linux kernel release is climbing fast. Not long ago, a release closed about 500. Now the count is nearing 2,000. Greg Kroah-Hartman teased the trend before his Kernel Recipes 2026 talk.
There is a real risk that will become the attitude though, no need for security researchers, the LLMs got us covered. Great if true but it's probably not.
I hope you guys understand my question, as somebody who has used VOIP on very limited times.
On a regular phone call, there is a constant line of communication, meaning both sides could talk at the same time if they wanted. I thought VOIP would be like this, but in my experience VOIP is a short audio message you send, the other side hears it and sends you an answer, nothing wrong with that.
I want to talk to family, I don’t want to use whatsapp and I’m experimenting with SimpleX Chat. It allows me to send short audio files as audio messages, but it’s still not a continuous LOC. Would whatsapp be the same?
I want to convince family to use SimpleX, user experience would have to be as similar as possible to whatsapp
Both sides can talk at the same time during VOIP calls. While Simplex can send audio or other files you can also tap the phone icon in your contact. This will make a regular phone call or video call with two way communication. For me, calls have worked the best out of other open source apps other than Signal. Only problem I have had was echo when using speaker phone. Regular calls work fine.
If you were asking about the network layer how things work. There are small packets of information going in both directions. Dropped packets will cause short lost audio. But normally all the small packets are put together into a continuous two way communication.
@Revan_9766 The initial devices with GrapheneOS support should be available in 2027. The initial devices will be flagships so they'll be higher end hardware than Pixels at a higher price. Lower end devices will take more time to meet our requirements since the updates and security features aren't as good. It's mostly due to how Qualcomm handles it. The latest Snapdragon flagships have the best security features. We'll also need Motorola to start paying them for longer updates below flagships.
Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 00:36 Sponsor: TuxCare 01:45 Flatpak gets half a million in funding 03:57 Omarchy gets 8 million dollars 06:05 Nintendo nukes 400 repos linked to emulation 08:16 GrapheneOS will come to Motorola flagships 09:34 Kernel 7.3 brings a lot of performance improvements 11:10 BTRFS improves, ext4 and XFS still much faster 13:09 Chromium working on adding proper Flatpak support 14:35 Multikernel project has its first version 16:39 Asahi project now supports M3 macs 18:30 LibreOffice gets big improvements 20:42 Apple starts putting ads in their Maps app 23:26 Wine and Proton update 24:57 Sponsor: Tuxedo Computers
BTRFs, which has advanced filesystems features like snapshots, data integrity checks, and scrubbing, is a less performant filesystem for databases than filesystems that don't have these features, like EXT4, F2FS and XFS. No shit, Sherlock. At least compare it to ZFS or something.
If you are storing files that you care about, use a filesystem with integrity checks. If you require high database performance, it'll probably be happier using a whole partition, if not just a whole pile of disks, and be allowed to get on with it. If you are driving nails into a wall, do not compare the performance of different screwdrivers for the task. And so on.
Ive been wondering who would donate such a ridiculous amount of money to disgusting people like DHH and Vaxry. Figures it's all CEOs of disgusting companies as well. Don't let friends use fash software. Use Arch itself or CachyOS, not Omarchy. Use Niri + Dank Material Shell or Noctalia, or even Mango. Fuck hyprland.
The Omacom Foundation (Omarchy) contributors listed are:
Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke, Stripe CEO Patrick Collison, Dell Technologies Chairman and CEO Michael Dell, Block co-founder Jack Dorsey, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince, Oculus co-founder Brendan Iribe, 37signals CEO Jason Fried, and Hansson himself.
Matthew Prince has in the past removed nazis from Cloudflare, maybe it's worth bringing his attention to DHH's support for Tommy Robinson and anti-immigrant protests in the UK. The rest of them seem at least sympathetic to, if not part of, the far right.
Patches sent out to the Linux kernel mailing list today can provide much more efficient Zstd compression and decompression by addressing a very unfortunate oversight in the existing code.
Linus has already chimed in, and wants Zstd to just use the standard way of checking for CPU features instead of rolling their own. Apparently, that would be even faster, compiling to a single jump instruction.
Unfortunately, one of the things that Debian is, is almost unable to manage packaging modern dependency trees. While more recent distributions like Guix can recursively import dependencies from a dozen programming languages' package repositories, with a result that is generally acceptable to add to the distribution, Debian's policies don't make that very possible for a progam to accomplish. Perhaps some will use LLMs to do that. If they succeeed, Debian will become dependent on proprietary software for development, while still needing people in the loop, doing even less appealing scut-work.
I run Debian on all my home systems, increasingly with some Guix on top.
Yesterday, I was setting up an old X220 Thinkpad with Debian stable for a purpose of quick data entry in my living room. (My work Thinkpad can't do that because due to some hardware problem, it crashes when one tries to suspend it and closes the lid). I wanted to have Taskwarrior on it, which I want to sync with the Taskwarrior instance on my Gemini PDA, for things like shopping lists. The PDA runs Sailfish OS, which contains Taskwarrior.Turns out it is Taskwarrior 3, which has a new sync protocol. Debian Trixie still has Taskwarrior 2 which is not compatible.
The easiest solution? Installing Guix as package manager and "guix install taskwarrior".
And Guix also has a current Rust compiler and cargo build tool, which is nice for building and running personal tools,and things like jujutsu.
Still, Debian is the base, and the contributions of Joey Hess and the other maintainers are invaluable.
Debian is unable to manage modern dependency trees because they chose not to. It is fucking embrarassing what happens with any "normal and modern" thing in cargo, npm or other cursed repository pulling in 2000 dependencies you have absolutely no hope in being able to vet for malware or stupid bugs. This comes on top of a culture of API instability between one minor version and another.
Debian has their packages and those are tested and inspected in depth, regressions are tested. There are people running debian for a job and we don't want that kind of nonsense.
And Arch. Arch itself and most derived distros like Endeavour don't use Omarchy; Omarchy uses Arch.
Is Void run by crypto libertarians? Is Alpine? openSUSE? LFS? Puppy? All of þese are independent and don't share a package manager and all reasonably popular. Heck, Gobo Linux is still around! Much less distros like Chimera and Dragora which might be less widely used but are still independent, maintained distributions.
Þere are a ton of distros not based on deb, rpm, or ... who is þe "crypto libertarian"? Omarchy?
No, seriously... who did you mean by "crypto libertarian"? I'm vaguely aware DHH is anti-immigrant or someþing like þat, and it seems as if every week I discover someþing unsavory about some personality in our field. So it was an honest question: who's been acting like a crypto libertarian? Is it DHH, or has someone else proven þemselves to be an asshole?
The second graph doesn’t really even tell the whole story either, because it’s just by release. You need to see how the number of bugs detected/fixed changes over time for each release.
Otherwise super-new releases get an unfair advantage just by virtue of not being exposed for as long. And super-old releases get an advantage too, by falling out of use at the same time more resources are allocated to detection.
Every time when i poweron the pc, some proccess are started with the system. Some of them are Anydesk and SQL. I had disable sql from start alongside the system with systemctl disable mysql, so i think that i need to do the same with anydesk. But why these programs make this? Even if i dont start the app/program, they will be there, eating resources from the start... WHY THIS HAPPEN?!?!
Edit: Something i forgot to put: why they have root permissions? this happen no wonder the system i install these programms, they have the same behaviour
Those processes are server processes and they are supposed to always run in the background. In that way they are ready to be accessed by client software immediately. For why they are root: often but not always servers need elevated privileges, e.g. to open ports below 1024 or read restricted files.
This is where the server/client concept comes from. Some server software runs in the background and wait for access from an external client software. Then it works on the server and produces and output for the client. This way the entire server does not need to start run and stop for every single request. I mean you don't start and close every time you click on a new link on the website, right? So your PC runs all the time. And that's similar to how MySQL operates. It starts a server in the background and then waits for any application to use it. So this is totally normal.
Now because lot of people don't want to start the server process "by hand", they put it in autostart, so it starts with your system. If you don't want it to autostart, maybe there is a way of configuring it so you have to start it manually each time you want to use it. But I cannot assist with that help, just wanted to explain why that is on a high level.
Whether a system(d) service is activated by default after you install a package is a distro-specific choice. I know Debian and derivatives do, so it will be started at the next reboot; while Arch and derivatives don't, requiring an explicit systemctl enable [--now] something.service to run it. The devs of the distro try to pick what they think their userbase wants and after the initial decision is taken it's not a behaviour that can be changed lightly.
Regarding running as root, sometimes it's just the default configuration that can be changed to a dedicated user, other times it's required by the privileges they use (e.g. if they need to open a port below 1024)
This entry was edited (Sunday, August 30, 2026, 5:26 PM)
Chapitrage : 00:00 Introduction 01:28 Premières transmissions 04:45 La transmission 10 et le système octal 08:56 La transmission 15 et la suite de Fibonacci 09:44 La transmission 14 et la notation polonaise inversée 13:40 La transmission 74 et ses équations de fonctions
A selection of new features in LibreOffice 26.8, our latest major release. For all the changes, see: wiki.documentfoundation.org/Re…
LibreOffice is a free, private and open source office suite. It's backed by a non-profit foundation, and has no built-in AI. Learn more: libreoffice.org
(Music: Dmitrii Kolesnikov (The_Mountain) from Pixabay)
The untold story of Nazi sympathizers on American soil. In February 1939, more than 20,000 Americans filled Madison Square Garden for an event billed as a “Pro-American Rally.” Images of George Washington hung next to swastikas and speakers railed against the “Jewish controlled media” and called for a return to a racially “pure” America. The keynote speaker was Fritz Kuhn, head of the German American Bund. Nazi Town, USA tells the largely unknown story of the Bund, which had scores of chapters in suburbs and big cities across the country and represented what many believe was a real threat of fascist subversion in the United States. The Bund held joint rallies with the Ku Klux Klan and ran dozens of summer camps for children centered around Nazi ideology and imagery. Its melding of patriotic values with virulent anti-Semitism raised thorny issues that we continue to wrestle with today.
Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 00:36 Sponsor: TuxCare 01:45 Flatpak gets half a million in funding 03:57 Omarchy gets 8 million dollars 06:05 Nintendo nukes 400 repos linked to emulation 08:16 GrapheneOS will come to Motorola flagships 09:34 Kernel 7.3 brings a lot of performance improvements 11:10 BTRFS improves, ext4 and XFS still much faster 13:09 Chromium working on adding proper Flatpak support 14:35 Multikernel project has its first version 16:39 Asahi project now supports M3 macs 18:30 LibreOffice gets big improvements 20:42 Apple starts putting ads in their Maps app 23:26 Wine and Proton update 24:57 Sponsor: Tuxedo Computers
@Revan_9766 The initial devices with GrapheneOS support should be available in 2027. The initial devices will be flagships so they'll be higher end hardware than Pixels at a higher price. Lower end devices will take more time to meet our requirements since the updates and security features aren't as good. It's mostly due to how Qualcomm handles it. The latest Snapdragon flagships have the best security features. We'll also need Motorola to start paying them for longer updates below flagships.
@thelinuxexperiment Thank you so much for bringing attention to the ethical issues related to Omarchy's creator! And I fully support you not touching Omarchy on your channel. 👍
@thelinuxexperiment 26 years. beginning with KDE on Mandrake Linux. Mandrake already had everything Graphical tools for everything Ubuntu claimed to introduce.
#GrapheneOS also recently announced that it looks like #Motorola just surpassed #Google as the latter just removed #ArmMTE support from the #Pixel11! Which is a very nice security mechanism protecting against vulnerabilities from memory errors.
Also note that #Eden (eden-emu.dev) is the continuation of #Yuzu and #Suyu with a few important bugfixes.
A crucial benefit of #BTRFS is transparent compression with #LZO or #zstandard! Meaning that contents on the filesystem are compressed and uncompressed when you access them, so you can store more data on your disk! I wonder what the benchmarks would be if that compression was turned off, that might be a significant reason 🤔
20years too. Was at uni and borked my XP install. So, of all things, installed Slackware. Eventually... Went down the distro rabbit hole and ended up on LFS + a custom package manager and then decided to touch grass. Debian or Fedora these days.
How to get windows to not do disk checking or ruin my bootloader when i add a linux partition on the same drive. I don't like the windows panicking when there is a linux partition on it and doing a variety of things, even if its not on the same ssd it STILL does disk checking but I have not seen anything worse than that on the same partition, but I need the space.
Dunno if this belongs in the linux subreddit but I mean if there is any way i can hide linux that could also work.
If you've got a desktop, and using sata drives, you could use a SATA Power switch panel. Basically on off switches for drives so you can turn off the Linux drive when booting windows.
If using efi (instead of bios), set up a second efi boot partition. Use one efi for windows and the second for Linux. It's "non standard" but the efi spec does not explicitly forbid you having multiple partitions, and it will keep windows from disabling anything on the Linux boot partition.
This may or may not work. Recognizing a second ESP on the same disk is not required in the EFI standard. So it's down to your board's implementation if it works or just stops the moment it find the first one.
This entry was edited (Saturday, August 29, 2026, 11:54 AM)
Honestly I have no clue how many EFI implementations actually fail there. Maybe it's indeed a minor fraction. But I have personally seen two different ones (out of about a dozen -mostly laptops a few years old- systems where I tried it) and that's enough to consider it a problem. (PS: Probably not conicidently one of those also had a broken SecureBoot implementation that rejected all key changes and only worked with the pre-installed MS ones. Maybe I'm simply good at finding the trashy ones.)
This entry was edited (Saturday, August 29, 2026, 10:32 PM)
I have had a bad history with this. The windows partion constantly (noticed the competition and) overwrote the bootloader when it updated. With separate drives for both OS I no longer have this problem.
I've done it with over a dozen computers by different manufacturers: primarily laptops: Lenovo, HP, toshiba, and I have yet to run into any issue.
Windows assumes there is only ever going to be one efi, so it totally ignores the second partition. Linux has you mount the efi partition so you can choose it over the windows one.
What problems have you had with it? There is lots of advice out there on the Internet saying this is the best setup, not just me.
have tried to do this once after seeing it somewhere, my motherboard firmware couldn't boot from the second efi partition and only recognized the first partition. (i believe this was a gigabyte motherboard but not too sure)
with UEFI, i don't think it's much of an issue as it once was. i have one machine with windows and linux installed, windows doesn't mess up linux's bootloader/partition.
You'd be saving yourself a headache if you use separate physical drives. I was able to get a dual boot to work on one drive temporarily, but it broke every time Windows updated.
In the age of Bitlocker and UEFI windows recognizes potential drive contamination at a very early point in the boot process. So it will look like it's working fine at the start, but once you boot into the linux partition, Windows is going to request disk checking at next boot and potentially write over things.
Windows will rewrite your boot partition, when it feels like it.
It can be commanded to do this remotely, also. Its called a Windows Update. And Windows buries itself below Ring 0 via Pluton/TPMv2.
It does this because the NSA likes being able to keep tabs on everyone.
The precise/exact way this works is hardware/setup dependant, and changes every 6 months or so, ish, but yeah this bootloader fuckery nonsense has been going on for years now, in dual boot setups, and there really is not a plausible explanation for this continuing as a persistent 'problem', other than Windows makes NSA backdoors into your entire system, or breaks shit while trying to.
Dual booting is dumb if you value system security and stability.
This entry was edited (Saturday, August 29, 2026, 5:36 PM)
If there's a way under Gaia's green earth to put it on a separate drive, do that. Stick windows on an external NVMe on a fast USB / Thunderbolt, or many laptops have a WLAN port you can shove a NVMe into (often faster than SATA, has a PCIe lane, so give it to linux). Then use BIOS (F12 or whatever) to swap between them, or boot to linux first and let GRUB start windows. Back when, I used REFind on macbooks, if I recall it gets in there earlier but winblows is likely onto it by now.
This problem has been so persistent that it indicates malice aforethought from M$, so if possible give it it's own lesser device until you can find an alternative to that holdout software (sympathies if it's Photoshop or AutoCAD). Perhaps there's a way to run it on Wine / Proton.
**NOTE: i have only used linux for about a year or so and im not a power user, im basically a tired windows user but i know more stuff than most beginners i feel like? like not a lot more but a little bit ** so when i don't have anything open my memory usage is like 4-5GB out of 16, which makes it pretty bad when i want to play games (even minecraft can make it so my pc use 99% memory so i have to hard reset, although i might have fixed that) and/or when i want some demanding theming things (like a live wallpaper). "Background services" is using like 4GB and "baloo_file_extractor" is using like 1GB out of the 4. I have done a tiny tiny bit of research and ive found out that baloo is a file indexing thingo, but idrk what file indexing is used for so i don't know if i should disable it
distro: endeavourOS de: kde plasma wayland ram: 16gb of something (i have a prebuilt so idk what ddr it is or whatever)
if you need more info then please say so (i can't show images for some reason)
File indexing allows (faster) searching of files and sometimes even allows finding files by their content not only the file name.
That said those indexers (I'm not using KDE so not sure about details of your specific case) can use an big amount of RAM especially if there are new files to index. As far as I unterstand they should pause if the RAM is needed otherwise but might depend on the implementation.
File indexing allows (faster) searching of files and sometimes even allows finding files by their content not only the file name.
At least for text files, grep can do that too. Off course it is not as fast as indexed files, but how often do you need that? There is ripgrep, a faster alternative. I personally don't miss indexed files as I thought I would. With fast drives and CPU and the knowledge how to do a proper search does most of the stuff I need. Just my opinion. The price for an indexer is too high to me (and besides they were responsible for the death of my SSD... I believe).
I'm on EndeavourOS, too. I don't see anything near that kind of memory drain, but I've been using window managers instead of desktop environments for a long time.
For ages I had old, poorly specced laptops, and the big DEs like KDE would quickly cap what memory I had for actual software. And I'm not even a gamer, this would be GIMP or a plain browser that would crash because of too little RAM.
Even now, with more memory and better CPU, I stuck to the habit of using a WM instead, and everything really just runs better. You do sacrifice some eye candy and built-in functions, but IMHO it's worth the tradeoff.
FWIW, I use the OpenBox install of Endeavour OS, with a few simple tweaks of my own. As far as I know OpenBox isn't actively maintained, but it Just Works™.
You should read into zram, It's a very fast compressing method that will help you leverage some ram space. With your 16gb ram you could compress 8gb with a normal 2x compression rate. That would "net" you around 20gb usable ram space. With basically non existing performance penalties. You can also opt to compress all of your 16gb.
In layman's terms it's like downloading more ram. But it won't help you get rid of your source problem.
Baloo is indexing your file system, you can disable it, but its memory usage should drop once it is done. How long it will take to finish depends on how many files you have.
If memory usage is a concern you can always try a lightweight desktop environment but with 16GB you are just fine staying on KDE Plasma.
Make sure to avoid miscounting disk buffers. That's kernel-owned memory that might eat a ton of RAM, but 1. It gets freed instantly when your apps need more memory 2. Until then, it increases your overall system performance by avoiding the need to read from storage (making it somewhere around 10ish times faster).
@goofsqueak Don't make the mistake of confusing "Free Memory" with "Available Memory", Linux will be default use nearly all available memory for cache and buffers so you let it run long enough and your free memory will only show a few hundred KB but your available memory will still be 14GB or something. Not to be alarmed, start your game and buffers and cache will be flushed to disk and memory will be available for your game.
KDE provides a very large set of services. This makes it something of an elephant in the world of Linux desktop environments. Lighter DEs should fit in less than 1GB (that's anything other than KDE and Gnome). I think the last time I checked my system with just the DE up and nothing open, it was using on the order of 200-300MB. However, the lighter DEs will also do less by default.
It should be safe to kill baloo, but as others have already said, you will see some tradeoffs in how file searching works if you stick with KDE. If I'm not mistaken, it may restart periodically to index new files unless you go to some effort to exorcise it.
@goofsqueak Baloo is an indexing service for kde search. If you don't need KDE search then you don't need Baloo, or if you don't need to super current you can schedule it to run at 4am or some such. If you really want a light desktop look into LXDE or XFCE.
Baloo (which is KDE's file indexer, which is meant to speed up file searches) was borked earlier this year, and I don't know if it has been fixed yet, but seemingly it'd keep doing symlink loops which of course isn't useful. This is likely to happen when you have any wine-prefix installed so even just Steam installed will do this. ::: spoiler The fix on my computer was simply turning it off for all of my /home/$USER folder by adding the location in System Settings - Workspace - Search - File Search - Stop indexing a folder. ::: If you're on an nVME SSD, and if you rarely do file searches anyway, I don't see any problems doing this.
As for RAM, definitely check out Zram. It works by compressing unused parts of memory back into RAM. Here's what 8 GB Zram looks like on my PC right now:
> zramctl
NAME ALGORITHM DISKSIZE DATA COMPR TOTAL STREAMS MOUNTPOINT
/dev/zram0 zstd 8G 573,5M 138,6M 154,4M [SWAP]
So it has compressed half a gigabyte of unsused memory down to ~150 megabytes, that's a 3.7x compression rate, saving quite a bit of memory.
It's very easy to set up, take a look here. ::: spoiler My config for reference, which ships by default with Nobara.
─────┬──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
│ File: /usr/lib/systemd/zram-generator.conf
─────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
1 │ # This config file enables a /dev/zram0 device with the default settings:
2 │ # — size — same as available RAM or 8GB, whichever is less
3 │ # — compression — most likely lzo-rle
4 │ #
5 │ # To disable, uninstall zram-generator-defaults or create empty
6 │ # /etc/systemd/zram-generator.conf file.
7 │ [zram0]
8 │ zram-size = min(ram, 8192)
─────┴──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Summary of my reply: Baloo (and mlocate) were stuck on filenames with unusual characters in filenam, which probably caused the death of my system SSD.
Baloo is known to be borked from time to time, in the many years I used it before. I stopped using Baloo for a different reason. Baloo and the more general mlocate file indexer destroyed my previous system SSD. After replacing the drive, (without knowing what the issue was) I was careful and watched write and reads of the drive. And then I found the issue, Baloo (and later mlocate) did massive Gigabytes of writes and reads in short amount of seconds for long period. After examination I found out baloo (and later mlocate the same) were stuck on specific files. Those filenames had unusual characters, that normally would only be seen in binary file formats.
I don't know if we can blame the indexers for this, but as far as I know those are the only applications with the issue. I'm not entirely sure if RetroArch can play those games (these are Rom files for old systems), but at least its file handling worked fine.
IME modern KDE idle consumes a lot of memory, and every file indexing tool for boþ Gnome and KDE have always been hogs. You used to be able to turn it off.
@goofsqueak Of course how much work an indexer has to do in part relates to how much crap you have on your file system, if you've got 15TB or so like I do, patience is a virtue.
Every once in a while I think I'll drop my mix of all those GTK/Gnome-based apps plus some Qt apps, and switch to a full KDE desktop. More coherent. Uniform look etc.
I just tried Q4OS yesterday but it runs under Xorg. Isn't wayland the default for KDE these days? Which distro should I live-check?
Another thing, I noticed that something called ksyslogger iirc consistently eats CPU. A daemon that keeps up with everything that's happening. Is it possible to disable this without breaking KDE, or otherwise make it as lightweight as, say, a simple Openbox desktop?
Using Falkon under a Plasma desktop was a great experience though.
BTW, does KDE have a good equivalent for all the usually important apps, e.g. a full-fledged mail client?
This entry was edited (Saturday, August 29, 2026, 1:14 PM)
Fedora KDE, CachyOS, Debian. One of those, depending on your needs.
You can rice KDE Plasma easily. Check why ksyslogger uses so many resources, it's not normal. You can get a full Plasma desktop with under 400MB of RAM usage and under 0.5% CPU.
I use Thunderbird as mail client, as Kmail doesn't really cut it for me.
On a Thinkpad T430s with a Intel Core i5-3320M, i.e. 2 cores with 2 threads each at 3.3GHz max., ksyslogger ran at 3-5% CPU. This was in a live environment which I shut down after tweaking it for about 30mins, so IDK, maybe it would've settled down evtl.?
This entry was edited (Sunday, August 30, 2026, 12:13 PM)
You mean ksystemstats? You can theoretically disable it completely. Plasma depends on ksysguard but you can probably just run plasma-shell without it. Never tried. There have been comparisons between "lightweight" DEs and Plasma where Plasma didn't consume more resources than say Xfce.
Thanks, I guess it was ksysguard what I saw eating CPU in Q4OS.
I tried CachyOS Plasma live yesterday, it ran so much lighter! Idling at ~1%, that's basically the same as my current (fully riced) Openbox system.
However, the live system is very barebones.
I researched CachyOS and I approve so far. Even the ArchLinux community doesn't seem to hate on it. Have to boot it up again and sniff around under the hood.
This might just be my stepping stone back to a fully fledged DE.
Contributors are expected to understand, review, test, and, where appropriate, modify AI-assisted output before incorporating it into Debian. Blindly accepting or uploading AI-generated material without appropriate human review is inconsistent with Debian's established development practices. We [encourage] our contributors to disclose whether a contribution was made with AI [assistance], but do not require them to do so.
When people do code review off a pull request and sees it’s slop, it will go back to the developer to fix it. I guess if a person submit too much slop, they will get banned or something similar.
However, I don’t know the Debian process to have new code submitted, but would guess that it have to be more than one person to go from code to build a package.
Former Debian Project Leader Lucas Nussbaum expressed regret on the results of the vote, writing: "On a very personal note, I regret that the winning option does not acknowledge all the legitimate concerns around AI: environmental impact, copyright and licensing uncertainty, the health of Free Software communities, and the strain of aggressive scraping on the open web."
Do you feel weird lately? Maybe you need to change something in your life to feel better. If you need help, please seek out medical or psychological professionals, even if you just want to confirm you're healthy.
If this AI distro crap keeps going, I'm going back to using my Android (Pixel 10a and GrapheneOS) phone for everything. Not the best option but better than using a vibe-coded distro.
All I need is a monitor and wall mount for the monitor. Connect a hub and charger (phone does pass-through charging), a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse.
Some workflow will have to change, Cryptpad instead of LibreOffice for example.
Could GrapheneOS take a clear stance against LLMs? Something simple may be best/easiest, like this in each README or CONTRIBUTING.md: Strict No LLM / No AI Policy Use of generative AI/LLMs is stric...
Former Debian Project Leader Lucas Nussbaum expressed regret on the results of the vote, writing: "On a very personal note, I regret that the winning option does not acknowledge all the legitimate concerns around AI: environmental impact, copyright and licensing uncertainty, the health of Free Software communities, and the strain of aggressive scraping on the open web."
It's not like it matters, the kernel is being sloppified and that will affect all distros. Shame that this happens right as linux is beginning to get popularity.
It's hard to be upset. I'm not a Debian maintainer, or even someone paid to program. But here a group of people got together and said yes to allowing AI. I feel like on some level you have to accept that answer. I'm curious why they made that decision I guess.
Thanks for this, maybe too late as I'm a year down the line on a new laptop. It would be great to challenge those who sell refurbished PCs also, they generally refuse to sell without a windows install. Arguing that I'm a Linux user just didn't matter, needless to say I didn't pursue this route (although it was preferred as I'm happy to run a lightweight OS, reduce E waste etc.).
Years ago they bought Iron Galaxy, the studio behind the beloved Killer Instinct reboot. They also bought smash.gg, the site where most fighting game tournaments are hosted. At the time I was sure this was a sign. PS4 was the console for fighting games and M$ were trying to position the Xbox as the fighting game console. We were going to get a new Killer Instinct (or new IP), smash.gg would have it's terrible UI improved and probably some Xbox integration. It would get an app too.
Several years later, none of that happened. They renamed smash.gg to start.gg and you can login with your M$ account. That's all that's changed. It's amazing how they squandered such an opportunity.
Когда приходит время прощаться с любимым питомцем, важно, чтобы этот процесс был максимально гуманным и спокойным — и для животного, и для семьи.
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In the other corner, Proposal B seems to lay out something similar to how AI-generated code is handled on the Linux kernel. The proposal allows AI-generated code only if the submitter takes full accountability for it, ensures it's free of copyright issues, and declares any LLM usage.
Assuming full technical responsibility would probably make most AI-generated code pointless, as the whole point of using AI this way is that generating code saves work. Which is not any more the case if the result is really fully reviewed.
This is different from using AI for vulnerability scanning (as it is practised in the Linux kernel).
The other thing is there is no way one can declare AI generated code safely free of copyright isses. You'd need to prove that the result code was not contained in the training data - which is not possible.
This entry was edited (Friday, August 28, 2026, 6:53 AM)
Disagree on your first point. AI will generate code that is mostly correct, the human time cost of (properly) reviewig this code and correcting it is generally less than also writing it. People that do more serious work than vibe-coding oneshot skateboard simulators in html do actually get noticeable productivity boosts even when every generated line of code is reviewed by multiple people.
That is why the kernel allows it, because they mostly care that a human is around that will take responsability for it, that the patches are of the same quality than always and that everything is manageable by humans. This is in contrast to the techbro github repo with commits that span 20 files and 2k edits where there is no hope in hell to understand what is going on.
AI will generate code that is mostly correct, the human time cost of (properly) reviewig this code and correcting it is generally less than also writing it.
I do not see it play out like this in practice, for example at my workplace. The work of debugging, reviewing, verification, and maintenance is simply offloaded to other people. Which, as a result, have more work, not less.
This entry was edited (Friday, August 28, 2026, 8:01 AM)
The people running the agent need to be looking at the code and cleaning it, not someone else, that is the key thing that is missing in all these failures. Linux is the same, they would never accept something that has not at least the same quality as something written by a competent human
It is a very well known truism that it is harder to debug code than it is to write it. This is, in my experience, doubly true of the convoluted code generated by current frontier LLMs.
Allowing LLM coding at our org basically stole most of this year's progress from us as every PR made this way still has yet to be merged because the code quality just never reaches anywhere near our minimum requirement.
We are investigating ways to improve this (a style guide for agents etc) but the best step we've taken so far is just to ask people to stop using it and see what happens. (Code quality jumped up and PRs started getting merged, though the LLM ones are still languishing and probably will need rewriting from scratch before we can merge them)
That doesn't change the fact that it's harder to properly review code than to write code, especially when that code is ten times longer than it needs to be, makes no sensible decisions about how to separate concerns, and might, if you're lucky, pay lip service to naming things well.
I don't necessarily think this will always be the case with generated code, but I expect we'll need a proper breakthrough in the technology before it can write good code (it needs a number of things: actual world models, the ability to go back and edit its output when it realises a mistake -- which is crucially different from saying a new thing that contradicts the mistake -- and continual learning, to name the three that spring to mind).
Even if it started writing perfect code, I'd be dubious of signing your org's ability to write code away to a service that you don't own and has a notable history of intellectual property infringement and an insane disregard for both the law and morality. At the very least we should all be using open weights models.
Assuming full technical responsibility would probably make most AI-generated code pointless, as the whole point of using AI this way is that generating code saves work. Which is not any more the case if the result is really fully reviewed.
When you submit code that you write you take responsibility for it, irregardless of the tools you use. AI generated code should not be different in this aspect. You can use AI to generate code but you should review it anyway, at least at the basic level to make sure that it does not contain obvious bugs and do what it is supposed to do.
The other thing is there is no way one can declare AI generated code safely free of copyright isses. You’d need to prove that the result code was not contained in the training data - which is not possible.
Which itself should make people to avoid to use AI generated code for anything else than playing around.
The 'old' article seems to have deliberately missed a lot, and the headline is perhaps misleading? It is perhaps likely that debian expanded on A vs B since the article was written
I was unable to find anything more recent than what has already been posted on lemmy, based around the vote linked below, that contains a lot of long-winded potential outcomes, mainly of which seem deliberately verbose?
This is a bit reductive on the situation with Ubuntu side of things but I don't know why you're being downvoted since you're not technically wrong lol... vibe-coding on a large scale always results in very poorly structured code unless significant manpower is used for manual review.
Construction sites in the UAE are increasingly shaped by one practical constraint: available space. Urban development, high-density commercial districts, residential communities, infrastructure upgrades, and industrial projects often operate within tightly bounded sites surrounded by existing buildings, roads, utilities, and active traffic. In these conditions, installing a large concrete production facility can consume valuable working space and complicate site logistics. A compact batching plant offers a more measured alternative, providing concrete production capacity while maintaining a smaller operational footprint. The appeal of compact equipment is not limited to physical dimensions. For UAE contractors, the real advantage lies in how a smaller plant can integrate with restricted site layouts, simplify material movement, and adapt to temporary or phased construction. Instead of designing the entire project around a large concrete plant, the production system can be selected around the actual constraints of the project.
Why Space Is a Critical Construction Resource in the UAE
Urban Projects Leave Limited Room for Concrete Production
Major UAE construction activities frequently take place in developed areas where land is already occupied by buildings, roads, parking facilities, utilities, and other infrastructure. A construction site may therefore have a substantial concrete requirement but very little room for supporting equipment. A conventional stationary batching plant typically requires dedicated areas for aggregate storage, cement systems, batching equipment, internal traffic, and maintenance access. On a constrained site, allocating this amount of space can interfere with cranes, excavators, material storage, worker access, and other essential activities. A compact concrete batching plant approaches the problem differently. Its reduced footprint allows concrete production to occupy a smaller portion of the site while preserving more space for the primary construction workflow.
Site Logistics Become More Important When Space Is Restricted
A crowded construction site can quickly become inefficient if equipment and material flows overlap. Concrete trucks, aggregate loaders, construction vehicles, and workers may all compete for limited access routes. Compact batching equipment can help simplify this arrangement by reducing the physical area dedicated to concrete production.
Less Congestion Around the Production Area
A smaller installation can create a more orderly material flow. This matters in urban UAE projects where site access may already be affected by surrounding roads and traffic restrictions. The objective is not merely to fit a plant into a small space. It is to preserve enough circulation area for the rest of the construction operation.
How Compact Batching Plants Adapt to UAE Construction Conditions
Suitable for Temporary and Phased Projects
Many construction projects in the UAE are completed in phases. Concrete demand may be intense during one stage and considerably lower during another. A large permanent batching facility can become disproportionate when production requirements change throughout the project lifecycle. A compact batching plant offers a more flexible production model. Contractors can select a configuration that corresponds more closely to actual demand and available space. For temporary construction facilities, infrastructure works, building projects, and developments with restricted access, this flexibility can simplify both installation and subsequent relocation.
Mobility Can Reduce Dependence on a Fixed Production Location
Some compact batching plants are designed for easier transportation and relocation. This characteristic is particularly useful when the active construction area changes. Rather than maintaining concrete production at one fixed point throughout the project, contractors can potentially reposition mobile equipment closer to the next work phase.
Shorter Internal Concrete Transport Routes
Producing concrete closer to the point of placement can reduce unnecessary movement across a crowded site. Shorter internal transport routes can simplify traffic management and reduce conflicts between concrete delivery vehicles and other construction equipment. For a space-restricted project, this can be just as important as the plant's nominal production capacity.
Compact Does Not Mean Insufficient
The term "compact" should not be confused with low-performance equipment. A properly selected plant can provide sufficient output for many small- and medium-scale construction applications while occupying less space than a large conventional installation. The correct capacity depends on concrete demand, pouring frequency, project duration, and the required production rhythm. Contractors evaluating a batching plant UAE solution should therefore assess the complete operating environment rather than focusing solely on production figures.
What to Consider When Selecting a Compact Concrete Batching Plant in the UAE
Match Production Capacity to Actual Demand
Oversizing a batching plant can create unnecessary requirements for space, material storage, power, and site logistics. Undersizing it can lead to insufficient production and disrupt concrete placement. The ideal configuration should be based on expected hourly demand, peak pouring requirements, total project duration, and the consistency of concrete consumption. A project requiring moderate quantities of concrete at regular intervals may benefit more from a compact, well-matched plant than from a high-capacity installation designed for substantially larger projects.
Consider Installation and Foundation Requirements
Site preparation can become a significant consideration when available space is limited. Contractors should examine the plant's installation method, foundation requirements, aggregate storage arrangement, and accessibility for maintenance. Equipment that simplifies installation can reduce the amount of permanent site infrastructure required.
Maintenance Access Still Matters
A compact plant should not be positioned so tightly that routine inspection and maintenance become difficult. Sufficient clearance must remain around critical components, conveyors, mixers, electrical systems, and material-loading areas. Space efficiency should improve the site layout, not create a maintenance bottleneck.
Evaluate Local Support and Long-Term Operating Conditions
A concrete batching plant in UAE must operate reliably in a demanding construction environment. High temperatures, dust, continuous operation, and intensive project schedules can place considerable stress on equipment. Contractors should therefore consider component quality, maintenance requirements, spare-parts availability, technical support, and operator training alongside the initial equipment cost. Reliability becomes particularly important on space-restricted sites because equipment failure can obstruct an already congested work area and potentially affect several other construction activities.
Compact Production Can Create a Larger Operational Advantage
The strongest argument for compact batching plants in the UAE is not simply that they occupy less ground. Their real value comes from how efficiently they fit into the broader construction system. On a restricted site, every square meter has a function. Space may be needed for cranes, reinforcement, formwork, aggregate storage, vehicle circulation, worker access, and safety zones. A compact concrete production system allows contractors to allocate more of that limited space to activities directly connected with project progress. For contractors searching for a concrete batching plant in UAE, the right solution should therefore be evaluated according to site geometry, concrete demand, mobility requirements, installation conditions, and long-term operational reliability. In the UAE's increasingly dense construction environment, mini batching plants provide a pragmatic answer to a deceptively difficult problem: how to produce enough concrete without allowing concrete production itself to consume the construction site. When equipment dimensions, production capacity, mobility, and logistics are considered as one integrated system, a compact plant can turn limited space from a constraint into a manageable engineering parameter.
EDIT: Ended up going for Kubuntu anyway. Installed it with separate / and /home so in case they want to explore more there's the option.
I daily drove Linux for about 6 years and finally managed to convince some of my family members to try it!
However, I realized I don't have a lot of ideas about beginner distros. I have some requirements that led me to some decisions, but there doesn't seem to be a fit-all option: - Minimal maintenance -> Debian-based (stable release) - High compatibility -> Debian-based (.deb seems more convenient than say, AUR) - Familiarity -> KDE Plasma (looks like Windows, very customizable)
It's for a Thinkpad X1. The main purpose is going to be academics.
All of that points to Kubuntu, but I worry about the Canonical Snap store stuff.
Everyone recommends Linux Mint for starters, but it doesn't come with a KDE Plasma flavour. I know I can install it myself, but the integration is gonna be bad and they're gonna bug me a lot.
I use Endeavour OS personally, so I'm somewhat familiar with Arch-based system. I guess .debs can be installed with debtap, but that feels like a whole another hacky solution. I have done university courses with my Endeavour OS laptop and I know quite a bit of software comes in .deb but not AUR.
What should I pick for them? And should I get more input from them? If so, what should I ask about?
I've never used Fedora. I guess it can be a good learning opportunity but that also means I can't provide fast solutions based on my experience. I'll look into it though.
It's pretty well traveled and established so support for it is pretty easy. Fedora comes in both KDE and Gnome varieties. Debian based, though it uses dnf instead of apt for package installer, but that's not hard. IMHO it's a good sweet spot of a release cycle. It's big enough that issues reliably get ironed out before they hit the stable version, but doesn't trail kernel updates for too terribly long.
Don't think too much about it. There's little reason not to try Kubuntu even with snaps. If it starts to bother you, backing up your files is simple then you can redeploy them on another distro. I've used Ubuntu for a couple years now with no issues other than some audio funkiness. But as I understand, that's just linux in general sometimes and I fixed it in like 20 minutes.
The sooner you stop being determined to get 100 concensus opinions from "experts" and instead just roll with what features suit you and form your own opinion, the happier you'll be. Snap has never once got in my way and the moment it does, I'll figure out a solution or jump ship if it's a big enough issue. The same way I did with Windows, Reddit, Twitter, toilets, disposable napkins, etc.
Lol, no, but maybe one day if I can figure out a way to use my rainwater irrigation system to clean my bum. North American and switched from toilets to bidets.
You seem to have a good sense of what disros are out there. I think any beginner friendly distro with wherever user friendly DE it comes with will probably be fine.
I'd say maybe stick with a deb or rpm one which most are anyway, for the compatibility point you already made. If you/they need something that's otherwise not available in your distro's repos, there's probably already packages or third party repos available.
But the ask is a recommendation. I find myself generally recommending Fedora, despite not having used it myself for years. It's easy to install, you can choose your DE, it's stable, has a good release cadence, and is easy to upgrade and maintain.
manjaro kde, it tells you when you need to update, and all you do is push a button. Most users should be able to get everything they need from official, or flatpak if need be. I don't use the AUR at all.
mint is such a weird common recommendation
debian is annoying for no good reason
ubuntu is for when you want linux to go down the windows path
I've been there. My mom is not able to do anything. All distros I tried broke at some point. A sound issue or a WiFi issue, easily solvable with one command line but totally impossible for my mom to even do it when I explained. I ended up installing an immutable distro, Bazzite. It has been 2 years, 0 issue. It's the longest ever. So my recommendation for noobs is to go immutable. They don't need to tweek the system anyway.
I've heard Bazzite has issues with updates sometimes though. I feel like their release cycle is too fast and they aren't able to keep up with testing at that pace.
I never had any issue. I think problems are mostly if you use it on handled devices like a steam deck. Then yes, I heard it was unstable. But on a computer for simple usage ? It's perfect. But my point was more about immutable than Bazzite. There might be better flavours.
I often have this conversation with the people I do Linux support with. We either go for Debian, which can be a bit tricky to install on some machines or Fedora/OpenSUSE with KDE Plasma. Since you want an Ubuntu based system, maybe check out MX Linux, but be aware, that it needs manual migration between major versions (mxlinux.org/migration/). Maybe also have a look at this list: distrowatch.com/search.php?des…
With your separate /home you are free to explore, I think that was the right answer all along. I personally dont like Canonical but pick what works for you the distro doesn't matter as much as it used to. If you really like it I recommend Debian + KDE as a similar setup with no Canonical foolery going on.
Reading after the edit. Honestly, if you ever switch from Kubuntu, just use Debian with KDE. Since this presumably isn't going to be running games you won't have to worry about potential NVIDIA driver bullshit. I've personally had nothing but strange issues with Kubuntu and software distribution but YMMV.
When your website designer receives clear, thoughtful input, the quality of the work rises dramatically. The relationship strengthens, the timeline stays intact, and the finished site becomes something you are proud to share with your customers. Keep the dialogue honest and frequent, and trust that the process works.
A first draft rarely tells the whole story. That initial mockup is just the beginning of a conversation — one that shapes everything about your online presence.
Think back to when you first partnered with a web design company. You shared your vision, discussed timelines, and outlined what success would look like. Now the ball is in your court, and the notes you provide will determine what happens next.
Too often, business owners send feedback that is either too vague to act on or too harsh to process constructively. Neither extreme helps. Learning to communicate well with your creative team is one of the highest-leverage skills you can develop.
To make this concrete, imagine you own a family bakery looking to launch an online ordering system. Your website designer has delivered the first version of your site, and you need to guide them toward the final product. Here are several principles to follow.
Anchor Every Response in Business Outcomes
Colors and fonts are magnetic — they pull your attention the moment you open a design file. But leading with aesthetics skips the most important question: does this design actually help the business?
A talented website designer builds for function first. They want feedback that connects visual choices to measurable goals. In the bakery scenario, the central objective is clear: let customers browse the menu, customize an order, and check out without confusion.
If your homepage burys the online ordering button beneath a scrolling photo gallery, the design is not supporting that goal. Instead of saying "the gallery is too big," try something like: "The ordering button needs to be visible without scrolling. People come here to place orders, not admire photos."
This approach tells your designer what matters and why. It removes guesswork and anchors the conversation in real business priorities rather than personal reactions to a shade of frosting.
Replace Gut Reactions with Concrete Directions
"Something feels off" is among the least helpful notes a creative professional can receive. Your design team needs specifics — details they can locate in the file and act on immediately.
Consider what outcome you are after. Describe it in ordinary language without jargon. Back at the bakery, let's say your menu page needs to highlight seasonal items that have a limited sales window. Instead of telling your team to "make the seasonal stuff more visible," try a different approach entirely.
Say, "We need a featured section at the top of the menu page for seasonal items. Right now, they disappear into the full list. Our best sellers — the pumpkin loaf in fall, the citrus tarts in summer — should stand out on their own with pricing and a one-click add-to-cart option."
When you spell out exactly what you need, the task becomes a checklist rather than an interpretation exercise. Your designer gets clear parameters: a dedicated section, visual prominence, and a specific user action to facilitate. That is a world apart from a vague complaint.
Gather Everything in One Place
Feedback scattered across emails, texts, voice messages, and sticky notes creates chaos. Nobody can track it. Important points get buried. Versions conflict with each other.
A web design company operates most efficiently when they receive a single, well-organized document. Structure it by page or feature. Keep each entry focused and brief.
A simple spreadsheet works well here. Use columns for the page name, the specific concern, and what you want changed. An entry might read: Menu Page — Cupcake photos are dark and inconsistent — Replace with well-lit photos on a white background so the colors pop.
After any phone call or video meeting about the project, send a written summary of the decisions made and the tasks assigned. A short follow-up message prevents misunderstandings and ensures that nothing gets lost between conversations.
Tell Apart Usability Issues from Personal Preferences
Every business owner has opinions about how things look. That is natural and even healthy — up to a point. The key is recognizing when a comment addresses a genuine usability problem versus a matter of individual taste.
If a checkout button blends into the surrounding background so closely that a user might miss it, that is a legitimate accessibility concern. Your website designer should address it without hesitation. But if you simply dislike the typeface chosen for your headings, that is a different category of issue.
You can still raise aesthetic concerns. Just frame them honestly. "The script font used for our headings is charming, but it is difficult to read on smaller screens. Could we explore something that retains warmth but is more legible?" gives your designer a direction while acknowledging the tradeoff.
Always bring it back to the people using the site. In the bakery case, those people are busy parents ordering a birthday cake on their phone during a lunch break. They need speed and clarity. Flashy effects or decorative elements do not help them complete an order faster.
Lean on Their Training and Experience
Hiring a professional means you gain access to expertise you do not have. Visual hierarchy, responsive layout principles, color theory, and usability heuristics — these are not guesswork. They are skills refined over years.
Your designer may occasionally push back on your suggestions. They might tell you that a particular layout will not scale to mobile, or that a color combination will fail accessibility standards. This is not defiance. It is the exact reason you brought them on board.
Treat those moments as learning opportunities rather than obstacles. A good web design company will not simply refuse a request — they will explain why, and they will often propose an alternative that achieves your goal while respecting technical constraints.
If you remain convinced a certain change is important, let your designer note their objection formally. Then compare results once the site is live. Data settles these debates more reliably than opinions do, and over time, mutual respect grows from evidence-based collaboration.
Treat Deadlines as Shared Commitments
Creative work depends on momentum. When you delay feedback, the entire production timeline shifts. Worse, the designer may lose the mental context around your project and need time to reorient.
Do not rush your review, but do give it proper attention. Set aside a focused window — thirty uninterrupted minutes at your computer. Navigate every page. Click every button. Read every line of text. Look at it on different screen sizes if you can.
Aim to submit your notes within 48 hours of receiving a deliverable. If something prevents that, a quick message goes a long way: "I will have my full feedback ready by Thursday." That short update preserves trust and keeps the project moving forward without unnecessary friction.
Pair Every Problem with a Proposed Fix
Criticizing is effortless. Improving is harder but far more valuable. Whenever you identify something that does not work, try to suggest a better alternative — even if it is rough.
If your bakery's contact page feels cluttered, resist the urge to simply write "too much going on." Instead, propose a solution: "Can we trim this down to just the address, hours, and a simple inquiry form? The embedded map and social links can move to the footer."
This kind of note gives your team a starting point. A capable web design company will take that direction and elevate it — refining the layout, adjusting spacing, and ensuring it integrates smoothly with the rest of the site. Without a proposed direction, the designer must invent one from scratch, which adds time and cost to the process.
Final Thoughts
Feedback is not a confrontation. It is a conversation between two parties who share the same objective — building something that works. You hold the knowledge of your audience and your brand. Your designer holds the technical capability to translate that knowledge into a functional site.
Be organized. Be specific. Ground your examples in the reality of how your customers behave. The bakery's online ordering system and a large e-commerce platform follow the same feedback principles because they both serve real human needs.
When your website designer Singapore receives clear, thoughtful input, the quality of the work rises dramatically. The relationship strengthens, the timeline stays intact, and the finished site becomes something you are proud to share with your customers. Keep the dialogue honest and frequent, and trust that the process works.
Create a powerful online presence with our modern and innovative web design services. Our skilled web designers will create a custom website that fits your brand.
Saaeid Saaeid engagiert sich in Magdeburg für gesellschaftliche und politische Teilhabe. Als Mitglied des Integrationsbeirats setzt er sich dafür ein, dass auch die Perspektiven von Menschen mit Migrationsgeschichte gehört werden. Seine Botschaft: Sie gehören zu Magdeburg und gestalten die Stadt genauso mit.
Begegnung und Austausch spielen dabei für ihn eine wichtige Rolle. Denn dort, wo Menschen miteinander ins Gespräch kommen, können Vorurteile abgebaut und ein gemeinsames Verständnis davon geschaffen werden, was Zusammenleben in Magdeburg bedeutet.
🎬 Anhalten! – ein TikTok-Reportageformat in Kooperation mit der taz. Entstanden im Masterstudiengang Multimedia & Autorschaft der Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg.
Ein Projekt von Johanna Pichler
Die taz ist eine unabhängige, genossenschaftlich getragene, überregionale Tageszeitung. Um eine kritische Öffentlichkeit zu ermöglichen, veröffentlichen wir alle Inhalte der gedruckten taz auch kostenlos auf unserer Website. Unser freiwilliges Modell "taz zahl ich" ersetzt die Bezahlschranke. Damit das möglich bleibt, unterstütze jetzt die taz mit einem selbst gewählten Betrag: taz.de/zahlich
Die taz gibt es digital oder gedruckt auch als Abo - was die taz gleichzeitig am meisten unterstützt und ihre Existenz sichert. Erfahre hier mehr dazu: taz.de/abo
Hinweis: Die Kommentarfunktion ist derzeit nur während moderierten Livestreams aktiviert, da sie vermehrt für Hate Speech genutzt wurde. Während des Livestreams steht allerdings der Live-Chat für Fragen, Anregungen und Diskussionen zur Verfügung. Vielen Dank für dein Verständnis.
Hi, I will be writing petition to my government (Poland) to try to get them to ban Windows at schools. I believe it should be illegal to force children to use systems that are paid and use children’s data for AI and advertising. Maybe you will do it as well? Let’s end this insane practice.
This entry was edited (Thursday, August 27, 2026, 12:19 PM)
That actually makes a lot of sense, if you remove concepts such as "but Windows is already customary here" from your head. From scratch, you'd never want to do this.
If such a petition exists for the Netherlands or EU-wide, I'd sign and subscribe/support.
I disagree. While it would be correct in some way, it would be a different political movement.
With "let's introduce Linux", it's easy to stop mid-way and too early. For example, at 1 hour per week for 1 semester once during the whole school.
With "ban Windows [from school computers and as mandatory software]", the political agenda is clear and the technical goal is clear. And the benefit is clear, too.
American mindset, and probably more broadly speaking, "ban thing" when thing isn't widely understood (to be bad, or even in general) usually gets reactionary backlash because people don't like when decisions are made for them or options (even those they're unaware of) are either taken off the table or forced upon them. It's teeing up Microsoft to spend a few bucks on a country song and cowboy character ad campaign to brush the issue off.
"New thing better" doesn't always work well either because people need a reason to change when things seemingly already work as-is. Leading with outrage is unfortunately the better way to win over people who aren't going to make an effort for themselves to investigate the problem. Tell them why they should be angry, why Microsoft is a threat to their children, etc and then, if you can convince them, is when you add "...and that's why we should ban MS products." Even that is still insufficient without a clear course of action. If the solution isn't drop-in and painless, it's going to disrupt the education of the generation when the change is made. The argument needs to be compelling enough to worth unsettling the status quo.
Last up, our education system is headed by a carny. Our administration swung the doors wide open for Mecha Hitler. Our president loves the uneducated and the uneducated clap like a pack of trained seals when they hear it. Even if Microsoft failed to backroom deal or blackmail their way into maintaining their stranglehold, you'd have to be on Elon levels of ketamine to believe the current admin would adopt open standards or invest the US equivalent of Venezuela's Canaima Linux. We'd get gaudy gold TrumpTops preloaded Grok, nationalist propaganda and government spyware.
All that isn't to piss on the parade. I'm for open standards, open operating systems and improving technical literacy while stripping away the invasions of privacy and stopping the dumbing down of our youth. I just think "ban thing" is only ever going to appeal to bandwagon radicals and the folks that already agree with you. If you're not winning over the opposition (and more importantly the idiots who don't even know they're opposed until their indignant inner sleeper cell is activated by the word "ban") you're in for a losing fight.
Agreed. Make it about the privacy of students or something. Privacy is a winning topic across much of the political spectrum and would gain support from a lot of parents. In the end, make it about the benefits of free and open source software.
I wouldn't "ban Windows at school" as a whole but I would: * ban schools from installing windows in school computers * teachers and students can still use it on their own computers, if they want * ban teachers from requiring windows-only software * regardless of what you use at school, teachers would often require MS office or Adobe for homework, which would force students to use windows at home
As long as 90% of businesses use it on their desktop it makes sense to teach. Using windows and the common software (photoshop, excel etc.) on it is basically a life skill at this point in time.
I agree with your premise though.
I guess it could be argued the computer proficiency skill is transferable (from Linux at school to Windows at work) as long as there is a significant overlap in the available software, desktop presentation, workflow and control conventions.
One example where it for sure doesn't work is gimp to photoshop. If you wanna know why, go dig out instructions for how to draw a circle in each one. Or try recreating one of the many effects from PS in GEGL. - The workflow is so fundamentally different that if you know one software, it will actually hinder you learning the other, because your intuition will mislead you and you'll be constantly frustrated (which actively hinders learning. There are studies on that)
This entry was edited (Thursday, August 27, 2026, 1:11 PM)
I went to school in germany, we had a generic computer class for a semester, where we started with basic controls left, right mouse click, middle click to close apps, tripple click to select a row of text, f2 for rename, f10 create new folder, deleting files, installing and uninstalling software etc.
And even here Linux diverges. Middle click pastes your clipboard and only rarely do apps like pdf viewers support tripple clicking.
Later we learned photoshop, word, excel, powerpoint, internet explorer and how to use the powerful features in google search, like quotes, +, -, site: etc. And I must say, it proved to be extrenely useful. I constantly see people around me struggle with those tasks and I'm thankful for my school teaching me.
I moved all my PCs to Linux ~5 years after graduating and it sure was a long grindy struggle of frustration and accepting bad compromises. I tried using gimp for university assignments and it was a huge PITA. Touched a mac for a week and it was equally full of friction to learn and work with.
What I want to say is - I'm sure the re-learning is a similar struggle in either direction. So if you want to prepare students for the real life, it makes sense to learn the software they will most likely encounter in their real worklife. I'm sure most polish design companies use photoshop and illustrator on windows or mac systems instead of gimp and those school students will have a harder time getting into it.
This entry was edited (Thursday, August 27, 2026, 1:49 PM)
It's interesting to hear Photoshop and GIMP have diverged so much! I haven't used Photoshop in 20 years but when I initially made the switch it was pretty simple. I guess photo processing has changed a lot in that time, eh? 😅
In the US we have a law that says we must keep student records confidential. Yet at my school our email for both faculty and students is provided by TinyFlaccid. I know for a fact that they are scanning and indexing all of that email because that's the only way they could make reply suggestions. They also have copilot enabled and there is no way to turn it off.
I'm not commenting to pick on you but because I think it's really important that people understand the details of laws so that they can make informed choices. People often think they have more rights or protections than they do, and they might not make the same choices if they knew otherwise.
If you are referring to FERPA, the decision about whether an email is an education record depends on the content and the context for which it is used. I don't think it would hold that all emails from an educational account are educational records. ( aalrr.com/EdLawConnectBlog/a-r… )
From the above and specific to whether an email itself can be a record (when there was a paper copy on file)
The court held the electronic messages themselves were not “education records” for purposes of FERPA because, while they related to the student, they were not “maintained” by the educational institution.
(Please note: "the decision was unpublished and therefore cannot be cited.")
An educational agency or institution may disclose personally identifiable information from an education record of a student without the consent required by § 99.30 if the disclosure meets one or more of the following conditions:
B) A contractor, consultant, volunteer, or other party to whom an agency or institution has outsourced institutional services or functions may be considered a school official under this paragraph provided that the outside party—
(1) Performs an institutional service or function for which the agency or institution would otherwise use employees;
(2) Is under the direct control of the agency or institution with respect to the use and maintenance of education records; and
(3) Is subject to the requirements of § 99.33(a) governing the use and redisclosure of personally identifiable information from education records.
So having access to and using the information in the emails is not necessarily a violation so long as the personally identifiable information is not redisclosed.
Schools have a duty to ensure that the access is for "legitimate educational interests" which is subjective but I could see email tools or copilot being argued as meeting that.
I guess we won't know until someone challenges it 😉
I'm aware of all of that, but wasn't looking to write a novel about it.
I am of the opinion that feeding students' information to AI and to advertising algorithms is not a legitimate educational purpose. Particularly when hosting your own email that doesn't do that is so trivially simple.
ETA: btw, my nickname is potateo. You could say that's an arcane spelling of potato!
This entry was edited (Thursday, August 27, 2026, 10:04 PM)
Having worked at an email provider before, I can assure you that hosting your own email is not, as you put it, "trivially simple." The number of spam filters that sit between every server is insane, and they're all controlled by third parties that, almost universally, deem any server hosted on a residential IP address block to be spam. Even medium-sized commercial providers get blacklisted every so often and have to appeal to the filter providers to get back in business. Hosting it yourself is almost guaranteed to mean that nobody ever gets your emails.
The problems you're talking about are not problems of hosting email. Hosting email is trivially simple.
The anticompetitive practices of big tech have to be dealt with a different way. Requiring all schools to host their own email would go a very long way to ending one of those practices. You would see the opaque, unresponsive spam filterers disappear overnight.
I was thinking this 20+ years ago and it makes me sad that Windows is still treated like a product worth using. My work machine is my most hated device in terms of software. Such garbage.
AI use in schools will make us wish constant screens were all we had to worry about. We are actively making kids dumber and that’s just how big tech wants it.
I don't know how much IT experience you have, but at the end of the day when an organization pays for license, they're paying for a fall-guy. They want to have someone to go to when there's a problem with the software, because that's cheaper than everyone needing to hire an expert at whatever issues pop up to be certain it's solved.
They don't want to have a bunch of PCs running whatever distro and domain software the last IT guy felt like going with. And when the next heartbleed/shell shock/spectre happens, they don't want to have to figure out how to get the fix for the flavors of software they went with. They want to be able to say "hey company, this is what we pay you for" and the company to say "all good, we got you".
Of course, it is possible to have both open software, and corporate support. This is why redhat exists. Just understand that your IT dept may have a preference based purely on how easy/hard it makes their job. When my PC has some bug or hw incompatibility, I'm willing to take the time to solve it. But someone who doesn't have that time is going to prefer to just tell the company that made it to solve it.
I'm also on-board with no computers in schools, as someone else brought up. Phones should not be allowed in classrooms. Before we had LLMs running on calculators, my idea was to have a series of optional classes where you build your own calculator starting from logic gates, and that's the only computer you're allowed to use.
The very pro-Microsoft government where I live was apparently the origin of social media age restriction legislation that then went national and now seems to be taken up various places internationally. Also very into banning phones in classrooms. And the leader was also promoting some sort of purity ring type pledge thing for phone use.
I am kind of anti-tech for kids when it detracts from the basics and adds nothing and I think a lot of tech is distracting and a waste and the only real beneficiaries are large companies. So with all this anti-phone, anti-social media stuff you might think they were looking after kids. But they were also pushing a rebranded copilot into schools and forcing AI into the curriculum. My take is Microsoft write all their scripts for them. Microsoft missed the boat on social media and mobile so attacking Meta, Apple and Google serves them while attacking AI and Windows does not. Shit like public servants and politicians getting corporate lobbying jobs isn't illegal. Nothing ever changes.
This entry was edited (Friday, August 28, 2026, 7:58 AM)
I'd start by banning tablets, what the fuck is the point of "learning" IT stuff on a glorified 10 inch phone? Get them fucking laptops, even better with Linux, but I feel like even going BACK to Windows PCs would be an improvement at this point, sad.
Just go back to establishing a computer lab with shared resources. We don’t need a laptop in every kid’s backpack. Fewer screens and more books is the answer.
Jup, in an ideal world there would be one or more computer rooms with desktop PCs running whatever fucking immutable Linux distro.
However I'm also kind of torn about books since I DO think they are important, but in practice they were always just super outdated, super politically one-sided, unreasonably heavy and so on. Some kind of middle-ground would be great with a mix of some classes using books and paper and some classes using a cheap laptop with Linux on it. But whatever's the case, tablets are absolute fucking bullshit.
Edit: hell or just no laptops but WAY more than one computer room so you could literally have some classes exclusively in "regular" rooms and some in computer rooms, idk. JUST NOT FUCKING TABLETS.
This entry was edited (Saturday, August 29, 2026, 12:58 PM)
Go for it, but please consider the platform you use for that carefully and get as many partners as possible beforehand - gives much bigger chances it reaches more people.
Pracowałem przy kampaniach społecznych, w razie czego służę doświadczeniem.
This entry was edited (Friday, August 28, 2026, 10:21 AM)
I agree with Stallman and others on this sort of thing, it should be illegal for any public institution to use proprietary, corporate software in any capacity.
Public institutions are supposed to serve and benefit the public good first and foremost. The idea that they can do that equally well or better by partnering with mega-corps who's only fundamental drive is to generate as much profit as possible for their shareholders, is idiotic.
I was IT lead at an education trust (kinda like a school district but bigger) covering K-21 for a long time, managing a few thousand endpoints for a few thousand students. Laptops, desktops, tablets, smartphones, digital signage and embedded; devices belonging to schools, partner organisations, staff BYOD and student remote learning; structured IT suites in school campuses, stateless networks for anything portable, antique appliances that simply must work but also be accessible to particular people from anywhere; it goes on and it never ends.
No-one has time for that.
From a few central interfaces, I could deploy an application to every device. And, I could make sure that a particular website was accessible to every student from their fifteenth birthday, not a day before. And, I could make sure that any device a Ukrainian refugee logs into speaks Ukrainian. And, I could remove any bloatware. And, I could make sure that when a brand new laptop is drop-shipped to a teacher's home address directly from the distributor it will automatically configure itself with everything they need the second they connect it to their home Wifi without me even having to touch it. And, I could apply a photo-of-the-month to every device, even overlaying it with the appropriate school's logo. And I could disable (or force enable) any unwanted hardware or software features on any device. And I could make sure that every student's web traffic was appropriately filtered and, if nessecary, scrutinised.
And I could prove that all of it was working: I could prove it to staff, to parents, to governors and, when it came to it, I could prove it to the police and to lawyers. "When", not "if".
Forget schools for a second, look instead at big corporations. They are ruthlessly profit focused, but they all run Windows, Office, SharePoint, 365, etc because even though it costs money, it's cheaper overall and comes with a lot of protection, both technical and legal. Schools get that stuff basically for free, and it just works. Linux isn't there yet, not by a long shot, and no education authority worth their salt is going to take the risk of being the first to experiment with their student's wellbeing, let alone curriculum, for effectively - in their eyes - zero benefit.
To be blunt: when one of the children you are responsible for safeguarding is the victim of an attempted kidnapping that was only possible because of lax data security, no-one is going to have any tolerance for your personal philosophy about software licensing or your home-spun scripts. Ask me how I know.
Also, if your schools are letting advertisers/social media/whatever inspect student's data, that's nothing to do with the technology and everything to do with mismanagement: forcing them to manage yet another OS isn't going to fix that.
TLDR: If you want to make Linux replace Windows in schools, you first need to figure out how to make Linux replace Windows in hospitals, call centres and Fortune 500 corporations.
This entry was edited (Friday, August 28, 2026, 6:49 PM)
FOSS geeks are incapable of grasping why industry standards are industry standards. They genuinely believe that all major orgs only use Windows because they've been bribed/tricked into using it.
Linux isn't there yet, not by a long shot, and no education authority worth their salt is going to take the risk of being the first to experiment with their student's wellbeing, let alone curriculum, for effectively - in their eyes - zero benefit.
This is the crux of your ramble and it's nonsense.
The reason orgs use these tools is productivity, not the well-being of the students. To conflate the two is to admit you're a lackey of capitalism.
If the orgs cared about student well-being, they wouldn't be training them on proprietary systems and letting corpos harvest their data. Period.
Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 00:40 Sponsor: Joplin 02:08 A few milestones 06:13 Linux desktop: winning 16:46 Gaming: also winning 19:55 Server: we won 20:57 Smartphones: difficult 22:30 Linux is growing faster than ever 26:27 Sponsor: Tuxedo Computers
To the point. This Linux history recap kinda reminded me things are constantly going in the right direction in Linux / FOSS software world. And fast. That left me upbeat thinking in a few years time you're gonna be recording "and remember when there was virtually no fully functional Linux phone? And mobile market share was o-point-one or sth? Crazy huh?" XD
I am looking for good options for an elderly relative which has some onset of slight dementia, but is still living alone (with assistance).
The main problem is that usual things are becoming just too complicated for that person. There are too many details that don't matter. For example, user interfaces have a lot of features that are not strictly needed, many hidden states, often no clearly visible affordances, and so on. Some mail clients make it difficult to recognize phishing.
As a good example how it is done better, I'd name GNOME simple-scan. A really good and simple UI!
This person is currently using Thunderbird + Firefox on Windows, and K9 Mail on Android. Learned to use Windows in their sixties and is now in mid-eighties age.
Well as you pointed out the GNOME philosophy of keeping everything dead simple can be interesting there. Their mail client apps are Evolution and Geary, the last one seeming to be the simplest one.
Y'all will get pissy. You should set them up with an AI assistant interface. You could do it with a powerful GPU + qwen, but there are obviously non foss options as well.
Set up something like Hermes + Nemoclaw. Set them up with productivity skills they'll need, eg let's go through my email. As well as skills, memories, and cron tasks to help them through the day. Set them up with agents to review for scams and other malicious payloads. Skills to contact you to intervene when situations with low confidence arise.
The medical models for this are currently being developed, but the public ones are good enough for now.
Yes, it'll hallucinate, but I promise you it'll still be better at identifying scams than your family member. For me the biggest concern with be them creating an attachment to the AI which is certainly problematic but I'd weigh the risks and where they come from as age increases and dementia gets worse but for me the rest of the risk mitigation would be worth it.
This entry was edited (Thursday, August 27, 2026, 12:03 PM)
I'd recommend against having someone with cognitive health issues offload cognitive load to a machine that has demonstrated many times to be poor at it.
You've brought up the dangers of hallucinations and dependence, but I think the dangers are much riskier than you think they are.
Besides, doesn't learning and using critical thought help slow down the progress of dementia?
I assure you the dangers of falling for a scam and sending your retirement to a scammer is more consequential. You can instruct models to drop the nice act via skills and memories with rbac to mitigate. It's a tool to handle certain things and risk mitigate.
Not every LLM is candyai trying to date you. It's putting your emails in front of you and running scam detection and maybe paying a bill or two.
This entry was edited (Thursday, August 27, 2026, 7:50 PM)
Google, Microsoft, banks and everyone in between has been spending the last decade rolling out sophisticated scam detection systems and infrastructure. If a scam can get through all that, then it can get through your little kiddy model.
And even if you did have a model that worked well, why is the best interface for it an llm? Why not just have a big red "scam warning" banner? Loud, clear and to the point.
AI agents can make mistakes, that's something you're going to have to explain to the user. But you also have to explain to the user to always listen to the scam warning even if their gut thinks otherwise. How do you define whether or not you should trust the AI in such a way that someone with cognitive impairment can apply it?
If a scam can get through all that, then it can get through your little kiddy model.
I use FastMail which has a reputation for decent spam filtering, and spam messages still fall through. I also have AI agents process my emails and it correctly detects those messages as spam.
why is the best interface for it an llm?
Because you can talk to it like a person and it's not bounded by a GUI's features. Compared to humans they're more readily available and you're not risking your relationship if you need to ask something you wouldn't want to ask a person
Why not just have a big red “scam warning” banner?
Because we already have those and they aren't reliable enough
How do you define whether or not you should trust the AI in such a way that someone with cognitive impairment can apply it?
When in doubt ask a human when one becomes available
I’d recommend against having someone with cognitive health issues offload cognitive load to a machine that has demonstrated many times to be poor at it.
AI has improved tremendously though and outperforms old people with cognitive health issues by a large margin at this point, and that's even with low-cost models
This entry was edited (Friday, August 28, 2026, 1:44 AM)
A pleasure to read and fun to set up an own server. I run an agate server (written in Rust) on a Raspberry Pi B which is attached to my home router. Needs only about 1 Watt of power.
(Not related in any manner to the Google AI stuff.)
Normal is dead. Global civilizations, ecosystems and climates are collapsing. This film follows a grass roots resistance network that uses non violent tactics to confront the system that is destroying life support systems and barreling us deep into uncertainty.
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Dr_Vindaloo
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