The Linux Thread - The Autist's OS of Choice

[Autism Contractor]

I'll try out both, it's not my daily driver and I basically only use it to ssh into servers. Thank you both for the input on my next waste of time. Maybe one day I'll be able to fully escape windows.

 

[prollyanotherlurker]

This might be the most queer person I have ever seen.



I've been running various distros on my laptop or dual boot for a while now so I guess I'll try hyprland out. I heard some shit about hyperland but cant remember why it was catching shit. I'll have to get those fuggly ass thigh highs too now since I'll have the thinkpad arch BTW loadout.

in that comment section there was someone telling them "you look like someone straight out of an anime" and how quirky they were....

I've been running various distros on my laptop or dual boot for a while now so I guess I'll try hyprland out. I heard some shit about hyperland but cant remember why it was catching shit. I'll have to get those fuggly ass thigh highs too now since I'll have the thinkpad arch BTW loadout.

if you are talking about the actual program catching shit, it could have been a few things. One, was in the beginning it was being VERY heavily developed, so peoples configs would break as new things were added or removed, and also because new things were constantly being added people would find bugs.

If its not that, then its probably just something more wayland related than hyprland. Since its still in a transitional period. But imo both wayland, and hyprland at this point are actually at the point where they are ready for daily use imo. At least I have never personally ran into anything that broke because of it (at least not in the last 6 months or so).

currently using Garuda w/ KDE Plasma on my laptop and Kinda want to switch to something else, was debating NixOS but they seem to have been having a DEI tism fit. Any good suggestions or should I just bite the bullet and install arch and a tiling window manager?

On the nixos thing, since you brought that up in the original post. I'm personally not a fan. I gave it a chance, and to me the extra stuff you get from using that model. Just doesn't have any benefit to someone like me. I could see it being perfect for someone that has a ton of computers they need to install the exact same setup on. And some server related applications. But for desktop use. My impression from trying it. Is nix is needlessly complicated for using it as a desktop user. And keep in mind. This is someone that uses Gentoo saying that, as if Gentoo wasn't needlessly complicated enough.

Really same goes for fedora atomic which I tried not long ago.

Well sort of. It would also be good to just install on a bunch of computers, and have repeatability, but the other application where using it wouldn't seem like a much worse experience than just a normal distro. Is for someone that wan't exactly what they give you with their distro. Because I like using the terminal, having different shells, tui's, cli's and other terminal programs. It fell apart real quick. Because in order to install those you needed to either use busybox, or rebuild the os-tree with the programs you want to add, (which defeats the purpose). And the only other way they provided to install programs is using flatpaks, for you GUI apps. And having to use busybox, itself bothered me. One reason, was one of the programs just broke when trying to run it, but the other is you have to take all the extra steps to install it with that, then to run it, unless you want to type busybox run "program name" you need to now make an alias to run the program like you normally would. That isn't particularly hard to do. But the fact you have to do it, and that is their suggested solution sucks to me.

I didn't have any problem with the idea of immutable/atomic/declarative distros going in really. But after actually trying to give them a chance. I just really hated them. I mean, do we really need to turn Linux into android? Even if theoretically there are some benefits. To me the losses are more than I am willing to give up. To me, the fact you have enough freedom to completely ruin your system is one of the amazing things about Linux. Not the ruining your system part, just the fact that you can literally do anything you want with it. I think those types of distros do have their place, but I think the people that are completely wrapped up in the immutable thing, are just wrong when they say they are the future of Linux. At least I don't think they are going to be the default (or really hope not).

Edit: why is it that if you write a long post, replying to it is disabled? I feel like I didn't see this before, and now it seems like if a post get's past a certain length, you can't reply at that point. I just don't get the reason for it.

 

[Looking Glass]

If its not that, then its probably just something more wayland related than hyprland.

Its probably the tranny drama. That or instability, though its not too bad at this point.

But for desktop use. My impression from trying it. Is nix is needlessly complicated for using it as a desktop user. And keep in mind. This is someone that uses Gentoo saying that, as if Gentoo wasn't needlessly complicated enough.

I like it personally. Its nice knowing i can for the most part recover all my configs from a git repo and share common ones between more than one computer. Also direnvs are nice.

Edit: why is it that if you write a long post, replying to it is disabled?

Too long to quote in full, but you can still highlight text to quote it.

 

[Overly Serious]

Chat. Is this autism or schizophrenia?

On the one hand I want to say that being able to tell what someone is like from their distro is absurd. But on the other one look at that kid and I could immediately tell he used Arch.

 

[⠠⠠⠅⠑⠋⠋⠁⠇⠎ ⠠⠠⠊⠎ ⠠⠠⠁ ⠠⠠⠋⠁⠛]

On the one hand I want to say that being able to tell what someone is like from their distro is absurd. But on the other one look at that kid and I could immediately tell he used Arch.

What Linux distribution would Ted Kaczynski use? I would bet on NetBSD

 

[Jang Joo]

What Linux distribution would Ted Kaczynski use? I would bet on NetBSD

LFS

 

[Oat Milk Matcha Latte]

What Linux distribution would Ted Kaczynski use? I would bet on NetBSD

"What kind of niche tech would the writer of 'anti-tech revolution' prefer?" is an absolutely deranged question.

BTRFS is shit, so I can only imagine the windows driver is worse

Btrfs is pretty decent nowadays albeit eternally unfinished. I've switched from ZFS entirely with zero issues. The only thing I'm kind of missing is the in-band deduplication.

 

[Rusty Metal Skull Gun]

What Linux distribution would Ted Kaczynski use? I would bet on NetBSD

A pen and paper.

 

[AmpleApricots]

I'll never understand why this guy is venerated by some. Complete nutjob. He argued for a lifestyle we moved away from because it was basically non-stop suffering. He also wanted to become a tranny at one point, went to the psychiatrist to talk about it but changed his mind at the last second, and very sanely considered murdering the psychiatrist because he was angry about his own sexual fantasies. Then he became a total recluse, got upset at some environmental destruction in his backyard and his grand plan was to blow up an airplane, random computer store owners and professors.

If he grew up today, he'd totally run an invidious instance, install arch and wear programmer socks.

There's a point to be made about ethical use of technology and the whole "just because we can, doesn't mean we should" dilemma, but that guy's views were worthless. I accept him as poster child how fucked up MKULTRA was, at best.

 

[analrapist]

What Linux distribution would Ted Kaczynski use?

Temple OS.

 

[prollyanotherlurker]

Its probably the tranny drama. That or instability, though its not too bad at this point.

I like it personally. Its nice knowing i can for the most part recover all my configs from a git repo and share common ones between more than one computer. Also direnvs are nice.

Too long to quote in full, but you can still highlight text to quote it.

I won't say anyone is wrong from choosing to run nix for their desktop. Because if you find utility in it then obviously it's useful to you.

That said I'm able to back up all my configs just on my normal distros. I use a USB instead of a git repo. Mostly because I haven't spent the time to do it. But on a new install I plug I in. Copy all the files I've backed up to the new system and that's done.

The only difference is I need to install the programs after. Which. I will probably get around to writing an install script at some point for. Just so I don't need to remember everything I want.

I might look into homed. At some point.

 

[HootersMcBoobies]

I accept him as poster child how fucked up MKULTRA was, at best.

I would have started with this point. Every action he took was likely influenced by MK Ultra programming. Tom O'Neill found a lot of direct connections between Charles Manson and doctors involved in MK Ultra as well.

I also don't get people who praise the Killdozer dude. He didn't have any connections to MK Ultra, but the 2019 documentary Tread plays his old audio recordings and interviews all his old friends and rivals. Dude was a psycho and had a completely different interpretation of events than reality. People praise him for not killing anyone, but that's because the cops evacuated all the buildings (he drove through a part of a library that was filled with school children prior to the reverse 911 call). Dude was no libertarian heo. He was offer several 100k+ more than his property was worth just to calm him and he turned it down. Guy was scum.

LFS

A pen and paper.

To keep this on topic, Uncle Tedshit wouldn't use a computer, but if he did .. he'd George RR Martin it with an 80s Wordstar and floppy disks.

Charles Manson is Hanna Montana Linux

Marvin John Heemeyer (aka the Killdozer guy) would be whatever operating system is one those Casio watches used by terrorists for bombs ... or Slackware.

 

[Unicorn Fairie]

LXDE is the best desktop by virtue of being able to run on a SUN Ultra or maybe even a late SUN4.

 

[⠠⠠⠅⠑⠋⠋⠁⠇⠎ ⠠⠠⠊⠎ ⠠⠠⠁ ⠠⠠⠋⠁⠛]

I also don't get people who praise the Killdozer dude. He didn't have any connections to MK Ultra, but the 2019 documentary Tread plays his old audio recordings and interviews all his old friends and rivals. Dude was a psycho and had a completely different interpretation of events than reality. People praise him for not killing anyone, but that's because the cops evacuated all the buildings (he drove through a part of a library that was filled with school children prior to the reverse 911 call). Dude was no libertarian heo. He was offer several 100k+ more than his property was worth just to calm him and he turned it down. Guy was scum.

I mean, the killdozer guy was a libertarian hero- and also scum. The only libertarian who has ever done anything for the courage of his convictions for anything beyond hostile individualism was Timothy McVeigh.

 

[HexFag]

Does anybody have any experience with FVWM3 and NSCDE?

 

[ZMOT]

I pray for the day that the hobbyist software scene is not completely infected by political nonsense, but I don't think it's coming any time soon. You're simply going to have to ride the tiger no matter what choice you make as an end user.

it will get better eventually, I'd say we're already on the way.
you have to remember all that idpol-shit only exists because troons and antifags exploit it for power and money. people will get sick of it, given the last election most already are, and the extremists will only get more deranged once they get pushed more and more to the fringes, which only accelerates it.

it will probably never go back to the good old 90's, but the commie-troon infestation will subside at some point when no one gives a fuck anymore and kicks then once they fuck up to be replaced.

I'll have to get those fuggly ass thigh highs too now since I'll have the thinkpad arch BTW loadout.

aren't archfags usually depicted as the fat stallman-type nerd?

 

[AmpleApricots]

Killdozer

Think people want to celebrate these people as working-class heroes that stick it to the man and so they get romanticized and their flaws glanced over until the story that is told is very different from what actually happened. You could sort of see it happening in real time with Terry Davis - before anyone gets angry: I don't have anything against the dude, but he was severely mentally ill. He became a bit of an icon in certain circles but also remember that the dude used to jerk off in front of his webcam and had quite a few, let's say, unhealthy obsessions. Tragic story and not quite comparable with the others but lots of things wrong with that dude, too. People like to whitewash these things later on and then end up creating a myth other hapless people then end up believing because they don't know the original story, which I totally feel is the case with "Uncle Ted" considering that the people that go on about him often were babies when he was arrested.

As in restoring your distro - just store whatever the equivalent of the world file (e.g. in Alpine /etc/apk/world) is and write a script that takes it and re installs all the programs. Then back up /var (you can exclude /var/tmp) and /etc which shouldn't be huge and just dump them into the new system. It's more difficult with something like gentoo because if you don't wanna rebuild everything you kind of have to back up the entire system, which isn't great. I'm not sure something as complicated as Nix is necessary. Not dissing it per se because for that I'd have to try it first.

 

[prollyanotherlurker]

I mean, the killdozer guy was a libertarian hero- and also scum. The only libertarian who has ever done anything for the courage of his convictions for anything beyond hostile individualism was Timothy McVeigh.

I don't think I would consider either of them libertarian heros. The first seemed like someone who was already a bit unhinged, who when got fucked over basically decided to kill himself, just in a really elaborate, and destructive way, to do as much damage to the people he blamed on the way out. Tbh I don't really think anyone should consider someone who's only notable moment, was a suicide, a hero (and people don't frame it that way, but that's exactly what it was).

And Timothy McVeigh. He claimed to do it as revenge for Waco. Which sure Waco and Ruby ridge were fucked up, but that doesn't really seem like a super libertarian stance to me. And I don't think anything either of them did, helped more people adopt libertarian ideals. Generally when someone does something fucked up, and associates it with a movement that does a lot more harm than good for the cause. For a much milder example think of ecological activists doing retarded protests. They just made people hate them. (Those could also be partially a psyop)

 

[HootersMcBoobies]

As in restoring your distro - just store whatever the equivalent of the world file (e.g. in Alpine /etc/apk/world) is and write a script that takes it and re installs all the programs. Then back up /var (you can exclude /var/tmp) and /etc which shouldn't be huge and just dump them into the new system. It's more difficult with something like gentoo because if you don't wanna rebuild everything you kind of have to back up the entire system, which isn't great. I'm not sure something as complicated as Nix is necessary.

Gentoo has a world file too. But honestly you don't need to do either of those. Just rsync the entire disk:

rsync -avxHAWXS --numeric-ids root@old-machine:/{bin,boot,etc,lib*,opt,sbin,usr,var,home} .

You need to recreate proc, tmp, dev, sys (anything on a virtual filesystem), bind mount all the virtual file systems from your livecd to the new root, chroot into the new system and reinstall Grub. If you new drive is larger than the old one, you really just need to use dd to copy the whole disk, chroot into it and install Grub (or use the EFI shell to boot Grub directly on the new system, and the install Grub when it boots or use efibootmgr directly to add Grub to the EFI menu). If you use ZFS, you don't even need dd. Just zfs send/recv the snapshot to the new drive and use zfsbootmenu .. no more Grub!

Nix is neat because you have a snapshot of and entire package tree at one point in time. Imagin wanting to roll back your entire Debian or Mint system to the exact same packages that were installed last Tuesday. Say you do nightly updates. You've gotta figure out what's been installed when, find the packages for that date, and pin all of them. If you do nightly updates and something breaks and you don't notice it until a week later and you can't figure out exactly what it is, you might be pulling your hair out. With nix you can roll back the entire thing base on one of the previous hashes for the entire package tree.

I've never used NixOS because I'm allergic to systemd, but nix on Gentoo (via nix-shell or direnv) works fine. It's like a virtual environment for Ruby/Python, but for the entire set of Linux packages! You can also use it to build containers. I started writing some scripts to create container "updates" and push/restart them, but the Nix documentation is dog shit and I'm starting to worry about the weird political situation going on in its fandom/cult.

 

[AmpleApricots]

But honestly you don't need to do either of those. Just rsync the entire disk:

That's roughly what my server does every day to back up the machines on the network. My point was with binary distributions reinstalling is a rather quick affair, with gentoo you'd really have to back up everything if you don't want to rebuild everything. Gentoo clocks in at a slightly bigger size because of all the installed dependencies. Backup might not always be practical for everyone, binary distros are simpler there. Absolutely no point to back up everything if you don't need the guarantee to be up again even with no internet connection when needed be.

Grub

I don't use grub, uefistub all the way. Never really got the point of grub anymore with current x86. I don't really fiddle with boot parameters except once and my kernel has a handwrought initramfs which needs to unlock the drive first anyways. On the kernel in my server I stuffed wireguard in there too so I can remotely connect to unlock the drive if I ever need to reboot it from a distance. It's also neat that you can just drop the new uefistub kernel on an USB stick if you want to try something out in your kernel config and still can boot into your normal system with that. You can also make uefi entries to select different kernels in your uefi boot partition but I never felt the need to screw with that either.

Nix

It sounds neat until you ask yourself for what you'll ever really need all that, which I always did when I came across the features of NixOS. Maybe if you set up machines and manage hundreds of machines all the time, but meh, I don't really do that (YMMV, obviously). And even with Gentoo it's been a long time since an update totaled anything for me. It helps only to update when it actually makes sense to do so. If you wanna be somewhat energy-conscious, that makes double the sense with Gentoo. More important with my current Gentoo system than my first I wanna say Pentium 3 one.

Gentoo has a lot of ugliness but I always come back to it because the unparalleled customization, down to the seamless way to add patches to software packages. No other distro offers that in a straightforward way. It's just kinda alarming how the dependencies keep blooming in the last 5-10 years, but well that affects everything anyways, just in gentoo you're more viscerally aware of it.