merc @ merc @sh.itjust.works

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2 yr. ago

Yeah, I only use flatpak for GUI apps that don't need any special handling. To be fair, that's a decent number of the things I use most often: Firefox, Thunderbird, Signal, Kodi, Discord, Gimp, VLC. I think it's also how I installed some themes for KDE / Plasma.

Console stuff I've either done in a distrobox using the conventions of that OS (apt for the Ubuntu one, DNF for the Fedora one), or I've used homebrew. But, I haven't used too much homebrew because I want my "normal" console to be as unchanged as possible.

There are a few things I've used distrobox-export to make available outside the distrobox.

It took me a little while to understand how you're supposed to think about the system, but now that I think I get it, I really like it. My one frustration is that there's an nVidia driver bug that's affecting me, and nVidia has been unable to fix it for a few months. I think I'd be in exactly the same situation with a traditional distro. The difference is that if they ever fix it, I'll have to wait a couple of weeks until the fix makes it to the Bazzite stable build. I suppose I could switch to Bazzite testing and get it within days of it being fixed instead of weeks. Apparently just use a "rebase" command and reboot. But, I'm hesitant to do that because other than the nVidia driver, everything's so stable.

So, there are multiple ways of installing things. For GUI apps the standard way is flatpaks. Some non-GUI things are installed that way, but it's less common.

For CLI apps, homebrew is installed by default and it's recommended as a way to install CLI things.

The method I like for apps that have a lot of interdependencies is to use a distrobox. If you want a development environment where multiple apps all talk to each-other, you can isolate them on their own distrobox and install them however you like there.

I currently have a distrobox running ubuntu that I use for a kubernetes project. In that distrobox I install anything I need with apt, or sometimes from source. Within that kubernetes project I use mise-en-place to manage tools just for that particular sub-project. What I like about doing things this way is that when I'm working on that project I have all the tools I need, and don't have to worry about the tools for other projects. My base bazzite image is basically unchanged, but my k8s project is highly customized.

If you really want to, you can still install RPMs as overlays to the base system, it's just not recommended because that slows down upgrades.

More details here:

https://docs.bazzite.gg/Installing_and_Managing_Software/

It would be smart to diversify, but it's going to take a long time, and it's never going to be as efficient as just moving things across the biggest land border in the world.

Canada would have to build up the Atlantic shipping ports, and all the rail and highway connections leading to those ports to do more business with Europe. That's going to be expensive and take a long time.

As an example, Australia is an isolated continent so everything entering/leaving has to go by port. Its largest port is the Port of Port Hedland in WA. That port handles more than 500 million tonnes of cargo every year.

By contrast, the biggest port in Canada is the Port of Vancouver which handles only 140 million metric tonnes, less than 1/3 of what Port Hedland handles. Australia has multiple other ports over 100 million tonnes too.

Has your fiancé had to update drivers? Has he had to upgrade to a new release? Has he had to figure out how to install a version of something that isn't in the Debian stable repositories?

If the only application your fiancé uses is Firefox, then he might go a long time before having any kind of problem. It all depends on how he uses it.

Debian is fine as an introduction to Linux, if that's what you want. But, as a beginner, you're going to screw up, and Debian doesn't do anything to protect you from that.

Atomic distributions let you use Linux but make it harder to shoot yourself in the foot. It's much harder to break the system in a way you can't just reboot to fix it.

It all depends on what your goal is. If your goal is to learn Linux by using it, then by all means, go for a traditional distribution. Debian is nice, but I'd go for Ubuntu. But, if your goal is to have a stable system that you can't screw up as a beginner I'd go with an atomic distribution. If your goal is to play games, Bazzite is hard to beat.

You can still learn Linux if you use an atomic distribution. Configuring and using the desktop environment is basically the same. But, you don't need to worry about your drivers, and you don't install packages the traditional way. If you want to learn those things, you can run a VM or a distrobox.

In addition, tariffs need to be seen as a rational thing that will be kept in place for a long period.

If Trump wants to bring manufacturing jobs back to the US, businesses need a minimum 5 year plan to buy or build factories, buy equipment, hire people, and so-on. That's a huge investment and a big risk. If the tariffs are cancelled before the factory is finished and orders start coming in, the investors might be out the entire amount.

Trump's tariffs are utter chaos. They're applied then removed, the value changes randomly. He's putting tariffs on US military bases and uninhabited islands. In that kind of environment potential investors are just going to convert their money into gold and wait out the chaos.

As an example of that, Canada currently depends massively on trading with the US. US tariffs are devastating to Canada's economy.

But, over the last week or so, the Canadian dollar has done extremely well against the US dollar because for all the damage the US is doing to Canada, it's hurting itself so much more.

I hope one of the first things to change is the ridiculous Intellectual Property laws the US forced on the rest of the world. Those laws benefit the US at the expense of everyone else.

I completely disagree. Debian is not beginner-friendly. Go with Bazzite if your focus is gaming.

It is a gaming-focused distribution. It's also an "atomic" distribution, which basically means it's really hard to break it. It's more like Android or IOS where the OS and base system are managed by someone else. They're read-only so you can't accidentally break them.

For example, instead of trying to manage your own video card drivers, they come packaged with the base system image, and they're tested to make sure they work with all the other base components.

I've been using Linux since the 1990s, so I've run my share of distributions: Slackware, RedHat, Gentoo, Debian, Ubuntu, etc. Even for someone experienced, atomic distributions are great. But, for a newcomer they're so much better.

I don't know if it's exactly the same, but they definitely have a limited number of loans before the library is forced to buy another copy.

Here's an article from 2023 by a librarian with more details:

Other titles are metered. This is essentially a lease. Libraries purchase a title for time, 12 to 24 months or by checkouts, usually 26. When the terms of the lease expire the item is no longer available and has to be repurchased.

It's not just Obama. Reagan spent only 2 terms, 8 years as governor of California before becoming president. George W Bush spent only 5 years as governor of Texas before becoming president. JD Vance only spent 2 years as a senator before becoming VP.

For people who haven't become president, Tammy Duckworth spent only 4 years as a congresswoman before being elected to the senate. John McCain was only a congressman for 4 years before becoming a senator.

Generally people who get national name recognition that quickly don't hang out in congress that long. Once they hit the senate, sometimes their progress stalls. See Biden, Warren, Bernie, McCain, John Edwards, John Kerry, Bob Dole, etc. But, normally national name recognition = senate, at a minimum.

Did you know that you can 3d print a house in less than 24 hours? You can't download the concrete, but you could download the plans.

We're maybe slowly creeping towards a post-scarcity world. If we can avoid destroying ourselves or the planet in the next century, we might get there. But, the entrenched interests are holding on with their fingernails.

One awful example of this is library books.

In the before times, people had to go and take an actual physical book out of the library. Along came e-books. In theory, a library now only needed to buy a single copy of a book and they could lend it out to everyone. It's no surprise that they didn't do that, instead if they want to loan out 10 copies at a time, they buy 10 books.

What's really stupid is that the publishers weren't satisfied with that arrangement. They also want to simulate wear and tear on these digital ebooks, so it can be just like paperbacks. So, after 26 loans, DRM on the ebooks means they self-destruct.

It's amazing to me that she's still only a congresswoman. I can't think of anybody who has been in the national spotlight for that long without moving up to at least senator, if not a cabinet position.

This is the case we know about, how many others are there?

I think everyone knows how great the BBC is. But, not everyone knows just how big and important it is. It is the largest broadcast news organization in the world. It has more than 5500 journalists and 50 foreign news bureaus. Canada shouldn't compete with the BBC, but it should at least be BBC-like within its own borders.

Other national broadcasters are also great. Look at Australia's Triple J for example. Not only does it expose young Australians to Australian music they wouldn't otherwise hear on commercial radio, it also has science programs aimed at children and young adults. I love Dr. Karl's stuff, even though I'm definitely not in the target demographic (being non-Australian and old).

IMO, the statutory funding isn't enough either. It's a step in the right direction. But, if all it takes is parliament voting, then it's vulnerable to the next PC majority. If it's made independent enough, that should also help it avoid accusations of being a government mouthpiece.

I'm not sure if everyone knows this, but commercial weather forecasters get their weather information from Environment Canada, the American NOAA, and so on. Very few have their own weather satellites etc. The Environment Canada weather forecasts are pretty barebones, but they're the kind that are useful for pilots, shipping, etc. The Weather Network, Weather Channel, AccuWeather, all take that information and build on it for fancier and more user-friendly weather reports.

I think it would be great if the CBC could have a basic news wire service that commercial news services could build on. The local bureaus that Carney is recommending don't have to be full setups with reporters doing live to-camera pieces. They could be more like Thomson Reuters dispatches (a Canadian company btw). That would make the money go farther, and would provide a barebones framework for the more detailed reporting that say City or CTV wanted to do.

Anyhow, it's great that the current PM (and likely future PM) is a guy who lived and worked in London for a while, and understands how great the BBC is.

Someone who spends way too much time on LinkedIn.

Some provinces have connections to exchange electricity when needed—but this is the exception rather than the rule, and they are underutilized where they do exist.

This seems pretty crazy. Canada is the size of California by population, but is split into multiple small grids. Meanwhile, California is part of a huge grid that includes 11 other states, basically everything west of Texas.

Especially with renewables, it seems like Canada should join the grids together as much as possible so there's redundancy.

The privacy issues are nasty, but a smart toilet could actually be an incredibly useful device.

Can you imagine if every time you went to the bathroom, your toilet could do some of the basic stool / urine tests you get at the doctor's office? Certain diseases could be caught extremely early, and you wouldn't have to do anything different.

And then there are bidet functions. Forget smearing poop all over your ass with paper, wash the poop off with nice warm water every time.

I wouldn't want to have to use a smartphone app for that, but there's no reason you couldn't have a simple set of buttons on the toilet itself. You could keep the manual flush lever and only use that if you preferred, but if you wanted an even better experience and a better clean, that option would be available.

Reminder: never go have pancakes at wise_pancake's house.