quat @ quat @lemmy.sdfeu.org

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Joined

2 yr. ago

As an experiment you could go to debian.org and see if you find the download link.

If you can understand written english well, there's translation/internationalization that isn't too scary. What is your native language?

While I do agree that the website is bad, nowadays the main iso includes non-free firmware, and it's the same installer for all DEs.

"Hello, support? How do I get through the Gnomish Mines in Nethack?"

People will say "use this editor" or "use that window manager", but honestly it's just personal preference. There's no award for using ed to edit files, and almost anything you can do with one distro you can do with any other distro. You might get an urge to distrohop and compile the kernel, and that's fine, but imho far more useful is to learn how pipes work and what you can do with regular expressions. A tutorial for bash is always useful.

I agree with that. Big players have too much power. In theory there's nothing that stops us from self-hosting e-mail, but in practice today it takes a lot to make it work and be accepted by the big players. I think free speech is desirable and wish that it was the norm. The best we can do is to use services that align with that ideal, and make sure that the system itself is built so that it is open for anyone to be in control over who they interact with. Even if that means someone choosing to not interact with certain others. As long as it's easy to use an alternative when there are restrictions.

Imho, the argument doesn't translate to countries. In Iran, the government has a monopoly on governing, and most people can't just hop over to another country with different laws. In effect, you can be stuck with a system you don't like.

In the digital world, and Lemmy in particular, the same is not true. If you have a computer, you can "start a new country" with your own rules. No one is forced to join, and you can't force anyone else to do anything. As a whole, Lemmy allows all opinions. The problem is central power, and free federated software is a solution.

Being able to run your own instance with any policies you want is a strength of lemmy.

The Gopher renaissance era perhaps?

I've started to reconsider how I do things online. For such a long time it's been the norm to expect things for free (gratis), and users became the product. If the choice now is being bombarded with ads or paying for a service, I'd rather pay a reasonable price. If I want online storage to keep my files backed up and available, then a small sum is acceptable to me. The important thing is to choose providers who believe in the open spirit of the internet, using free software, respecting privacy. I've submitted a couple of patches to the operating system I use. Etc. I want the internet to be a cooperative, friendly place.

This reminds me of a talk by Rob Pike that was made 23 years ago: https://doc.cat-v.org/bell_labs/utah2000/utah2000.html

Same for me, sort of. Started with Ubuntu in 2007 (I still feel nostalgic about the login drum "bu-du-bup" sound), then arch for a couple of years, all the tiling wms, endless polishing of dotfiles. I mainly used the computer to modify how I used the computer. Then I found things I liked doing, like typesetting with TeX, and after that I just wanted a system that let me do that without spending time on the system itself. Since then I've used Debian.

I see. I asked because "stable" means different things in different distros. In Debian it means that interfaces and functionality in one version doesn't change. If I set up a script that interacts with the system in various ways, parsing output, using certain binaries in certain ways etc, I should be able to trust that it works the same year after year with upgrades within the same release. To some people this is important, to some people it isn't.

How do you define "stable"?

Find an instance with active and good admins? Maybe they are very busy, in which case it's also a good idea to decentralize.

At my work they wanted better security, and made the rule of minimum 12 characters, must include all sorts of numbers, special characters, etc, no previously used password and it must be changed every month, 3 attempts then the account is locked and you have to call IT.

The result was that people wrote their passwords on post-its on the screen, so it led to worse security overall and they had ro relax the rules.

Where would you place Stalin in that compass?

I think many linux users go through a similar journey. In the beginning you feel a need to tweak everything manually, you take pride in it being difficult and you polish your dotfiles. Modifying the OS itself is 90% of what you use the computer for. You have strong opinions on tiling window managers. But then that becomes kind of old when you need your computer for actual tasks and work. You want to work on your actual projects, not configure irssi or ncmpcpp. The joy of tinkering with the OS itself transforms into seeing it as a tool to do interesting things with. Still, now you have an idea of how to fix things, where to look, but configuring Xorg is not the fun part of using a computer.

I've used debian stable for a decade now. The things I care about are not dependent on new features, so I'm not in a hurry to upgrade to newer versions. I'm happy with security updates and a system that is reliable above all.

Long time ago, I did several villages where I grew up. This was before satellite images covered that area, so I did it the old fashioned way with a GPS, cycling up and down every single street, writing down name and surface in a notebook. Walked around every field, every patch of forest, creek, etc. It took years, but I've literally been everywhere in those villages. It was fun :) When aerial images came I could do private buildings too.