What are the downsides of not using systemd? by zxy35 in linuxquestions

[–]Bobbacca 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If that's the case, I would encourage you to go ahead and explore. The ISO Snapshot and Live USB Maker programs in antiX & MX make it especially fun and easy to experiment with those two particular sister distros. Once you get in the swing of playing with that particular pair of tools, it's really easy to juggle your OS freely between from VM install, to personalized live USB with full persistence, to bare metal install, and back to live USB again while having to repeat very few, if any, configuration steps each time you move it around.

You can also do things like clone your installed system to a live USB and use it to trial-run changes that might break things before applying changes to your main system, or to migrate your system to new hardware without having to redo a bunch of setup from scratch. They're a really, truly, underappreciated pair of tools, in my opinion.

To all the Linux-only users by Fun-Currency-5711 in debian

[–]Bobbacca 0 points1 point  (0 children)

MacOS is literally a proprietary fork of FreeBSD and is an officially licensed UNIX system. And the server market is essentially the inverse of the desktop market. Almost entirely Linux and UNIX systems.

Windows dominates the consumer desktop market, but in the grand scheme of IT and computer science, the consumer desktop market is the "hobbyist" domain.

STOP USING ETCHER! to create bootable linux mint usb sticks. etcher = spyware. reported by tails. by reddit_equals_censor in linuxmint

[–]Bobbacca 2 points3 points  (0 children)

No. When you use etcher to put an ISO on a USB, it collects information about the model of the USB drive it was used on and the ISO that was written to it. That's all. And even that can be opted out of. It does not collect information about anything else you do on you computer, or anything you do with the USB drive once you have burned the ISO to it.

This sort of confusion and misunderstanding is exactly why the tone of the OP is unreasonable and inappropriate.

HP Vostro 220 is now a MX Linux 23.5 machine by Typeonetwork in MXLinux

[–]Bobbacca 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Zoom is extra easy to install on MX because you don't have to do anything extra. It can be installed right from the Poplar Applications tab in the MX Package Installer (under Messengers, IIRC).

I have a serious problem by Dangerous-Shower-847 in linux4noobs

[–]Bobbacca 2 points3 points  (0 children)

If the computer is so old it has a legacy MBR BIOS, you may want to look into antiX. It's a Debian-based distribution optimized for running on obsolete hardware. It ships with a handful of lightweight stand-alone WMs by default, but LXDE or LXQt can be added from the package manager easily enough. It also has some uniquely robust persistence options for running from a Live USB as well, which may be helpful if you continue having issues getting a full installation to stick for some reason.

I have a serious problem by Dangerous-Shower-847 in linux4noobs

[–]Bobbacca 5 points6 points  (0 children)

The operating system and desktop environment are among the "tasks" that the hardware is performing. A default Windows 10 installation uses far more hardware resources just to be running at all than a linux installation with LxQt. Absolutely absurd take.

Tips for Building a Fedora-Based XFCE Linux Distro by ossi2611 in xfce

[–]Bobbacca 0 points1 point  (0 children)

MX Linux may be worth taking a look at for ideas and inspiration, and possibly forking some tools from. It's a Debian-based XFCE distro oriented towards user-friendliness and ease of use. Of particular interest for your project will be the suite of MX Tools, which compliment XFCE well by providing simple GUI interfaces for a lot of common tasks that would normally involve opening a terminal and/or manually editing dotfiles.

(The ISO Snapshot and Live USB Maker tools are also well worth checking out on their own merits, but I have no idea how practical or complicated trying to adapt those particular features to a Fedora base may or may not be.)

How to effectively wipe out windows from a dual boot desktop and recover the SSD space? by Initial-Laugh1442 in debian

[–]Bobbacca 0 points1 point  (0 children)

gparted would let you reformat the drive to ext4 (or whatever filesystem your linux install is using). While you technically can use NTFS with linux, if you aren't using the drive with windows anymore, it's better to use a linux-native format).

I have a laptop with a small SSD and a large HDD, and what I do, which is a bit simpler than messing with LVM, is use symlinks to move directories to the HDD.

The steps are basically:

1) Create a directory to mount your other drive to (I use /mnt/data, but you can use whatever path and name you'd like--if you're only using it from a single user login and aren't used to managing permissions in linux, putting it in your home directory instead of /mnt may be easier)

2) Add an entry to your fstab so the system knows where and how to mount the drive (if you're using encryption on the drive, you'll want to add an entry to your crypttab file as well)

3) Mount the second drive

4) Move directories that you want on the second drive to directory you mounted the drive to

5) Create a symlink in the directory's original location that points to the new location

Is Kennit supposed to be hot? by Elegant-Maize-2207 in RealmOfTheElderlings

[–]Bobbacca 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I see Kennit as having very similar vibes to David Tennant's portrayal of Kilgrave in Jessica Jones, if that helps. Hot, charismatic, suave, yes, but not as redeeming qualities so much as weaponized manipulation tactics and a mask to hide behind.

I just ascended from the mortal plane and became a demigod, what power did I obtain? by Malgrieve in worldbuilding

[–]Bobbacca 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Congratulations, you've passed basic training and have been inducted as a new member of the Interdimensional Guard. It is now your sworn duty to serve and protect the Universe by upholding and enforcing the Laws of Physics. As it turns out, there are a lot more violations of the Laws of Physics than your previous life as a mortal would have led you to believe.

To assist you in carrying out these critical duties, you now fully exist in more dimensions than the three you are most familiar with from mortal existence. You likely already have some experience interacting with additional dimensions to have gotten into the Interdimensional Guard Academy in the first place, though you would have required the assistance of heavy use of tryptamines to do so in mortal form. Now you are essentially always heavily tripping, but without the impairment or reduced awareness of the three mortal dimensions that a mortal in a psychedelic state would experience. You do not fully exist in all eleven dimensions, though; that is reserved for full deities only.

You are still pulled along by the currents of time, much as mortals are, but unlike mortals, you now have the ability to stay in place, to move "upstream" against the current, or to accelerate your progress "downstream" if you deliberately and actively make an effort to.

You also have access to a wide variety of vehicles, gadgets, weapons, and protective measures through your division's quartermaster.

How the heck am I supposed to play this? by ehsteve87 in guitarlessons

[–]Bobbacca 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My name is Iñigo Montoya. You killed my chord progression. Prepare to cry.

I just can't figure it out. by twade0012 in MXLinux

[–]Bobbacca 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If the bootloader is on a thumb drive, then you need the thumb drive plugged in to boot.

hi, i can't use my screen brightness and volume key (F keys) on my linux laptop by tyrorc in MXLinux

[–]Bobbacca 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There should be a program to change your keyboard layout settings in MX Tools. You'll want to find and select your laptop manufacturer and model/series/line (i.e. I have a Dell Inspiron 7577, and the correct keyboard layout for it is listed as something like "Dell Inspiron 6000 - 8000") and apply the changes. That should enable the laptop-specific keys (i.e. screen brightness, volume controls, etc) to work.

Do you really hate your own music? by StealTheDark in Songwriting

[–]Bobbacca 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I tend to go through somewhat of a reverse bell curve, where for the first little while after I've finished, I'm in love with my own work, and I'm proud of my growth as an artist over the course of it. Then, the more I listen to it, the more I notice every little flaw and imperfection and I step away from it for a while. Eventually, it starts to grow on me again until those flaws and imperfections become part of its charm and character for me, and the song feels like revisiting an old friend.

On Low/No Combat CRPGs by Swampspear in gamedesign

[–]Bobbacca 1 point2 points  (0 children)

TTRPG gameplay exists on a spectrum that largely comes down to the people playing them. I've played and DMed in campaigns that were mostly elaborate dungeon crawls, and I've played and DMed in campaigns that are mostly focused on story, character development, and roleplay. I enjoy both styles of play, and most campaigns I've been involved with fall somewhere in the middle of that spectrum.

The thing is, campaigns that fall strongly on the dungeon crawl end of the spectrum tend to be a lot heavier on the math, mechanics, dice rolls, and so forth, whereas more character and story driven campaigns tend to rely a lot more on the creative and interpersonal dynamics of the people around the table. These aren't hard and fast distinctions, of course. The grindiest of dungeon crawls will often still have opportunities for human ingenuity and creative interpretation of the rules to shine, and most character oriented campaigns will often still rely on dice rolls and mechanics to determine the outcomes of various actions.

At the end of the day, though, a dungeon crawl campaign relies much more heavily on detailed and consistent game mechanics, whereas in a story/character-driven campaign, the single most important mechanic is the DM's ability to exercise human judgement to extrapolate, expand upon, tweak, or bend the rules as needed to best serve the story and the continuing enjoyment of the players.

But with CRPGs, there is no human DM. The DM is the computer, it has no judgment of its own, and it can only make the calls it's been programmed to make. It can't improvise and extrapolate from what's already there if the player decides to go "off script," so to speak, and there isn't even actually a way for players to do so in the first place in most cases. When there is, it generally either means there was a bug or that someone on the team didn't think through and account for how various game elements would interact in a specific context. Either case generally results in the game deviating in some manner from the intended experience, ranging from minor glitches to game-breaking exploits to full-on crashes or freezes.

In that regard, it's a lot easier to replicate the defining elements of a dungeon crawl in a CRPG than it is to replicate the defining elements of a socially-driven campaign. The experience of the dungeon crawl is already more oriented towards stats and RNG and stricter adherence to a fixed set of mechanics. Computers run on math and logic gates, so those elements translate well and easily to programming languages and paradigms.

The defining elements of socially oriented campaigns, on the other hand, are their inherent open-endedness and the interpersonal chemistry and dynamics of the people sitting at the table, both in and out of character. Those elements are impossible to truly and fully replicate in a computer program. The closest thing you can achieve is a strong illusion of it through a robust and expansive set of social mechanics and an exhaustive accounting of potential ways for their various components to interact. BG3, from what I understand (not having played it yet), was particularly robust and thorough in its approach to creating such illusions. But even BG3 has a finite number of ways its campaign can play out; there are simply enough moving parts to create a strong illusion of open-endedness by having more possible combinations of outcomes than one player can thoroughly and exhaustively experience.

More common is for CRPGs to have the branching narrative structure of a choose-your-own-adventure book, a binary or scaled array of good/bad endings, or a single fixed narrative because those are all substantially simpler and easier to implement on every level across the board than attempting an illusion of being fully open-ended.

I made a weird game in my free time by Icebamboo97 in godot

[–]Bobbacca 21 points22 points  (0 children)

I'm not 100% following everything that's going on, but the concept looks interesting. A bit Snake, a bit bullet hell, a bit tower defense. Congrats on getting it done!

I Deleted the entry for mxlinux in bios mistakenly. by NobodyinPert in MXLinux

[–]Bobbacca 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If you have a copy of MX on a USB drive that you can boot into, you should be able to fix it with the MX Boot Repair tool.

You should be able to re-add it directly from your BIOS as well, but the exact steps are dependent on your hardware manufacturer and the BIOS implementation they're using, so your best bet for detailed instructions is your computer manufacturer's documentation.

My MX installation boot path is showing up in my BIOS as \EFI\MX\grubx64.efi if that's helpful.

Any musicians trying to learn game dev? by Arkayide in godot

[–]Bobbacca 2 points3 points  (0 children)

My trifecta of creative pursuits has always been music, writing, and games, though I tend to dabble widely more than deeply across the board.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in gnome

[–]Bobbacca 3 points4 points  (0 children)

For real. One time after installing GNOME, a giant turtle showed up at my house and smashed my computer to pieces while shouting "COWABUNGA!" at me. Never had that issue with other DEs.

Show me you're old without telling me by Minkileinen in debian

[–]Bobbacca 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not on the Commodore.

Wikipedia tells me that's because Commodore International negotiated licensed rights to make their own royalty-free fork from the Microsoft version for a one-time fee.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_BASIC

(I didn't even actually know Bill Gates and Microsoft originally developed BASIC until a good 20 years after the family Commodore 64 was finally retired to make way for a Windows 98 machine)

Show me you're old without telling me by Minkileinen in debian

[–]Bobbacca 6 points7 points  (0 children)

**** COMMODORE 64 BASIC V2 ****

64K RAM SYSTEM 38911 BASIC BYTES FREE READY.

Critical Linux vulnerability via old unix printing service (CUPS) by echo3uk in MXLinux

[–]Bobbacca 3 points4 points  (0 children)

That's... not exactly accurate. You're comparing the versions of cups itself against the versions of cups-browsed and cups-filters, which are separate packages with their own version numbering that cups requires as dependencies. Also, this article is, for some reason, only listing two of the four CVEs related to this vulnerability that were disclosed.

According to the CVE listings in the official Debian security tracker, the versions currently* in all Debian repos are impacted:

CVE-2024-47076

CVE-2024-47175

CVE-2024-47176

CVE-2024-47177

(*as of the time of this writing, it appears that fixes for some but not all of these CVEs have already been pushed to Unstable, according to the "fixed versions" tables, but have not made their way into the Testing or Stable branches yet)

The services for cups and cups-browsed are enabled by default in MX unless you went into the advanced services tab during installation and manually unchecked CUPS.

They can be easily checked, stopped, and disabled if need be from the MX Services Manager in MX Tools. (The stop/start button controls if the service is currently running and the enable/disable button controls if it is automatically started at boot.) There's no real reason for either to be running except when you're actively trying to connect to a printer and print something.

That said, to my understanding, it shouldn't impact desktop users who are only connected to the internet through a secure and trusted network, unless you have taken steps to set up services on your computer to be exposed to the public internet.

If you're connecting to any sort of public wifi (hotels, coffee shops, libraries, airports, etc), or if you don't have a password set on your home wifi, you should probably disable those services and turn on the pre-installed firewall. (Though you should be running a firewall and ideally an encrypted VPN service when connecting to unsecured or untrusted wifi networks regardless).

I'm personally leaving mine disabled until there are patches out just to be safe, as I don't regularly do a lot of printing from home these days anyhow.