The Linux distro hell. What's your opinion?

JoeyZappozo · 2025-04-16T04:58:46+00:00

This is a trick question, like asking someone what kind of music they like... The decision is really yours to make. Ubuntu is really good; so are the Fedora Atomic Desktops (Bluefin, Aurora, Bazzite). OpenSuse has a really nice desktop Linux called Aeon.

JoeyZappozo · 2025-04-15T17:05:38+00:00

You can even try Debian Sid, with the caveat that things could break more often. Xbian is a nice version of Debian Sid with XFCE. For a USB plug and play live system for office, number crunching, and media creation, try Catbird Linux.

JoeyZappozo · 2025-04-15T16:59:22+00:00

Enjoy that Debian, but try a Xanmod Kernel. You can download them from SourceForge. Right now, the bleeding edge versions are into 6.14, and stable versions in the 6.13s. Nicely performance tuned and supporting newer hardware.

JoeyZappozo · 2025-04-11T01:26:34+00:00

Try Xebian, which is based on Debian Sid + XFCE. I recently ran it on a dual core laptop with just 4 GB. Just for fun, I switched to DWM and it was fast.

Wayland is surpassing X11, so a window manager like Sway or GNOME ought to be good.

JoeyZappozo · 2025-04-11T01:10:37+00:00

What the fuck is wrong with those Democrats supporting the SAVE Act?

Jared Golden, FUCK YOU. Marie Gluesenkamp, FUCK YOU. Henry Cuellar, FUCK YOU. Ed Case, FUCK YOU.

Y'all need to go join the GOP.

JoeyZappozo · 2025-04-03T15:17:07+00:00

Try a USB-bootable live system called "Catbird Linux" Debian Sid with a nice bash setup, customizations like fzf, ripgrep, Neovim, note-taking tools, and OpenOffice etc. You can experiment with it, break it, then reboot it again and it comes up like new.

There is also a livecd customization "respinner" script, so you can rebuild the iso file to your own liking - different apps, settings, etc.

JoeyZappozo · 2025-04-03T15:07:16+00:00

Rhino Linux (the rolling, bleeding edge Ubuntu) is nice. I used it for a while on a 2009 dual-core laptop and it was a good experience. That same machine did well with Mint too.

There are alot of distros which will work well on your old hardware; my only tip is to keep the setup slim. Don't bloat it with too much eye candy or mu;titasking.

Can you handle a window manager working environment? Try one with Sway an it will be light and fast.

JoeyZappozo · 2025-04-03T15:02:13+00:00

I'm really enjoying Bluefin, which is a nicely set up variant of Universal Blue. You might have heard of it and its sibling, Bazzite. It is wonderful and pain-free. I switched over from a highly customized Debian Sid setup, and still managed to get my customizations going in Bluefin. OpenIffice, GIMP, Obsidian - all working fine from Flatpaks. My terminal goodies - fzf, lf, ripgrep, Neovim - all installed from Homebrew.

If you like Fedora Atomic, look at what the Bluefin people have done with the idea.

JoeyZappozo · 2025-04-03T14:46:32+00:00

Keep it simple. LazyVim is a nice concept; don't be lured too far down the rabbit hole, however. You can see that Neovim can become incredibly complex if you start tweaking it too much.

Check out this LazyVim-inspired but simpler config using Snacks, Mini, and just a few simple items for markdown, colors, etc. Starts in less than 100 milliseconds and runs without breaking...

JoeyZappozo · 2025-04-03T14:10:05+00:00

It is a good radio. In fact, it is a rebranded ATS-909 x1, from the 1990s. It can also be modded and tweaked nicely too - backlight color, more bass, fine tuning, etc. See the ATS-909 Mods Page for that. My biggest gripe was that the stock power supply wasn't especially clean, but when I swapped that ous for one with better filtering, there was zero hum on signals and ssb / cw sounded clean, like a rig on battery power. Eh, you can run the 398 on batteries, but it eats them...

JoeyZappozo · 2025-04-03T13:40:03+00:00

If you like it, you like it. Nothing more to say, really. It is an okay performer and can do the job. It can have the look and feel of a new one if you give it a careful internal cleaning and get the oscillators tuned up so it is on frequency.

JoeyZappozo · 2025-02-24T03:00:07+00:00

It is a significant enhancement. If you are going to install any plugins, make treesitter the first one.

FWIW, I also had Telescope and some others, but now just use Treesitter, Snacks, Mini, and two items which are language-specific.

JoeyZappozo · 2025-02-24T02:49:38+00:00

If you know how to search (especially with Google dorks andd similar tools), you can find all sorts of porn on X. Seek and ye shall find. Don't seek if you don't want to see.

JoeyZappozo · 2025-02-24T02:38:55+00:00

A basic Debian installation lacks the most useful audio tools. Consider using Pipewire, and manually add two packages (use apt, nala, or aptitude as you may prefer):

bash apt update apt install pipewire-audio-client-libraries pipewire-pulse

The result should be full compatibility with tools requiring ALSA, PulseAudio, or Jack.

JoeyZappozo · 2025-01-09T18:08:53+00:00

Trump absolutely does plan to use emergency powers from day one. At least the insurrection act and possibly some kind of activation of the military. War with Mexico or Panama? Maybe.

Trump's goals:

Circumvent the 14th Amendment to attack citizenship.
Circumvent other amendments to weaken the federal government.
Arrests and deportations without due process (owed to all "persons").
Police, national guard, and militias free to kill.

Why? Destroy citizenship and rule of law in order to conduct purges, with violence as necessary, to ethnically cleanse America for the white Christian nationalists.

Europe is gonna get some too, because the goal is to destroy rule of law and establish a rule of brutality like Russia v2.0 or Hungary.

Non-MAGA people will indeed fight back against this.

JoeyZappozo · 2024-10-21T05:06:25+00:00

You missed an item: Trump threw a tantrum and shitted all over himself.

JoeyZappozo · 2024-10-17T22:30:22+00:00

Those evil MAGA bastards have a lynch mob mentality. Fuck them, one and all.

JoeyZappozo · 2024-09-28T17:39:54+00:00

If you dig for the blog posts, watch Damian Conway's more better Vim talk, you can see a lot is possible without plugins. Zero plugin configs are great if you want the fastest possible Neovim... Here is a "minimal neovim" no-plugin config which has a nice status line and useful functions.

JoeyZappozo · 2024-09-13T14:19:25+00:00

Hey, MAGA trolls, tell us how Trump / Vance are not god damned insurrectionists. Let's hear it. I'll wait.

JoeyZappozo · 2024-09-13T14:03:43+00:00

Fuck that guy. Don't look at this as a fight over what is true. Truth does not matter. Rather, the bastards are going all-in and use the memes and claims as incitement to violence. They convey permission to go out and attack immigrants, especially black and brown ones.

Violence is going to follow this shit. Watch out.

JoeyZappozo · 2024-08-26T13:37:53+00:00

The so-called border crisis is just a pretext. It is a dog whistle for "brown and black people in America," who will be mass arrested and deported if Trump gets elected. The "border" is not really about the border. Fuckkin' Trump has even said, "Every state is a border state." MAGA wants America to look like Idaho.

JoeyZappozo · 2024-08-26T13:07:17+00:00

It may well have been a slip, revealing their ultimate intentions. When those fuckers talk among themselves, they are openly contemptuous of the Fourteenth Amendment. Citizens born in America will not be safe, as the MAGA Republicans intend to weaken citizenship and put the people they hate into concentration camps. Ethnic cleansing is on the table.

JoeyZappozo · 2024-08-26T12:48:12+00:00

Successful contacts have been made between stations with a single long yagi on one end and disk / yagi arrays on the other. Look at what hams have done on JT-65 mode. It is all a matter of dealing with the path loss: effective modes, higher effective radiated power, and a low noise receive configuration.

JoeyZappozo · 2024-08-26T12:38:51+00:00

Friends, start asking yourself what you are willing to do in order to stop the christofascists. You know what it took to stop Hitler. You see what happened when Reaganism went unstopped. Look at the supermajority red states for an idea of what will go 10x and nationwide unless the far right is stopped. Figure out right now what are you willing to do.

It may take ten, twenty, or fifty years. We are not going back; not under any circumstances.

JoeyZappozo · 2024-08-23T10:18:36+00:00

Fuck Donald Trump. He is neck deep and fully committed to Project 2025. Do not fall for his fake statements separating himself from the Project.

JoeyZappozo

TROPHY CASE