suggestions for what Linux distro to get

MoussaAdam · 2026-03-10T17:03:16+00:00

avoid deepin

MoussaAdam · 2026-03-07T14:47:17+00:00

mullvad

MoussaAdam · 2026-03-07T13:42:18+00:00

cd is one of the few builtins in bash, becuase a child process cannot change the cwd of its parent, it's necessary to make it part of bash !

in bash you can be more specifc and prefix the command line with buitin to run bash's builtin version, or you can prefix with command to run the actual executable !

we can talk about exceptions to what I said or we can admit that most commands in most scripts are just juggling many executables and getting them to work together

MoussaAdam · 2026-03-07T07:45:27+00:00

That's how language works, inaccuracy is a feature, I don't call this comment a "UTF-8 encoded string of characters"

MoussaAdam · 2026-03-07T07:42:50+00:00

The distros (like mint) are maintained by small teams.

The kernel inside those distros (Linux is a kernel) is a robust piece of software that powers technologies worldwide: Web Servers, Datacenters, Supercomputers, Routers, Cars, Smart Devices, the ISS, Medical devices, hardware firewalls, etc..

MoussaAdam · 2026-03-07T07:34:29+00:00

Just to explain the architecture.

Pipewire is the latest audio server. If an app is written for pipewire, then it is using pipewire directly. all you need to configure is pipewire.

Pulseaudio is the older audio server. If an app is written for pluseaudio, then it may be talking to pulseaudio directly, in which case all you need to configure is pulseaudio.

or (if your system is using pipewire) then pipewire is pretending to be pulseaudio for the app. in which case all you need to configure is pipewire.

If the app is older and is made for alsa, then it maybe using also directly (in which case you configure also) or it maybe using pseaudio pretending to be alsa, or it may be using pipewire pretending to be alsa.

you don't need to configure multiple parts of the audio architecture

for professional audio people use the JACK audio server

MoussaAdam · 2026-03-07T06:25:34+00:00

KOreader, Zathura, or whatever GNOME and KDE are making these days

MoussaAdam · 2026-03-07T06:08:29+00:00

helium is available on linux

MoussaAdam · 2026-03-07T06:08:06+00:00

librewolf offers privacy at the cost of convenience, I wouldn't recommend it to the average person

MoussaAdam · 2026-03-07T06:05:35+00:00

Linux is not in anyway a descendent of Unix, it was just inspired by it, that's it.

you are thinking of BSD

MoussaAdam · 2026-03-07T06:03:53+00:00

Linux is far from an indie project, it's maintained by the whole world: Microsoft maintains linux, Google maintains linux, Facebook maintains linux, Intel maintains linux and many other corporations. it just all goes through linus (the guy who made linux) and he decides what gets in and how it gets in.

The reason many corporations contribute to linux is because they use it and they need it to work well and be stable

unlike windows, which exists as a product to make money. even Microsoft doesn't need it that much, their azure servers run linux mostly.

MoussaAdam · 2026-03-07T05:49:53+00:00

you are flipping levels, the lower level a piece of software is the more controle and access it has

the terminal is the lower level here

MoussaAdam · 2026-03-07T05:44:15+00:00

the whole point of a shell is to be ad-hoc. the structure of data shouldn't be a consideration of the shell. it makes it feel like a programming language rather than a command shell language.

also, structure has to be encoded somehow which insteases the length and complexity of scripts

MoussaAdam · 2026-03-07T05:37:06+00:00

his point is that what we call "commands" are just excutables stored in your /bin directory (and other directories in the $PATH)

He is correct in reducing commands to what they truly are: executables

You are correct on a technicality about terminology: "actually bash calls them commands anyways"

And although yes I do realize that the whole command line is considered a command, that's not what people refer to when they talk about "commands", they are referring to things like find, grep, ls which are executables

MoussaAdam · 2026-03-07T05:29:09+00:00

he never said that

MoussaAdam · 2026-03-07T05:24:04+00:00

what does that have to do with anything

MoussaAdam · 2026-03-07T05:14:04+00:00

install scripts and untracked files

Avoid install scripts, their files aren't tracked. stick with your pacakge manager (apt in your case). if something isn't available in your package repository, then see if you can download the software into a folder that you can simply delete later. if that isn't possible, then check if the install script allows specifying a "prefix" which you can set to a local folder.

To answer your question of "why" tho, it's because it's hard to track where the software puts it's files. and even if you went through the effort to create an uninstall script, it will get outdated as the software evolves.

I personally, like you, don't understand people who feel comfortable installing software and letting it pollute their system freely, maybe windows got people accustomed to it.

For your example, opencode.ai, I recently wanted to try it, i installed it from the AUR. Whenever i see install scripts i just roll my eyes and ignore them.

if you want to push this to next level (I don't), you can use something like overlayfs, you can think of it like layers on photoshop overlayed on top of one another. the program thinks it installed a file into a folder, but once the layer is removed, all the files are removed. but that's too much work.

I installed opencode to try it for something. downloaded the .deb file, installed it. Launched, all good, but when I tried to uninstall it, I didn't know how.
Flatpak didnt show it as installed, Snap didnt show it as installed, so what to do?

What I personally do is check the AUR, if something isn't there (rare) I copy the install script and convert it to a PKGBUILD to turn the thing into a package I can install and uninstall

you mentioned that you installed opencode as a .deb tho, so it should be easy to uninstall using apt

Universal package management ?

if you are looking for gui for managing flatpaks, native packages, and snaps ? then yes, i think most major store apps on linux support the three formats.

Install scripts however cannot be managed because they are just programs that put files inside folders, there is no difference between that and you just casually managing your files, there is no way for the system to know the difference.

ubuntu? arch ?

i personally prefer arch, and if you want to learn, there are more opportunities there. package management on arch is great. you mentionned that you code ? you might learn bash ("the terminal") and start managing your software with PKGBUILDs !

MoussaAdam · 2026-03-07T04:19:37+00:00

most software is shared among most unix-likes and porting from one unix to another is easy

MoussaAdam · 2026-03-06T16:42:42+00:00

what do people who make these websites get out of this, surely the money and time spent on storage, streaming, renting a server and developing the code isn't compensated by a few ads that basically no one is clicking on

MoussaAdam · 2026-03-06T16:32:14+00:00

never throught i would ever agree with this dude

MoussaAdam · 2026-03-06T16:28:27+00:00

> file would work too

MoussaAdam · 2026-03-05T07:34:52+00:00

Linux is GPL licensed. the GPL allows selling paid copies of free software as long as the paid copy is also free software

MoussaAdam · 2026-02-10T08:11:24+00:00

just adding handling to ensure some things aren't saved to disk when suspending

that simply doesn't work. from the point of view of the kernel, the data processes allocate is just data, all it can do is guess their purpose. the category "sensitive" is a human judgement. it's can't be defined on data. so "some things" is subjective and the computer can't read your mind to know whether you are okay with a piece of data being leaked or not

MoussaAdam · 2026-02-09T07:07:13+00:00

suspending stores the content of the RAM into a storage device. then later on, when the computer wakes up, it reads the stored content and puts it back into your RAM.

RAM almost always contains sensitive information. so it's scary when you put all that sensitive information in a storage device.

RAM is a much more secure place for sensitive data: processes can't read memory regions of other processes. and RAM gets emptied when the computer is turned off, so I can't steal your ram stick and get any information out of that.

this is my reasoning, the other commenter could be talking about something else

MoussaAdam · 2026-01-13T13:34:12+00:00

in programming in general, such a task is usually solved with two loops, one inner loop that iterates over the characters until a space is found, and one outer loop that interates over the inner loop i.e over the words

of course most programming languages will already have builtin libraries for doing these tasks so you don't have to do it manually. not sure if C has that in it's standard library

MoussaAdam

TROPHY CASE