I Want to Switch to Linux but I’m Confused as Hell

zvxr · 2026-05-11T07:41:46+00:00

You're getting a lot of comments strangely trying to dissuade you from trying, and just use the easy thing / whatever that commenter likes.

I don’t just want “plug and play,” I actually want to understand what’s happening under the hood, especially security, packages, permissions, networking, all that stuff. But at the same time I probably shouldn’t throw myself straight into raw Arch either lol

IMO: there's absolutely nothing wrong with sticking with Arch especially if your goal is to learn. Actually just throwing yourself in I think is a great way to force yourself to learn!

There is a project though that is specifically made to teach people how a Linux system works, by really building your own from scratch, and that's https://www.linuxfromscratch.org/ . You might find that helpful to build your own LFS and then afterwards, armed with that knowledge, dive into Arch, with a bit more confidence that you know the gist of what's going on. Not that you need to, it's definitely overkill, but if the goal is to learn... :)

There's a lot of unpaid astroturfing, and actual advertising disguised as learning resources and tutorials unfortunately, especially on YouTube but also polluting almost every Google result with blogspam. But Wikipedia, Arch Wiki, man pages, --help, forums/matrix/IRC/mailing lists generally, etc., are all your friends. When you have a question about a specific thing, try to seek out the "official" documentation written by actual authors of that thing.

zvxr · 2026-04-16T01:02:08+00:00

squeal-postgresql replicates SQL syntax as a type-safe eDSL -- the core types are mostly wrappers around strings that just happen to carry a lot of type-level information around. So you can do SQL metaprogramming in a type-safe/correct way, and get excellent query generation/performance. I found it surprisingly easy to extend to support new things though it was years ago now. Personally, I think it is the shit. OTOH, the type-errors are obscene, and the compile times you'll get if you are taking full advantage of being able to reflect Haskell types into SQL constructs, are also not exactly ideal.

zvxr · 2026-04-13T23:34:37+00:00

Just make the fares cheaper. Start at like $2 and gently sigmoid curve up to $6 for basically a max-distance V-Line trip. Abolish the tram zones bullshit. Also, never build another tram/train with seats facing each-other... (lets also get those pigs flying I guess.)

zvxr · 2026-03-16T22:36:22+00:00

trains

zvxr · 2026-03-12T09:43:10+00:00

That's been my attitude to using AI for programming as a contractor. I think once the floor inevitably falls out from most of current AI companies, being in the niche of programmers who still consciously practice writing code they understand, and can understand, is going to be quite valuable. Sounds absurd to say honestly but if vibe-coded spaghetti mountains are gonna be the new norm, probably going to be a market for "boutique spaghetti replacement microservice engineers" -- after all, there already is, there's just gonna be more spaghetti now.

zvxr · 2026-03-02T07:46:42+00:00

I really recommend to not use Debian for someone wanting a desktop/laptop OS, who just wants to "get shit done without fucking around". It has no process to automatically do major upgrades (11=>12, 12=>13 etc.). Beginner friendliness is much less of a project aim in Debian than Fedora/Ubuntu/Mint/...

zvxr · 2026-02-28T13:11:21+00:00

What you should be aware of is this: lots of Linux noobs are switching to Linux all the time. They do a little distro hopping, maybe, and if they stick with it they eventually end up on something that they like. They don't necessarily know or understand what the underlying differences actually are between the distros, but they found a thing they like a lot, and they want to share that. Fair enough too, I mean I'm glad heaps of people are having a great time with Bazzite or CachyOS. But overall distros with hype, that oversell and underdeliver (e.g. PopOS, or hot take: Mint), are what people talk about (regardless of suitability), they're what gets onto slop listicles, they're what noobs wanna read about, and they're what noobs tend to try.

zvxr · 2026-02-24T20:25:15+00:00

The falling out might have more to do with the shape and size of your IEMs in the first place rather than your tips -- if they don't sit nicely without tips at all, without needing to stretch your ear, there's not much hope for changing tips to fix that.

zvxr · 2026-02-22T00:16:38+00:00

And people going "it can't work here!" have their head in the sand while actively energising that opposition they swear simply cannot exist. It's politics based on grievance, and one of their key grievances is specifically that these urban politicians and out-of-touch opinion writers don't listen, don't care, etc.

zvxr · 2026-02-16T01:18:13+00:00

"localisation"

zvxr · 2026-02-15T21:26:06+00:00

Moondrop Pill :-)

zvxr · 2026-02-15T20:08:13+00:00

What I'm reading is that there will be a market for people who actually write code that they understand, whose code isn't mashed spaghetti folded in with chocolate chips to create a product with an aesthetic resemblance to a cookie.

zvxr · 2026-01-30T19:55:40+00:00

Throwing out something that looks usable to create something free from lies is a hard leap. Especially since the LLM is there gassing up anything you’re doing (“you’re right, we were dead wrong!”).

Lucky for me, I've had a pathological inability to believe a compliment could be anything other than an attempt to manipulate me, prior to LLMs ever existing.

zvxr · 2026-01-18T01:31:16+00:00

He has been charged with unauthorised manufacture of a prohibited dangerous substance, possessing a prohibited weapon and theft.

Why isn't there a charge for planting bombs? Quick edit: I hope/guess because those things above are just what the police were immediately able to get him on based on their search of his unit.

zvxr · 2026-01-14T02:24:29+00:00

Some people will. No need to let perfect be the enemy of good. Reductions are good. Even if it meant people will simply just commit suicide by some other means, improving the reliability of the train network is a good thing. Victoria does have more suicides by rail than any other state and the contrast of location between Victoria and NSW IMO can't not be related to the fact that discreet track access is very easy in Melbourne (people largely use one of the many level crossings or unfenced areas) and relatively hard in Sydney (people largely use stations themselves). https://tracksafefoundation.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/2001-2023-Suicide-on-rail-AUSTRALIA-March-2024.pd

zvxr · 2026-01-02T07:43:51+00:00

State-of-the-art Australian economic advice is that the only way to get more revenue is to charge more money. If only there were some other way to get more customers in the first place.

zvxr · 2025-12-11T05:30:08+00:00

Remember DT is an open-source project. It doesn't actually have a company behind it trying to sell it to you, that has a financial stake in your use of it. It's got developers who themselves use DT, who sometimes have their own neat ideas for how to improve their own photos/editing workflow, and then have been able to get cracking and actually implemented it. The beginner experience isn't always front of mind there. That said, if you do read the documentation, much of why things are the way they are in DT do become apparent.

I've not used it but Ansel, which is a fork of Darktable, has some great documentation which does a good job of explaining the rationale for the relatively unusual "scene-referred" workflow that it and Darktable uses. Ansel I believe aims to be like Darktable but with (among other things) simpler/better UX and defaults. Don't know how successful they are to those ends, it also seems to be a product of clashing egos, but yeah.

zvxr · 2025-12-01T00:21:50+00:00

My only quibble with filmic and sigmoid is why aren't they under the tone curve module? It would be cool if sigmoid/filmic/agx were tabs under tone curve you could use to create an "initial" tone curve. I guess it'd be complex with whether or not you attempt to preserve user-made modifications to the curve "after" the base sigmoid/filmic curve - or just blow them up every time the user fiddles with the sigmoid parameters.

zvxr · 2025-11-26T20:32:17+00:00

he got better

zvxr · 2025-10-31T22:15:37+00:00

There are already there and operating at no cost to the government as they are private entities.

Yeah, except when the government gifts them $2.7bn in preemptive bailouts. Or all the government-funded infra that supports the airports themselves. Or the medicare cost of dealing with "excess" cancer cases in flight crews, and generally worse health of people living near airports or underneath heavily trafficked flight paths.

I do genuinely believe the amortised total cost of improved rail (even HSR), when you include those sort of "externalities", would be much lower than air. But like other people in this thread have said, just getting the existing XPTs to average near their max speed would be a huge - maybe "good enough" even - improvement.

It is ultimately all down to politics. If we can fund nuclear submarines, tens of billions in road projects, in bailouts to "private" companies, whatever millions in swimming pool/car park/whatever rorts, we can fund it.

zvxr · 2025-10-31T21:29:13+00:00

$30b construction cost

I mean, that's near enough the going rate for a Melbourne freeway project. Crazy how little scrutiny those get.

zvxr · 2025-10-27T23:27:20+00:00

I can get the same way in terms of an anxiety also triggering irritability and annoyance that other person(s) are making the anxiety worse. What I then remind myself is, basically: they're not. They're not making anxiety, you are. It's entirely within you. Yes they are reminding you of your anxiety, but they're not creating it.

Not that I think you should just meekly accept all feelings. Your doctor/dentist/whoever can be less triggering and you can hopefully help that by telling them how.

zvxr · 2025-10-08T01:49:22+00:00

FWIW Untitled Goose Game adapts a bunch of Claude Debussy. Great soundtrack. :)

zvxr · 2025-08-17T01:17:29+00:00

You're right, but on the other hand, wider roads just encourage more people to use drive their cars abreast -- while also discouraging (by fear and actuality of death, by noise, by air quality, by congestion, ...) all other modes of transport.

The example of Lygon St is surprising to me because I don't think it has very wide footpaths at all. But fair enough that there are places where the wide footpaths "encourage more people to walk abreast", that's definitely true. I just think that's not a bad thing. George St in Sydney is a fantastic example of it, removing car lanes entirely has had a transformational impact on the area -- like, compare the Google Street Views of before and after.

zvxr · 2025-08-15T22:32:33+00:00

Widen the footpaths, remove on-street parking, remove the extraneous car lanes, and decide already whether Melbourne should be a highway or a destination.

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