Approaching infinite volume, by the looks of them

They’re more different than people might expect. I like both, but they’re very different experiences.

“Yeah, but my PC doesn’t handle it well. If my PC were upgraded, it could really gen some AI.”

Absolutely. Making sure I have a huge life insurance policy, but getting it far ahead enough to avoid questions of fraud would be worth it.

I’ll throw Alpine Linux into the mix. Not sure how well it supports older hardware, but it’s really small.

I wish I could, but cameras are restricted :/

My office has two ping pong tables. They’re literally roped off with caution tape, and nobody is allowed to use them. I wish I were kidding.

They obviously don’t have the features that Rufus has, but I’ve ended up using the default USB image writers that come pre-installed (found them on both Mint and Manjaro, probably available on others). If you’re just looking to write an ISO, check to see if you already have one.

Got a gaming laptop that functions for everything. Not as powerful as a dedicated tower, but being somewhat portable is worth it for me.

You can make most distros work like most others, with enough tweaking. The main difference at this point isn’t what you can do with them, but how they’re set up by default, which typically reflects their thing (e.g., Debian is super stable vs Arch giving access to the latest and greatest).

To be honest, I think the homogenization is a net positive. I doubt we’d have the diverse driver support that makes Linux a viable desktop OS if we didn’t have lots of similarities. And it’s a natural thing–it turns out that most people want computers to do a relatively similar variety of things, so all the major distros end up moving a similar direction. And with open source, when one distro implements a really nice feature, it makes sense everyone else would port it as well.

Minutes 1-2: Grab a hoodie, my most comfortable walking shoes, my passports, and any extra cash. Turn on my shower, grab my cordless trimmer, set my phone on the sink, lock the bathroom door behind me. Lock the doors, leave through the garage. Grab my small adjustable wrench on the way out.

Minutes 3-5: my neighborhood lies along a set of railroad tracks that are heavily obscured by brush. Start walking. By the time they arrive at my house, I’m a good ways down the tracks and leaving my neighborhood.

Minutes 6-10: the agents have entered and found that I’m not in the shower. I’m further down the tracks and out of my neighborhood.

Minutes 11-30: I make my way to a friend’s house, mainly following the tracks. When I get there, tell them I have an emergency and can I borrow their car. The agents are searching.

Minutes 31-60: I start driving. I stop in a parking lot at a factory near my office. I look for a car that was backed into its spot and use my wrench to steal the license plate–shift change was two hours ago, so I have 6 hours before they notice. I put the other plate on my vehicle. The agents are interrogating my friend, but the border is only 1.5 hours away. I have family there.

Minutes 61-150: As I drive, I use my cordless trimmer to shave my hair and beard. About half way, I stop at a Walmart and pick up a burner phone. I dial my family as I drive. We make a plan.

Minutes 151-180: I park at Sam’s Club. My parents are already on their way back to the car with some groceries. I meet them at their car and get in the back seat. As we pull away, I crouch down and climb into the trunk. We head for the border.

Minutes 181-200: we arrive at customs, but my parents have a fast pass. They cross the border casually all the time. They don’t check the trunk. We’re waved through.

Minutes 200-525600: I contact my home country’s law enforcement. They put me in the witness protection program. I have a new identity and life. The agents search in vain.

Minutes 525601-20000000: I’m content in my new life. I work, I pursue simple hobbies, I avoid social media. Eventually age catches up with me and I decide to move into an assisted living facility. My mind isn’t as sharp as it once was. One of the workers in the cafeteria asks my name, and I give a name I haven’t heard in 40 years. The cafeteria worker raises their serving spoon. It’s not a spoon, it’s a gun. They’re the agent.

Welcome! I was actually in the same boat a year or two ago–every time I tried before that, there was a lot of finagling to get everything working. When I upgraded to Win11, and was having a rough time getting drivers going, I ended up trying Mint. Everything worked out of the box and I haven’t looked back.

1. I find it helpful to have a separate data partition (though I don’t actually use it for /home because I find that gets messy quickly). Separate data is nice in case you’re concerned about something getting messed up, or if you like to try another distros (I ended up switching to Manjaro a while ago). Not necessary, but whatever you do, I recommend keeping it relatively simple.

2. Can’t comment, haven’t tried.

3. Last I checked, there was no client for Google Drive or Proton Drive. Not sure about Dropbox. I’ve heard of rclone but haven’t tried it.

4. I usually try apt first, then check the GUI for a flatpak if needed. I personally prefer native apps/deb packages, but that’s a subjective thing.

5. I use the default terminal and Firefox install. I ended up moving my actual personal data out of /home and it’s been easier to keep it all tidy (there’s even a way to point the file manager shortcuts to an alternate location). Tip: if you happen to have an Nvidia card, there’s a GUI utility to switch to a non-free driver, which improved things for me. My other tip: especially if you have a separate data partition, give yourself permission to not get everything perfect, and that you might want a clean install somewhere down the road. Mint isn’t quite as easy to reinstall as something like SilverBlue, but it’s not that hard I’ve found.

Have fun!

The space? That will be based on how the website is designed (and many web frameworks do this). There might be an extension out there to do it, but I wouldn’t count on it working terribly well.

Your other option is to zoom in until the content fills your screen.

Though I’m only 62% sure I understand what you’re asking.

Stands there.

Looks around.

Picks nose.

Stands there.

Wiggles a bit.

Stands there.

Picks absently at a fingernail.

Stands there.

Chokes on air for a minute.

Probably not the most complex, but in programming, the salesman problem: intuitive for humans, really tough for programming. It highlights how sophisticated our brains are with certain tasks, and what we take for granted.

Also, related xkcd.

Had some people visiting from Columbia. The squirrels absolutely blew their minds.

Oh, I meant putting a hole in Abe Lincoln’s head.

/jk

Pretty sure that’s a federal offence.

Try Linux Mint. You set it up on a USB drive, and you can try using it before you install it. So load it up, and try doing a few things you’d normally do (check email, etc.). This way, you can get your feet wet without committing fully. If you find you like it, you can do an installation (and it doesn’t require any fancy terminal stuff).